Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defining the Optimal Window for Cranial Transplantation of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell‐Derived Cells to Ameliorate Radiation‐Induced Cognitive Impairment

Past preclinical studies have demonstrated the capability of using human stem cell transplantation in the irradiated brain to ameliorate radiation‐induced cognitive dysfunction. Intrahippocampal transplantation of human embryonic stem cells and human neural stem cells (hNSCs) was found to functionally restore cognition in rats 1 and 4 months after cranial irradiation. To optimize the potential therapeutic benefits of human stem cell transplantation, we have further defined optimal transplantation windows for maximizing cognitive benefits after irradiation and used induced pluripotent stem cell‐derived hNSCs (iPSC‐hNSCs) that may eventually help minimize graft rejection in the host brain. For these studies, animals given an acute head‐only dose of 10 Gy were grafted with iPSC‐hNSCs at 2 days, 2 weeks, or 4 weeks following irradiation. Animals receiving stem cell grafts showed improved hippocampal spatial memory and contextual fear‐conditioning performance compared with irradiated sham‐surgery controls when analyzed 1 month after transplantation surgery. Importantly, superior performance was evident when stem cell grafting was delayed by 4 weeks following irradiation compared with animals grafted at earlier times. Analysis of the 4‐week cohort showed that the surviving grafted cells migrated throughout the CA1 and CA3 subfields of the host hippocampus and differentiated into neuronal (∼39%) and astroglial (∼14%) subtypes. Furthermore, radiation‐induced inflammation was significantly attenuated across multiple hippocampal subfields in animals receiving iPSC‐hNSCs at 4 weeks after irradiation. These studies expand our prior findings to demonstrate that protracted stem cell grafting provides improved cognitive benefits following irradiation that are associated with reduced neuroinflammation.
Bringing politics back in: Towards a model of the developmental state

The few cases of rapid economic growth in the Third World in the last 30 years have occurred in democratic, quasi‐democratic and non‐democratic polities. They are thus clearly not a function of common regime type. I suggest that they are best explained by the special character of their states, understood ‘as developmental states’. This article outlines some common characteristics of these states. However the forms and features of these states are not simply a function of their administrative structures or principles of governance, but of their politics. The article thus also underlines the importance of political analysis in both development theory and policy, from where it has been extruded for too long.
Critical Involvement of the Chemotactic Axis CXCR4/Stromal Cell-Derived Factor-1α in the Inflammatory Component of Allergic Airway Disease

Stromal cell-derived factor-1α/β (SDF-1α/β) is phylogenetically a primitive chemokine widely expressed in a variety of tissues and cell types. This expression is detectable in the absence of stimuli provided by bacterial or viral infections and allergic or autoimmune disorders. Based on these and other findings, SDF-1α has not been considered an inflammatory chemokine, but, rather, has been believed to be involved in certain homeostatic processes, such as leukocyte recirculation. SDF-1α is a potent chemoattractant for lymphocytes and monocytes that mediates its activity via the chemokine receptor CXCR4. Study of the role of SDF-1α/CXCR4 in vivo during inflammation has been limited by the fact that transgenic mice that have been made deficient in either molecule die early in life due to developmental defects. The present study was aimed at evaluating the functional relevance of the SDF-1α/CXCR4 axis during an inflammatory process. Neutralizing Abs to CXCR4 reduced lung eosinophilia (bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and interstitium) by half, indicating that CXCR4-mediated signals contribute to lung inflammation in a mouse model of allergic airway disease (AAD). This reduction in inflammation was accompanied by a significant decrease in airway hyper-responsiveness. SDF-1α neutralization resulted in similar reduction in both lung allergic inflammation and airway hyper-responsiveness. Retroviral delivery of a CXCR4 cDNA to leukocytes resulted in greater inflammation when transduced mice were subjected to a mouse model of AAD. These results highlight that, although considered a noninflammatory axis, the involvement of CXCR4 and SDF-1α is critical during AAD, and this receptor and its ligand are potentially relevant in other inflammatory processes.
Gentrification and displacement: the household impacts of neighbourhood change

Gentrification raises concerns about segregation, social mix and sustainability issues for Australian cities. This report examines the process and its impact. The report looks at three main questions: How much gentrification has actually taken place over the last decade and how much household displacement has occurred as a result of the loss of affordable housing in these newly pressured locations? What are the social and economic costs to communities and to low-income households in these neighbourhoods, either as they are displaced to other neighbourhoods in the housing system, or as they remain in place, but with higher housing costs as rents rise? What are some of the policy implications of gentrification to State housing and Federal government agencies as these are implicated in the forced migration of low income households as affordable housing and marginalisation of low income renters has occurred? Image: Mickie Quick / flickr
Impact of two supportive care interventions on anxiety, depression, quality of life, and unmet needs in patients with nonlocalized breast and colorectal cancers.

PURPOSE Patients with cancer experience considerable symptom burden, psychological morbidity, and unmet psychosocial needs. Research suggests that feedback of patient-reported outcomes to clinicians or caseworkers, alongside management strategies, may result in improved patient functioning. Two intervention models were developed to test this effect in a randomized, controlled trial against usual care (UC): a telephone caseworker (TCW) model and an oncologist/general practitioner (O/GP) model. Primary end points included anxiety, depression, physical/emotional functioning, and unmet supportive care needs. PATIENTS AND METHODS Participants with nonlocalized breast or colorectal cancers were surveyed by computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) at three time points: baseline, 3 months, and 6 months. Data collected from participant CATIs in the supportive care models were used to generate feedback to either each participant's designated TCW, or their nominated O/GPs. Data obtained from participants in the UC model were used only to assess the impact of supportive care models. In total, 356 participants consented to study participation, completed the baseline CATI, and were randomly assigned to the UC, TCW, or O/GP groups. RESULTS No overall intervention effect was observed. Physical functioning was significantly improved at the third CATI for participants in the TCW model (P = .01), and there was a trend toward fewer participants with unmet needs (P = .07). TCW group participants also were more likely to have the following: identified issues of need discussed (P < .0001); referrals made (P < .0001); and strong agreement that the intervention improved communication with their health care team (P = .0005). CONCLUSION The TCW model holds some promise; however, additional work in at-risk populations is required before we recommend implementation.
Informative and Goodwill Advertising

T HIS paper attempts to show that there is merit in the long-standing but much abused distinction between 'informative' and other types of advertising, and that this difference is revealed in a differential effect on economic performance. After a brief literature survey, section II develops a theoretical distinction between informative and goodwill advertising. Section III outlines a test of the hypothesis that the different kinds of advertising will have opposite effects on market performance. Section IV presents the results of this test. Section V summarizes and relates the results to other recent work on the economics of advertising.
Macroprudential Policy with Cross-border Interbank Loans

How macroprudential instrument should be set in a federal structure such as the Eurozone? In an estimated two-country DSGE model, we account for alternative macroprudential instruments and implementations schemes. Our main conclusions underline a possible con‡ict between the federal and the national levels in the implementation of heterogenous macroprudential measures based on a single instrument as the Pareto optimal situation computed on a federal ground requires an asymmetric choice of instruments, while more symmetric practices should be preferred on regional ground. The adoption of combined instruments in each country solves this potential con‡ict as it leads to both a higher welfare increase in the Pareto optimal equilibrium and always incurs national welfare gains. However, in all cases, the Pareto optimal equilibrium cannot be reached on national incentives and requires a supranational enforcing mechanism. JEL classi…cation: E32; E44; E52; F36; F41;
Modeling Choices for Virtual Screening Hit Identification

Making suitable modeling choices is crucial for successful in silico drug design, and one of the most important of these is the proper extraction and curation of data from qHTS screens, and the use of optimized statistical learning methods to obtain valid models. More specifically, we aim to learn the top‐1 % most potent compounds against a variety of targets in a procedure we call virtual screening hit identification (VISHID). To do so, we exploit quantitative high‐throughput screens (qHTS) obtained from PubChem, descriptors derived from molecular structures, and support vector machines (SVM) for model generation. Our results illustrate how an appreciation of subtle issues underlying qHTS data extraction and the resulting SVM models created using these data can enhance the effectiveness of solutions and, in doing so, accelerate drug discovery.
The Principle of Logit Separation

We consider neural network training, in applications in which there are many possible classes, but at test-time, the task is to identify only whether the given example belongs to a specific class, which can be different in different applications of the classifier. For instance, this is the case in an image search engine. We consider the Single Logit Classification (SLC) task: training the network so that at test-time, it would be possible to accurately identify if the example belongs to a given class, based only on the output logit for this class. We propose a natural principle, the Principle of Logit Separation, as a guideline for choosing and designing losses suitable for the SLC. We show that the cross-entropy loss function is not aligned with the Principle of Logit Separation. In contrast, there are known loss functions, as well as novel batch loss functions that we propose, which are aligned with this principle. In total, we study seven loss functions. Our experiments show that indeed in almost all cases, losses that are aligned with Principle of Logit Separation obtain a 20%-35% relative performance improvement in the SLC task, compared to losses that are not aligned with it. We therefore conclude that the Principle of Logit Separation sheds light on an important property of the most common loss functions used by neural network classifiers.
Constituency Characteristics, Individual Characteristics and Tactical Voting in the 1987 British General Election

In Britain in recent years the study of tactical voting has become something of a growth industry. Unresolved, however, is a key question: the number of tactical voters. Despite an election-night estimate of 17 per cent, a variety of later analysts have estimated that little more than one in twenty voters behaved tactically in 1987, a surprisingly low figure in the light of the efforts of various groups to encourage tactical voting in order to avoid fragmentation of the anti-Thatcher vote. Most recently, Heath, Curtice and Jowell, in their analysis of the British Election Study survey, report that ‘just 6.5% of major party voters indicated in their replies a tactical motivation for their vote’.
The evolutionary stability of moral objections to free riding

In this study we explore the endogenous determination of moral objections to free riding. We first derive the individually rational behavior for given preferences. The motivational structure is allowed to evolve evolutionarily based on the comparison of the relative reproductive success of all possible preference types. The tastes that emerge are not necessarily those assumed in models resorting to altruism or moral obligations. In general, an effective social conscience preventing free riding need not be evolutionarily stable. In the first model that we explore, moral objections to free riding and, in turn, voluntary contributions to the provision of public goods are not to be expected with one notable exception, namely unanimity games. In the second model that we explore, the evolutionarily stable probability that an individual develops social conscience is positive. Copyright 1997 Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Informal caregiving and well-being in Europe: What can ease the negative consequences for caregivers?

Against the background of an ageing society with an increasing demand for informal caregivers, this study examines (1) to what extent informal caregiving is negatively related to well-being, (2) to what extent the relationship between informal caregiving and well-being varies over countries and (3) to what extent national policies and countries’ normative climates reduce the well-being gap between caregivers and non-caregivers. Analyses on the European Quality of Life Survey 2007 (N = 20,396 in 18 countries), applying multilevel regression techniques, confirmed previous findings that caregivers have lower levels of well-being than non-caregivers. This relationship varied between countries. Generous availability of formal long-term resources reduces the well-being gap between caregivers and non-caregivers. Surprisingly, services that are designed to support informal caregivers do not alleviate the negative well-being consequences. A strong country-level family norm does not affect the well-being gap between caregivers and non-caregivers, but reduces the negative well-being consequences of intensive caregiving.
Implementing Courcelle's Theorem in a declarative framework for dynamic programming

Many computationally hard problems become tractable if the graph structure underlying the problem instance exhibits small treewidth. A recent approach to put this idea into practice is based on a declarative interface to Answer Set Programming that allows us to specify dynamic programming over tree de-compositions in this language, delegating the computation to dedicated solvers. In this paper, we prove that this method can be applied to any problem whose ﬁxed-parameter tractability follows from Courcelle’s Theorem.
[Cross-sectional study on the determinants of work stress for nurses and intention of leaving the profession].

INTRODUCTION Occupational stress is one of the main causes of sick leaves among healthcare professionals and it determines high costs to health systems. Monitoring occupational related stress can be an important tool for policy makers. The Italian nursing research gave little attention to nurses' occupational stress. The aims of this study is to estimate the prevalence of occupational stress and evaluate risks factors among Italian nurses in order to evaluate health promotion intervention. METHODS Cross-sectional study on a convenience sample of nurses from three Italian public hospitals was carried out. The Nursing Stress Scale was administrated together with socio-demographic data information(age, occupational age, family structure etc). The Nursing Stress Scale includes 34 items with a score from 0 to 3. Seven areas of job related stress are investigate in the scale: conflict with physicians, inadequate training, lack of support, conflict with other nurses, workload, uncertainty about treatments, death and suffering. Scores were calculated for each item and for each area. Associations between stress scores and socio-demographic data were analyzed. RESULTS 231 nurses participated to the study. The two stress areas with the highest scores were "workload" (1.58) and "death and suffering" (1.39). Among the 13 items that exceed the overall mean stress score (i.e. 1.07), five belong to the "workload" area. "Watching a suffering patient" is the single item with the highest mean score. Demographic data associated to higher stress scores are, female gender (p=0.03) and working with night shifts (p=0.02). Intention to leave the nursing profession is associated to higher stress scores (p=0.002). Age, occupational age, time to commute to work, number of children, having disabled relatives at home, were not correlated to higher stress scores. CONCLUSIONS Our study provides data regarding nurses' occupational stress that was not available before. This data may be useful for policy makers to plan preventive interventions for nurses' job related stress and to reduce nurses' intention to leave.
The relationship between total quality management (TQM) and corporate strategy: the strategic impact of TQM

This paper examines the relationship between Total Quality Management (TQM) and Corporate Strategy by investigating the strategic impact of TQM on organizations. There is a paucity of in-depth research examining this complex relationship. The research methodology is a grounded theory inductive approach involving nineteen case studies. In this approach the dialogue and storytelling within the research study enables key constraints and areas of interest in the TQM/Strategy discourse to emerge. The key findings indicate that: (1) in many cases the bureaucratic/functional approach to strategy is paralleled in the approach to TQM; (2) a number of organizations had difficulty in identifying the ‘driving’ influences of TQM in relation to corporate strategy; (3) TQM is found to be a useful catalyst for developing corporate strategy; (4) some organizations were found to restrict their TQM efforts to operational levels rather than adopting Strategic Total Quality Management. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Melatonin alleviates acute lung injury through inhibiting the NLRP3 inflammasome

Acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are clinically severe respiratory disorders, and there are currently no Food and Drug Administration–approved drug therapies. Melatonin is a well‐known anti‐inflammatory molecule, which has proven to be effective in ALI induced by many conditions. Emerging studies suggest that the NLRP3 inflammasome plays a critical role during ALI. How melatonin directly blocks activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome in ALI remains unclear. In this study, using an LPS‐induced ALI mouse model, we found intratracheal (i.t.) administration of melatonin markedly reduced the pulmonary injury and decreased the infiltration of macrophages and neutrophils into lung. During ALI, the NLRP3 inflammasome is significantly activated with a large amount of IL‐1β and the activated caspase‐1 occurring in the lung. Melatonin inhibits the activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome by both suppressing the release of extracellular histones and directly blocking histone‐induced NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Notably, i.t. route of melatonin administration opens a more efficient therapeutic approach for treating ALI.
The Effects of a Transparency Change in the Preopening Session on Price discovery

This paper examines how price discovery efficiency is affected by changes in the pre-trade transparency level on the Korea Exchange (KRX) on October 6, 2003. The preopening session on the KRX has experienced three policy changes related to pre-trade transparency of the open limit order book. We find that KRX stocks composing the KOSPI200 index have significant price learning about 10 minutes before the opening. We document that the transparency level change has reduced informed traders’ participation in the preopening, but has enhanced the information transfer efficiency for uninformed traders. The information loss from the decreased informed participation is canceled out by the increased information transfer efficiency for the uninformed. The total amount of market price discovery shows no significant difference after the transparency change. Overall, we conclude that the pre-trade transparency level change did not increase preopening informativeness of the intrinsic price.
Economic rehabilitation programme and the existence of implicit deposit insurance in North Cyprus

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of implicit deposit insurance in North Cyprus Banking Sector during the period 1984-2002. Design/methodology/approach - A multivariate logit model is an empirical methodology that identifies the probability of bank failure. The model links the probability of banking problems to a set of bank-specific factors, macro-environment and structural weaknesses that may have exacerbated the internal troubles of the financial institutions. Findings - The empirical findings suggest that in addition to the microeconomic variables, high credit expansion to private sector, implicit deposit insurance, existence of economic rehabilitation programmed, financial liberalization, weak regulation and supervision played an important role in the escalation of the 2000-2002 banking distress in North Cyprus. Research limitations/implications - For further research, this paper may extend the time period and include other macroeconomic variables such as inflation, exchange pressure that may have a direct effect on bank failure in North Cyprus. Practical implications - This paper presents a practical application of the deposit insurance policy as a main determinant of bank failure, which would help bank examiners, investors and regulators in their decisions to alert management in time, to prevent bank failure. The ability for early detection of any structural or financial weaknesses in the country will help to minimize financial costs of the island that brought about by financial instability. Originality/value - Overall, the empirical results that are obtained by logit model analysis are quite robust. The logit regression results reveal that the predicted values, i.e. the potential risk levels for Mediterranean Bank was very high in this analysis. Towards 2005 Mediterranean Bank had to close, which prove that the model is robust.
Bacterial community structure and activity of sulfate reducing bacteria in a membrane aerated biofilm analyzed by microsensor and molecular techniques

The activities and vertical spatial distribution of sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) in an oxygen (O2)‐based membrane aerated biofilm (MAB) were investigated using microsensor (O2 and H2S) measurements and molecular techniques (polymerase chain reaction‐denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis [PCR‐DGGE] and fluorescence in situ hybridization [FISH]). The O2 concentration profile revealed that O2 penetrated from the bottom (substratum) of the gas permeable membrane, and was gradually consumed within the biofilm until it was completely depleted near the biofilm/bulk liquid interface, indicating oxic and anoxic zone in the MAB. The H2S concentration profile showed that H2S production was found in the upper 285 µm of the biofilm, indicating a high activity of SRB in this region. The results from DGGE of the PCR‐amplified dissimilatory sulfite reductase subunit B (dsrB) gene and FISH showed an uneven spatial distribution of SRB. The maximum SRB biomass was located in the upper biofilm. The information from the molecular analysis can be supplemented with that from microsensor measurements to better understand the microbial community and activity of SRB in the MAB. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2014;111: 2155–2162. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.