Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Silver–Polymer Composite Stars: Synthesis and Applications

Colloidal “silver stars” were synthesized upon poly(lactic‐co‐glycolic) acid nanosphere templates via a facile two‐step silver reduction method. Myriad dendrimer‐like Ag star morphologies were synthesized by varying the amount of poly(vinyl alcohol) and trisodium citrate used during silver reduction. Scanning electron microscopy studies revealed that star‐shaped silver–polymer composites possessing nanoscopic, fractal morphologies with diameters ranging from 500 nm to 7 μm were produced. These composites have broad applications from antibacterial agents to catalysis; two such applications were tested here. Surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) studies showed multiple hot spots of SERS activity within a single star. Electrochemical catalysis experiments demonstrated the feasibility of using the silver stars instead of platinum for the oxygen reduction reaction in alkaline fuel cells.
Political Representation and Gender in Brazil: Quotas for Women and their Impact

In the 1990s Brazilian Congress approved an electoral quota for female candidates in parliamentary competition (with exception of the Senate). The reticence of the law and the peculiarities of the Brazilian open lists electoral system have given rise to concern that the quotas will fail. In fact there has been no great increase in the number of women in Brazilian legislatives - there has been some change in the municipalities a little less in the states and almost nothing at the federal level. Analysing in detail the results of four elections to the federal Chamber of Deputies two before and two after the quotas it becomes apparent that in Brazil the impact of quotas is mediated far more than in other countries. Quotas provide above all an incentive to party elites to support an increase in the number of female political leaders and the results may appear only at mid term. (authors)
Does Pessimism Over Pension Prospect Spur Excess Saving? │ Evidence Concerning Close-to-retirement Households in Japan

Pessimism over pension prospect is widely spread among Japanese nationals. A recent survey reveals that roughly 70% Japanese feel anxious about the reliability of the public pension system. Despite most Japanese anticipate a cut of pension benefi t in the future, the anticipated range of cut varies notably from person to person. Some are extremely pessimistic about pension prospect, others less so. On average, Japanese nationals are much more pessimistic than policy makers. To cope with the future benefi t cut, households is likely to spend less and accumulate wealth. The elderly are major owners of Japan’s huge household wealth. Elderly households whose head aged 60 or over, were estimated to hold a total of 358.8 trillion yen in net fi nancial wealth in 2004, which is equal to nearly one year of Japan’s GDP. Elderly households own 51.4 percent of housing and land assets, and 78.6 percent of net fi nancial wealth, despite that they account for only 37.4 percent of the overall households. Contrary to the prediction of simple life-cycle model, most Japanese elderly households keep accumulating wealth even in the very late life stage. An average elderly household with workers’ head saves nearly 10 percent of their disposable income each year. Here, a simple question arises: do Japanese elderly households save excessively and accumulate too much wealth? Dekle (1990) believes that the answer is “yes”. Using a 1983 Japanese household survey, Dekle (1990) fi nds an obvious absence of dissaving among Japanese elderly households, based on there being no signifi cant differences in total wealth between different age groups for Japanese elderly
Comparative studies of PC12 and mouse pheochromocytoma-derived rodent cell lines as models for the study of neuroendocrine systems

SummaryWe have compared PC12 cell lines derived from different laboratories and the newly developed mouse pheochromocytoma (MPC) cell line. Morphologically, there were distinct differences in size, shape, adherence, and clumping behavior, which varied in response to different culture media, growth substrates, and nerve growth factor. Quantitative messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) analysis showed significant variability in the expression of the catecholaminergic biosynthetic enzymes tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase (PNMT), the noradrenaline transporter (NAT), and neuron-specific enolase (NSE) between all lines examined. Of most significance were the increased levels of PNMT mRNA in the MPC cells, which were to 15-fold greater than in the PC12 cell lines grown under the same conditions in Dulbecco modified Eagle medium (P<0.05). Growth of MPC cells in Roswell Park Memorial Institute media induced a further significant increase in PNMT gene expression (P≤0.05). Immunohistochemistry for TH, PNMT. and NAT was generally consistent with mRNA analysis, with the MPC cells demonstrating strong immunoreactivity, for PNMT. The MPC cells showed the highest levels of desipramine-sensitive [3H] noradrenaline uptake activity (threefold > than PC12 American Type Culture Center line, P≤0.05), despite relatively low levels of NAT mRNA. These results indicate that PC12 cell lines should be carefully chosen for optimal utility in the study of chromaffin cell or sympathetic neuron biology and that cell features will be influenced by type of media and substrate chosen. Furthermore, they confirm that the new MPC cell line is likely a useful model for the study of adrenergic mechanisms or studies involving NAT.
Rules as Institutional Context for Decision Making in Networks

One of the issues of the network approach to policy concerns the influence of the network structure on the policy processes that are taking place within it. A central point is the concept of rules. The basic assumption is that actors in networks form communal rules during their interactions. This article shows the way in which these network rules influence policy processes. First, the rules of two local social housing networks are reconstructed. The author then shows how these rules differ (e.g., rules of conflict regulation and autonomy) between the two networks and how they influenced the decision making surrounding the rehabilitation and restructuring of postwar housing districts that took place within these networks. He looks at the extent to which these differences in the rule structures of the networks explain the differences in the development of the decision-making processes. The article concludes with a discussion of rules as a context for decision making.
Information management in the Australian aged care setting

Background: Information management systems and processes have an impact on quality and safety of care in any setting and particularly in the complex care setting of aged care. Few studies have comprehensively examined information management in the Australian aged care setting. Objective: To (i) critically analyse and synthesize evidence related to information management in aged care, (ii) identify aged care data collection frameworks and (iii) identify factors impacting information management. Methods: An integrative review of Australian literature published between March 2008 and August 2014 and data collection frameworks concerning information management in aged care were carried out. Results: There is limited research investigating the information-rich setting of aged care in Australia. Electronic systems featured strongly in the review. Existing research focuses on residential settings with community aged care largely absent. Information systems and processes in the setting of aged care in Australia are underdeveloped and poorly integrated. Conclusions: Data quality and access are more problematic within community aged care than residential care settings. The results of this review represent an argument for a national approach to information management in aged care to address multiple stakeholder information needs and more effectively support client care.
Using distributed computing platform to solve high computing and data processing problems in bioinformatics

Since the problems in bioinformatics are related to massive computing and massive data. In recent years, due to distributed computing is gaining recognition. The task originally requiring high computing power does not only rely on supercomputer. Distributed computing used off-the-shelf PC with high speed network can offer low cost and high performance computing power to handle the task. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to implement a complete distributed computing platform based on peer-to-peer file sharing technology. The platform integrated scheduling, load balancing, file sharing, maintenance of data integrity, and user-friendly interface etc. functions. Through the platform can assist bioinformaticists in massive computing and massive data problems. Besides, the platform is easier use, more reliable, and more helpful than others for researchers to conduct bioinformatics research.
Brand communities for market trend discovery: a study to advance entrepreneurial marketing research

Information management has an important role for small and resource constrained firms. However the role of consumer insights in entrepreneurial marketing has remained under researched, specifically on how to gather, collect and access relevant information in the digitised consumer universe. This netnographic study fills this gap and proposes brand communities as a feasible source of valuable entrepreneurial marketing related insights, which can help small and resource constrained entrepreneurial firms to exploit opportunities and lower perceived market risks.
The Impact of Team Revenues on MLB Salaries

We test which individual major league baseball (MLB) player characteristics, such as on-base and slugging percentages, predict a hitter's salary. We also consider whether some MLB teams pay more per individual characteristic than others by using a hierarchical linear model to allow the value that a team places on a player characteristic to vary across teams. We find that offensive statistics are key determinants of player salaries but that teams do not pay differently for them. There are team differences, however, in the salaries received by players who are eligible for arbitration.
Fibroblasts in Mechanically Stressed Collagen Lattices Assume a “Synthetic” Phenotype*

Fibroblasts are subjected to changes of the mechanical force balance during physiological as well as pathological situations, such as wound healing, development of hypertrophic scars, and fibrogenesis. However, the molecular response and the changes in fibroblast gene expression upon mechanical stimulation remain poorly understood. As an in vitro model, human dermal fibroblasts were cultured within a three-dimensional network of fibrillar collagen either under high (stressed) or low tension (relaxed). cDNA microarray technology in combination with Northern blot analysis led to identification of mechano-responsive genes coding for extracellular matrix proteins, fibrogenic growth factors, protease inhibitors, components of focal adhesions, and the cytoskeleton. Application of biaxial strain to fibroblasts cultured on flexible silicone membranes revealed that the type of strain as well as the properties of the substrate induced different patterns of gene regulation. The transcriptional profile of mechanically induced genes in collagen lattices suggests that mechanical stimuli lead to a “synthetic” fibroblast phenotype characterized by induction of connective tissue synthesis while simultaneously inhibiting matrix degradation.
The political economy of tax policy

From book synopsis: Tax by Design identifies what makes a good tax system for an open developed economy in the 21st century and suggests how the UK tax system could be reformed to move in that direction. The recommendations stress the importance of neutrality and transparency in tax design. It draws on the expert evidence from the commissioned chapters and commentaries in Dimensions of Tax Design. It also acknowledges the growing importance of globalised markets and multinational corporations as well as the challenges created by changing population demographics, the growth of new technologies, and the broadened objectives of policy makers.
Joint Prediction of Morphosyntactic Categories for Fine-Grained Arabic Part-of-Speech Tagging Exploiting Tag Dictionary Information

Part-of-speech (POS) tagging for morphologically rich languages such as Arabic is a challenging problem because of their enormous tag sets. One reason for this is that in the tagging scheme for such languages, a complete POS tag is formed by combining tags from multiple tag sets defined for each morphosyntactic category. Previous approaches in Arabic POS tagging applied one model for each morphosyntactic tagging task, without utilizing shared information between the tasks. In this paper, we propose an approach that utilizes this information by jointly modeling multiple morphosyntactic tagging tasks with a multi-task learning framework. We also propose a method of incorporating tag dictionary information into our neural models by combining word representations with representations of the sets of possible tags. Our experiments showed that the joint model with tag dictionary information results in an accuracy of 91.38% on the Penn Arabic Treebank data set, with an absolute improvement of 2.11% over the current state-of-the-art tagger.
Women in Leadership: An Analysis of the Gender Pay Gap In ASX‐Listed Firms

This study provides evidence that after several decades of fighting for equal pay for equal work, an unexplained gender pay gap remains amongst senior executives in ASX-listed firms. After controlling for a large suite of personal, occupational and firm observables, we find female senior executives receive, on average, 22.58 percent less in base salary for the period 2002–2013. When executives are awarded performance-based pay, females receive on average 16.47 percent less in cash bonus and 18.21 percent less in long-term incentives than males. The results are robust to using firm fixed effects and propensity-score matching. Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition results show that the mean pay gap cannot be attributed to gender differences in attributes, including job titles. Instead, the results point to differences in returns on firm-specific variables, in particular firm risk.
On the efficiency of Slovenian government debt market: empirical analysis with Nelson-Siegel model

Government securities market is traditionally one of the most efficient segments of financial market with a broader meaning for the national economy. It is used by a variety of market participants including for conducting monetary policy. In order to play this crucial role, the government securities market needs to be efficient. The main idea of the current article is to find whether secondary market for government securities in Slovenia is efficient. We found that introduction of secondary market led to an efficient market. However, some changes in government policy announced in mid-2006 caused fall in its efficiency.
The heat shock protein 90-targeting drug cisplatin selectively inhibits steroid receptor activation.

Cisplatin is an antineoplastic drug that binds to DNA, thereby inhibiting cell division and tumor growth. Cisplatin may also disrupt the function of some proteins, including heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90). We report that cisplatin dose-dependently inhibited transcriptional activity of the androgen receptor and the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) in transient reporter assays. A truncated, hormone-independent GR was only partially inhibited at significantly higher doses of cisplatin. Cisplatin treatment of neuroblastoma cells led to an immediate inhibition of hormone binding by GR, followed by proteasome-dependent degradation of the receptor. Other Hsp90-regulated proteins, i.e. the phosphokinases raf-1, lck, and c-src, were not affected, indicating a specific functional interference of cisplatin with the steroid receptors GR and androgen receptor. Cisplatin did not elicit a stress response, in contrast to geldanamycin. Immunoprecipitation revealed that cisplatin disrupts binding of GR to Hsp90. Moreover, cisplatin-treated Hsp90 was unable to associate with untreated ligand binding domain of GR. Reticulocyte lysate was able to restore hormone binding of GR in vitro, but not when the lysate was pretreated with geldanamycin. Our data reveal that cisplatin influences steroid receptors also independently of its DNA-mediated effects and, thus, suggest a novel modes of action for this cytostatic drug.
Correlation of antiviral activity with beta-turn types for V3 synthetic multibranched peptides from HIV-1 gp120.

SPC3 is a synthetic multibranched peptide containing eight HIV-1 gp120 V3 loop GPGRAF motifs. SPC3 inhibits HIV-1 infection in human lymphocytes and macrophages, while the monomer counterpart of SPC3, i.e., the GPGRAF peptide, has no effect. Circular dichroism (CD) of these molecules in phosphate buffer, pH 7, and in a water solution containing 50% trifluoroethanol (TFE) showed significant differences. In TFE, the inactive monomer has a CD spectrum associated to type II beta-turn (class B spectrum), while SPC3 has a class C CD spectrum associated to type I beta-turn. To investigate the structure--function relationship, SPC3 analogs were built in solid-phase synthesis, and their activity and structures were compared to SPC3. Analogs having respectively two and four GPGRAF motifs show that polymerization is associated with these structural changes. Analogs with eight motifs but differing in their sequence show also that the sequence is important to stabilize a type I beta-turn structure. The activity tests of these analogs show a remarkable correlation between the antiviral activity and their ability to exhibit a class C CD spectrum associated to type I beta-turn. Taking in account CD results, a model was made using energy minimization and dynamics, which shows that, for SPC3, a model with motifs in a type I beta-turn structure is favored compared to one with a type II beta-turn. These data suggest that the SPC3 antiviral activity is related to the structure of the GPGRAF motif in the polymer, with special emphasis on the presence of a type I beta-turn structure.
Complementarity of Incentive Pay and Decentralized Decision Making: Evidence from Minnesota's Q-Comp Program for Teachers

Since 2005, dozens of Minnesota school districts have implemented pay for performance (P4P) and a decentralized approach to professional development as part of the state’s Quality Compensation (Q-Comp) program. This paper uses the experience of Q-Comp to oer new evidence on the complementarity of output based P4P and decentralized decision making. Teachers are asymmetrically informed about what actions are best for their specic classes: they have local knowledge about their own abilities and preferences and their students’ abilities and preferences and the quality of the match between these. This paper describes a theoretical model that shows, given this environment, districts should oer output based P4P coupled with support for
Educational Privatisation and Access to Higher Education: Experiences of Scheduled Caste Students in Odisha

This article is an attempt to correlate evidence from theories and practice to examine the policy changes in higher education and how privatisation has adversely affected the access and continuation in higher education particularly in the case of Scheduled Caste (SC) students. It also examines the various obstacles encountered by SC students and how these impact their participation and performance at the higher education level. Theoretically, the article analyses the arguments made by different scholars on privatisation through content analysis method. Empirically, exploratory design is carried out in five higher educational institutions of Odisha. The analysis for the empirical part is done through data triangulation method. The article establishes how privatisation has eliminated the critical aspect of equity while totally doing away with the social objective of higher education.
Capital controls on inflows, the global financial crisis and economic growth: Evidence for emerging economies

The results of an IMF study on controls on capital inflows in emerging economies, using a probit regression approach, are first replicated and tested for stability. The IMF results, downplayed by the authors, have been used by others to suggest controls can be helpful in a crisis situation. However, the stability findings suggest the results are not sufficiently robust to make strong claims in this regard. The same 37 countries and the IMF capital control measures are then used in a panel regression study to examine the impact of capital inflows on annual real GDP growth around the Global Financial Crisis. The results between the pre-crisis and the crisis periods are inconsistent with the IMF study – finding that capital restrictions on inflows (particularly debt liabilities) are most useful in good times when inflows to emerging markets are strong and upward pressure on managed exchange rates and reserves accumulation is greatest. However, lower controls on bonds and on FDI inflows seem to be associated with better growth outcomes during the crisis period studied. These findings are more consistent with studies that see capital controls as part of exchange rate targeting policies and concerns about excess reserves accumulation. JEL Classification: C23, C25, F21, F43, G01 Keywords: Capital controls, economic growth, emerging economies, financial crisis
The Effect of a High Pitch Volume on Musculoskeletal Adaptations in High School Baseball Pitchers

Background: Shoulder range of motion and strength adaptations occur at an early age in baseball pitchers. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of pitch volume on in-season and year-to-year range of motion (ROM) and strength adaptations in high school baseball pitchers. The hypothesis was that a high pitch volume will not affect range of motion asymmetries but will impair supraspinatus strength. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 2. Methods: Pre- and postseason ROM and strength measures were performed on pitchers from 3 high schools for 4 consecutive seasons, for a total of 95 player-seasons (mean ± SD participant age, 16 ± 1 years). Preseason measures were repeated the next year on players returning to the teams, for a total of 71 consecutive player-seasons. ROM tests included internal-external rotation and posterior shoulder flexibility. Strength tests (hand-held dynamometer) included internal-external rotation, supraspinatus, and scapular retraction. Pitchers were categorized by pitch count for the season (high, >400; moderate, 180-400; low, <180). ROM and strength changes in the dominant versus nondominant arm were assessed by analysis of variance. Results: Dominant versus nondominant ROM differences did not change from pre- to postseason (P = .36-.99) or from one year to the next (P = .46-.86), with no effect of pitch volume (P = .23-.87). Supraspinatus strength decreased in the dominant arm during the season, with 13% loss in high-volume pitchers (P < .001) and insignificant losses in moderate- (6%) and low-volume pitchers (2%). Strength in other tests was unaffected by pitch volume. Consistent with physical development, strength increased bilaterally from one year to the next (supraspinatus, 12%; external rotation, 15%; internal rotation, 14%; scapular retraction, 23%; P < .001). Supraspinatus strength gain in the dominant arm was affected by prior pitch volume (P = .02): 24% in low-volume pitchers (P < .01), with no significant change in moderate-volume (0%; P = .99) or high-volume (5%; P = .99) pitchers. Conclusion: Dominant versus nondominant ROM differences did not progress during the season, or from one year to the next, and were unaffected by pitch volume. A high pitch volume was associated with in-season supraspinatus weakness and diminished strength gains from one year to the next. In conclusion, a high pitch volume appeared to have a catabolic effect on supraspinatus strength.