Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Restoration of H‐2b expression and processing of endogenous antigens in the MHC class I pathway by fusion of a lymphoma mutant to L cells of the H‐2k haplotype

The RMA‐S lymphoma mutant cannot process and present antigens to H‐2‐restricted cytotoxic T lymphocytes. It synthesizes major histocompatibility complex class I heavy (H‐2KbDb) and light β2‐microglobulin (β2mb) chains of normal size and charge, but only a fraction of these assemble and reach the cell surface. As a first step investigating the genetic defect of this line, we have fused it to a L cell fibroblast line (H‐2KkDk/β2ma). The fusion restored H‐2Kb, Db and β2mb expression as well as the ability to process and present internally derived (minor histocompatibility and influenza virus nucleoprotein) antigens in RMA‐S. This shows that the mutation(s) responsible for the phenotype of RMA‐S is (are) not located within the MHC class I heavy and light chain genes. Other cellular factors, derived from the L cell fusion partner, can control antigen processing and transport of MHC class I molecules. These findings are discussed in relation to the observation that assembly and transport of MHC class I molecules can be induced in the mutant by H‐2b‐restricted peptides. The recessive nature of the defect and its independence of MHC class I genes in the mutant has important implications for future transfection studies, of this and similar mutants, aiming at establishing cells containing non‐assembled MHC class I molecules of different alleles and identifying the gene(s) controlling processing of endogenous antigens.
The Dual Tracking Puzzle: When IPO Plans Turn into Mergers

We examine a sample of 132 dual tracking targets - private firms entertaining acquisition offers at the same time as preparing for initial public offerings (IPOs) and eventually withdrawing their IPOs to be acquired after spending considerable time, money, and effort preparing for IPOs. We find that dual tracking private targets sell at a 58 percent acquisition premium relative to comparable private targets that never file IPO registrations, while their acquirers still earn a substantial average abnormal announcement return of 2.6 percent. Controlling for endogeneity effects does not change our results. The significant acquisition premium is due to neither dual tracking targets' improved bargaining power in negotiations nor higher potential synergy benefits for bidders. The premium is more consistent with the explanation that dual tracking private targets can signal their valuation to bidders and reduce valuation uncertainty by filing IPO registrations.
Family Firms and Entrepreneurial Human Capital in the Process of Development

In this paper we present a new theory accounting for the heterogeneous impact of family firms on economic growth. We develop an overlapping generations model, where agents are heterogeneous in innate talent, and family firms have access to an additional source of managerial capital, family connections, which affects the incentives of the firms' owners to pass on the company within the family and invest in the entrepreneurial human capital of their heirs. Our theory predicts that family firms cluster into heterogeneous groups with different management practices, inducing, at the aggregate level, a misallocation of talent that affects economic growth and the evolution into either a dynamic or a stagnant society, depending on the productivity of family connections in doing business. This heterogeneity in management practices and entrepreneurial human capital explains the different contribution of family firms during industrialization, highlighting the many possible evolutionary patterns for the economy and long-run growth regimes. Consistent with the theory, we provide empirical evidence in favor of the importance of social connectivity among individuals for explaining the difference in management practices between family and non-family firms, and, in turn, the GDP per-capita across countries. JEL Classification: J24, J62, L26, O11, O40
Does supply chain excellence really pay off

Subtitle: The short answer is a resounding yes! New research findings show that the top supply chain management companies significantly outperform their competitors across most financial measures. This article offers insights into those financial gains that differentiate the leaders from their rivals--and offers tips on how to get your top management interested in investing for supply chain excellence.
Fast Volume Rendering for Medical Image Data

Volume rendering is a technique for visualizing 3D images from 2D sampled data. For 2D medical image data, volume rendering can be used to construct the corresponding 3D images, and physicians can then use them for more precise diagnoses. In this paper, we use some speed-up methods to fast construct the 3D images. After the construction, one can use our system for real-time rotation and simulated surgery of the 3D images. The data used by our system are from the human body MRI provided by National Yang-Ming University. The goal of this project is to build the “visible human” database in Taiwan. On a Pentium II 300 PC, the speed in rotating a 3D image is 1.14 seconds per frame from 55 slices of 256x256 “full body” MRI images.
Does Corporate Coinsurance Enhance Shareholder Value?

This paper tests Leland's (2007) theoretical prediction that depending on specific merger conditions, corporate coinsurance can generate either synergistic gains accruing to both creditors and equityholders or a wealth transfer from stockholders to bondholders. We observe that in merger deals of firms with low cash-flow correlation, synergistic gains enhance shareholder as well as bondholder wealth. The difference in their cash-flow volatilities is positively related to shareholder return around merger announcements and to changes in bond rating of acquiring firms two months after the merger. On the other hand, in mergers of firms with high cash-flow correlation, the result shows a wealth redistribution, where shareholder wealth, and not bondholder wealth, is reduced. Under this condition, the increase in the same cash-flow volatility difference of merging firms negatively affects the combined stockholders' return, but not the bond rating of acquiring firms.
‘Triply cursed’: racism, homophobia and HIV-related stigma are barriers to regular HIV testing, treatment adherence and disclosure among young Black gay men

In the USA, young Black gay men are disproportionately impacted upon by HIV. In this qualitative study consisting of in-depth interviews with 31 young Black gay men and nine service providers, where we used thematic analysis to guide our interpretations, we found that HIV-related stigma and homophobia, within the larger societal context of racism, were related to sexual risk behaviour, reluctance to obtain HIV testing or care, lower adherence to treatment medication, and non-disclosure of a positive HIV status to sexual partners. Participants experienced homophobia and HIV-related stigma from churches and families within the Black community and from friends within the Black gay community, which otherwise provide support in the face of racism. Vulnerability to HIV was related to strategies that young Black gay men enacted to avoid being stigmatised or as a way of coping with alienation and rejection.
Dissociated active and passive tactile shape recognition: a case study of pure tactile apraxia.

Disorders of tactile object recognition (TOR) may result from primary motor or sensory deficits or higher cognitive impairment of tactile shape representations or semantic memory. Studies with healthy participants suggest the existence of exploratory motor procedures directly linked to the extraction of specific properties of objects. A pure deficit of these procedures without concomitant gnostic disorders has never been described in a brain-damaged patient. Here, we present a patient with a right hemispheric infarction who, in spite of intact sensorimotor functions, had impaired TOR with the left hand. Recognition of 2D shapes and objects was severely deficient under the condition of spontaneous exploration. Tactile exploration of shapes was disorganized and exploratory procedures, such as the contour-following strategy, which is necessary to identify the precise shape of an object, were severely disturbed. However, recognition of 2D shapes under manually or verbally guided exploration and the recognition of shapes traced on the skin were intact, indicating a dissociation in shape recognition between active and passive touch. Functional MRI during sensory stimulation of the left hand showed preserved activation of the spared primary sensory cortex in the right hemisphere. We interpret the deficit of our patient as a pure tactile apraxia without tactile agnosia, i.e. a specific inability to use tactile feedback to generate the exploratory procedures necessary for tactile shape recognition.
Profitability, Saving and Investment of Non-Financial Firms in Turkey

How investment is financed matters a great deal to growth, especially in countries like Turkey, where domestic savings are low and financial systems are not deep enough in supplying the funds needed for growth-generating corporate investment. In these countries there is a close link between selfgenerated corporate savings and investment activity, since access to external funds may be difficult, especially for firms that have little to offer in the way of collateral. When the funds available in the financial system are limited and there is a high external finance premium, corporate savings become even more important to fixed investment. This study analyzes the determinants of corporate savings and whether they enhance investment and ultimately growth. Empirical analysis of data from listed firms shows that in Turkey the savings of nonfinancial firms as a percent of net sales are lower than those of nonfinancial firms in major developing countries. In addition, the financial sector in Turkey is far from adept at attracting savings and mobilizing funds for firms that have to depend on external financing. In fact, the ratio of commercial credits extended to bank dependent firms to GDP is not high even though it has been increasing in recent years. These two factors are the main barriers to investment by nonfinancial firms. In other words, investment activity of financial firms proves to be highly sensitive to cash flows, which suggests that financially constrained firms invest less and thus grew slowly. In many countries corporate savings constitute about half of total savings. Policies that encourage efforts to raise corporate savings can enhance both investment and economic growth. The results of dynamic panel data regressions suggest that both firm-specific and macroeconomic variables explain savings of non-financial firms. For instance, firms’ saving rates seem to increase significantly with profitability, firm size, Tobin’s q, the GDP growth rate, and financial depth. They decline significantly with the ratio of tangible to total assets, the leverage ratio, the ratio of public debt to GDP, and real exchange rate appreciation.
Earnings Uncertainty and Analyst Forecast Herding

This study empirically investigates how a firm’s earnings uncertainty affects analysts’ herding behaviors in earnings forecasts. Trueman (1994) and Graham (1999) analytically predict that analysts have higher incentives to issue a herding forecast when a firm’s earnings uncertainty is low. We test this analytical prediction using a proxy for bold forecasts used by Gleason and Lee (2003) and Clement and Tse (2005). We classify analysts’ earnings forecasts as bold when an analyst’s revised forecast is larger (or smaller) than both the analyst’s own prior forecast and the mean consensus forecast of other analysts immediately prior to the analyst’s forecast. Earnings uncertainty is measured by standard deviation of time-serial earnings forecast errors. A logit regression result shows a positive relation between bold forecasts and earnings uncertainty after controlling for analyst characteristics, which is consistent with the prediction by Trueman (1994) and Graham (1999). We also find that as earnings uncertainty increases, the accuracy of analysts’ bold forecasts relative to consensus forecast accuracy also increases. These results imply that analysts are active in producing new relevant information about firms when earnings uncertainty is higher.
Corporate environmental performance considerations within bank lending processes : the social construction of risk perception.

This thesis seeks to open up a new area of debate and investigate the seemingly recent phenomenon of corporate environmental performance considerations within bank lending processes. By drawing initial evidence from professional banking literature which addresses this issue, risk management is identified as the foundation for such considerations. The critical question posed is how 'reality', and thus environmental risk, is perceived and its associated management rationalised by bank lending officers. Accounting research, which addresses bank lending processes, and interdisciplinary debates on theories of risk perception are reflected upon. Drawing on theoretical findings, initial evidence of corporate environmental performance considerations by bank lending officers is re-examined. Based on an analysis of the social construction of perception within a bank, it is argued that a plural rationality for environmental management is constructed according to the social roles, relationships and responsibilities of its members. 'How' and 'why' a bank lending officer interprets reality become interrelated questions which are addressed. The central proposal made is that banks can be characterised as hierarchical cultures with views of physical nature founded upon myths of tolerance. Environmental risk management within bank lending processes is thus rationalised as an effort to maintain human impact with the environment at natural threshold limits. Hierarchical cultural preferences explain a bank lending officer's support for environmental legislation designed to sustain corporate activity at these limits. Empirical evidence to support this proposal is based on a hermeneutic evaluation of environmental risk perception by bank lending officers. Research participants are drawn from bank communities within Switzerland, Ireland and the UK. The thesis concludes by drawing upon evidence that corporate environmental performance is considered within bank lending processes to highlight the need for further research in this area. The central proposal establishes a provisional basis for future research of this kind.
Platelet function in clinically healthy cats and cats with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: analysis using the Platelet Function Analyzer-100.

BACKGROUND There is currently no simple analytical tool for the evaluation of hypercoagulability in cats. The Platelet Function Analyzer-100 (PFA-100; Dade Behring Inc., Deerfield, IL, USA) is a bench-top machine that evaluates platelet function by measuring closure time (CT) in citrated whole blood under high shear conditions. We hypothesized that cats with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) have up-regulated platelet function, which shortens their CT and increases their risk for thromboembolic events. OBJECTIVES The goals of this study were to: (1) establish a feline reference interval for CT using the PFA-100, (2) measure CT in blood from cats with HCM, and (3) determine if there is a measurable difference between the CT of healthy cats compared with cats with HCM. METHODS Citrated blood samples from 42 clinically healthy cats and 30 cats with HCM were analyzed according to manufacturer's specifications. CT was measured in triplicate and the mean value was used for analysis. Transformed data were compared between clinically healthy cats and cats with HCM using a Student's t-test, and among cats with mild, moderate, or severe HCM using ANOVA. RESULTS The median CT of clinically healthy cats was 64 seconds (range 43-176 seconds). The median CT of cats with HCM was 74 seconds (range 48-197 seconds). There was no significant difference in CT between cats with HCM and clinically healthy cats. There also were no significant differences in cats with mild, moderate, or severe HCM. CONCLUSIONS A feline reference interval for PFA-100 CT will be useful in future studies of platelet function in cats. Cats with HCM do not have shorter CTs when compared with clinically healthy cats.
A poselet-based approach for fall detection

Thousands of elderly people are victim of a fall incident every year. So it is important to have a fall detection system. This paper gives a poselet-based approach to detect a fall in video. Combined with aspect ratio, the centroid of the torso computation and interaction objects reorganization, the method may detect falls with partial occlusion and pose variations.
Discovery and fine-mapping of loci associated with MUFAs through trans-ethnic meta-analysis in Chinese and European populations[S]

MUFAs are unsaturated FAs with one double bond and are derived from endogenous synthesis and dietary intake. Accumulating evidence has suggested that plasma and erythrocyte MUFA levels are associated with cardiometabolic disorders, including CVD, T2D, and metabolic syndrome (MS). Previous genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified seven loci for plasma and erythrocyte palmitoleic and oleic acid levels in populations of European origin. To identify additional MUFA-associated loci and the potential functional variant at each locus, we performed ethnic-specific GWAS meta-analyses and trans-ethnic meta-analyses in more than 15,000 participants of Chinese and European ancestry. We identified novel genome-wide significant associations for vaccenic acid at FADS1/2 and PKD2L1 [log10(Bayes factor) ≥ 8.07] and for gondoic acid at FADS1/2 and GCKR [log10(Bayes factor) ≥ 6.22], and also observed improved fine-mapping resolutions at FADS1/2 and GCKR loci. The greatest improvement was observed at GCKR, where the number of variants in the 99% credible set was reduced from 16 (covering 94.8 kb) to 5 (covering 19.6 kb, including a missense variant rs1260326) after trans-ethnic meta-analysis. We also confirmed the previously reported associations of PKD2L1, FADS1/2, GCKR, and HIF1AN with palmitoleic acid and of FADS1/2 and LPCAT3 with oleic acid in the Chinese-specific GWAS and the trans-ethnic meta-analyses. Pathway-based analyses suggested that the identified loci were in unsaturated FA metabolism and signaling pathways. Our findings provide novel insight into the genetic basis relevant to MUFA metabolism and biology.
Evaluating Quality Control Decisions: A Simulation Approach

Quality has become one of the core factors for almost all manufacturing and service companies that aim to achieve customer satisfaction. Therefore, improving quality is considered to be one of the efforts that companies consider a must to attain customer loyalty in today’s complex global competitive environment. Studies concluded that any serious endeavour to improve quality will lead to an increase of cost of the product or service. Obviously, improving quality has its own costs. As a result, measuring cost of quality is very important as it provides valuable insights into the different cost of quality components. Thus, favourable returns on investment maybe achieved. For this fact, the quality cost concept was introduced and implemented in many manufacturing and service companies. The first model of cost of quality was introduced by Feigenbaum (1956) known as the P-A-F model which consists of prevention, appraisal and failure cost. Feigenbaum (1991) categorized the model into two major areas: costs of control (costs of conformance), and costs of failure of controls (costs of non-conformance), which since then used by numerous research studies (for example, Sumanth and Arora (1992), Burgess (1996), Purgslove and Dale (1995), Gupta and Campbell (1995), Chang et al. (1996), Sorqvist (1997)). Most of the reported literature does not provide a single universal definition for cost of quality (Dale and Plunkett (1999)). However, cost of quality is usually best understood in terms of the sum of costs of conformance and the costs of non-conformance which was first introduced by Crosby (1979). Here, cost of conformance is known as the costs associate with quality requirement for achieving specific quality standards for a product or service. On the other hand, cost of non-conformance is known as the cost of failure to deliver the required standard of quality for a product or service. From the voluminous literature, one may categorized the cost of quality models into five generic models which are: P-A-F model, Crosby model, opportunity or intangible cost model, process cost models and ABC (activity based costing) model. Traditional cost accounting approaches typically used to measure cost of quality has been reported in the literature to have serious limitations when dealing with the components of intangible costs (see Son (1991), Chiadamrong (2003) and Sharma (2007)). As manufactures continue to improve their factories, they discover that existing cost measure systems should be updated and no matter how sophisticated and reliable these economic evaluation measure maybe, such problems still remain if unreliable cost information is not obtained as inputs for these economic evaluation, Chiadamrong (2003).
Determination of lingual myoarchitecture in whole tissue by NMR imaging of anisotropic water diffusion

RICHARD J. GILBERT, TIMOTHY G. REESE, SHRENIK J. DAFTARY, R. NEAL SMITH, ROBERT M. WEISSKOFF, AND VAN J. WEDEEN Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 02139; Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center and Departments of Radiology and Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School 02114; and Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University School of Engineering, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Differential distribution of hyperpolarization‐activated and cyclic nucleotide‐gated channels in cone bipolar cells of the rat retina

The hyperpolarization‐activated and cyclic nucleotide‐gated (HCN) channel isoforms HCN1, HCN2, and HCN4 were localized by immunofluorescence in the rat retina. Double labeling with the vesicular glutamate transporter (VGLUT1) was used to identify bipolar cell axon terminals in the inner retina. The HCN1 channel was localized to two cell types with differing intracellular distributions, insofar as staining was seen in the dendrites of a putative OFF‐type cone bipolar cell and in the axon terminals of an ON‐type bipolar that ramifies in stratum 3 (s3) of the inner plexiform layer (IPL). Staining for HCN4 was seen in two sets of bipolar axon terminals located in s2 and s3 and positioned between the two bands of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) staining. The cells that ramify in s2 were identified as type 3 cone bipolar cells and the cells that ramify in s3 cells as a subclass of type 5 cone bipolars. The latter group, designated here as type 5b, exhibit diffuse axon terminals and can be distinguished from the narrowly stratifying type 5a cells. Double labeling showed that type 5b cone bipolar cells express both HCN1 and HCN4 as well as HCN2. Superposition of HCN channel labeling with VGLUT1 staining confirmed the presence of a cone bipolar cell whose terminals ramify in the same stratum of the IPL as type 5b cells but that do not express these HCN channels. J. Comp. Neurol. 501:891–903, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.