Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PDP, The News Production Network and the Transformation of News

Personal Digital Production (PDP) represents a significant technological development of digitisation and multi-skilling practices within newsrooms. Introduced across the BBC’s regional newsrooms, it enables a single worker, whether a journalist, production assistant, videotape editor or camera operator, to film and edit material for transmission. It promises to revolutionise the entire news production process by eradicating established separate production roles. Its progenitor, Michael Rosenblum, a former CBS news producer turned media consultant asserts: ‘TV news has not yet been invented. ’ (Rosenblum, 2004).
Endurance exercise and selective breeding for longevity extend Drosophila healthspan by overlapping mechanisms

Endurance exercise has emerged as a powerful intervention to extend healthy physiology into advanced age. Normal, age‐associated declines in organ structure and function are alleviated in endurance‐trained individuals. Long‐term exercise also reduces age‐related pathologies. Despite these evident benefits, the genetic pathways required for exercise interventions to achieve these effects are still relatively poorly understood. Here, we compare the effects of endurance training on Drosophila melanogaster to the effects of selective breeding for longevity. We find that both selective breeding and endurance training increase endurance, cardiac performance, running speed, flying height, and levels of autophagy in adipose tissue. Microarrays indicate that 73% of transcriptional changes found in flies selectively bred for longevity are also found in flies subjected to three weeks of exercise training. Both endurance training and longevity selection upregulate folate biosynthesis, stress defense and lipid metabolism. Conversely, both interventions downregulate multiple carbohydrate metabolism pathways. methuselah‐like 3 was also transcriptionally reduced in both groups. Altering mthl3 expression in adult flies was able to reproduce a subset of the shared phenotypes. These results provide support for endurance exercise as a broadly acting anti‐aging intervention and confirm that exercise training acts in part by targeting longevity assurance pathways. In addition, these results identify the mthl3 gene as a potential target of exercise training.
Correlations between ultraviolet coloration, overwinter survival and offspring sex ratio in the blue tit

We studied the correlations between offspring sex ratio, UV coloration and overwinter survival in a population of blue tits, breeding in Gotland, Sweden, over three consecutive breeding seasons. In 2 of 3 years, we found that females paired to males with relatively brighter UV‐coloration produced a greater proportion of sons in their broods, and that this effect was significant with all 3 years combined, despite a significant year by male UV interaction. In addition, we found other correlates of sex ratio (breeding time, female age and clutch size) in some, but not all years, and some of these showed significantly different relationships with sex ratio between years. In both years for which data were available, there were indications that males with relatively brighter UV coloration, and that paired with females that produced male‐biased clutches, were more likely to survive to the next year. In addition, we also found that in both males and females, individuals produced similar sex ratios in consecutive years. Because correlations with the sex ratio may be expected to be weak, variation in results between years within the same population may be explained by low statistical power or genuine biological differences. Our results suggest that conclusions about sex ratio variation in birds should be based on multiple years. The correlations that we found in some years of this study are consistent with models of adaptive sex ratio adjustment in response to mate quality. However, careful experimental work is required to provide tests of the assumptions of these models, and should be a priority for future work.
Conformational Characteristics and Correlations in Crystal Structures of Nucleic Acid Oligonucleotides: Evidence for Sub-states

Abstract Sugar phosphate backbone conformations are a structural element inextricably involved in a complete understanding of specific recognition nucleic acid ligand interactions, from early stage discrimination of the correct target to complexation per se, including any structural adaptation on binding. The collective results of high resolution DNA, RNA and protein/DNA crystal structures provide an opportunity for an improved and enhanced statistical analysis of standard and unusual sugar-phosphate backbone conformations together with corresponding dinucleotide sequence effects as a basis for further exploration of conformational effects on binding. In this study, we have analyzed the conformations of all relevant crystal structures in the nucleic acids data base, determined the frequency distribution of all possible ϵ, ζ, α, β and γ backbone angle arrangements within four nucleic acid categories (A-RNA and A-DNA, free and bound B-DNA) and explored the relationships between backbone angles, sugar puckers and selected helical parameters. The trends in the correlations are found to be similar regardless of the nucleic acid category. It is interesting that specific structural effects exhibited by the different unusual backbone sub-states are in some cases contravariant. Certain α/γ changes are accompanied by C3′ endo (north) sugars, small twist angles and positive values of base pair roll, and favor a displacement of nucleotide bases towards the minor groove compared to that of canonical B form structures. Unusual ϵ/ζ combinations occur with C2′ (south) sugars, high twist angles, negative values of base pair roll, and base displacements towards the major groove. Furthermore, any unusual backbone correlates with a reduced dispersion of equilibrium structural parameters of the whole double helix, as evidenced by the reduced standard deviations of almost all con- formational parameters. Finally, a strong sequence effect is displayed in the free oligomers, but reduced somewhat in the ligand bound forms. The most variable steps are GpA and CpA, and, to a lesser extent, their partners TpC and TpG. The results provide a basis for considering if the variable and non-variable steps within a biological active sequence precisely determine morphological structural features as the curvature direction, the groove depth, and the accessibility of base pair for non covalent associations.
Reassessing the concept of policy paradigm: aligning ontology and methodology in policy studies

ABSTRACT The concept of policy paradigm, which was developed by Peter Hall in 1993, has given rise to an abundance of literature on ideas and policy dynamics. Despite its theoretical value, however, the original concept was insufficiently specified and has been used in problematic ways by many policy scholars, thereby undermining the validity of their descriptive and causal inferences. The main argument defended in this article is that scholars studying policy paradigms should devote as much attention to the ideas of policy makers as to the policies they adopt, while distinguishing between the two constructs as much as possible. This article reviews these issues and puts forward seven guidelines that aim to better circumscribe the concept of policy paradigm and improve research on ideas and policy dynamics.
Tackling conflict: a beyond opposites approach

The issue of conflict is pervasive to most human undertakings at both individual/intra level and group level. Conflicts are the source of internal and external suffering. It has been argued by many authors that although humans have advanced in the technological sphere tremendously and managed to find solutions to countless scientific and material challenges, their ability to effectively resolve internal and external aspects of conflicts remains elusive. Given the level of pain and suffering that can derive from both psychological and social conflicts, it can be argued that any advances in helping improve the resolution of conflicts can have immense benefits in alleviating human suffering making this issue a very worthwhile area of study. Accordingly this paper aims to describe a developing counselling methodology for addressing conflict. The methodology, which was originally inspired by Fuzzy Logic, adopts a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) perspective despite awareness of its limitations. The paper traces the origins of the methodology and the areas within counselling it could be applied to. The paper concludes with recommendations regarding the relevance of this approach to an increasingly multicultural environment.
Centromeric Aurora-B Activation Requires TD-60, Microtubules, and Substrate Priming Phosphorylation

The chromosome passenger complex (CPC) controls chromosome congression, kinetochore-microtubule attachments, and spindle checkpoint signaling during mitosis. Aurora-B kinase is the catalytic subunit of the CPC. To understand how a single kinase can regulate such diverse events, we have investigated the activation of Aurora-B and describe two distinct activation mechanisms. First, Aurora-B activation in vitro requires two cofactors, telophase disc–60kD (TD-60) and microtubules. TD-60 is critical to localize both the CPC and Haspin kinase activity to centromeres and thus regulates Aurora-B at several levels. Second, Aurora-B substrates can inhibit kinase activation, and this is relieved by phosphorylation of these substrates by the centromeric kinases Plk1 and Haspin. These regulatory mechanisms suggest models for phosphorylation by Aurora-B of centromeric substrates at unaligned chromosomes and merotelic attachments.
Some Hegelian Ideas of Note for Contemporary Analytic Philosophy

I take my point of departure from Paul Redding’s thoughtful and thoughtprovoking book Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought, which I see as a paradigm of the sort of philosophy Hegel described as ‘its time, captured in thought. ’ It is at once impressively and usefully learned, and philosophically insightful and suggestive. Redding’s strategy is to tunnel from two directions. On the one hand, he has interesting things to say about what elements in the analytic tradition make it ripe for a Hegelian turn. On the other, he lays out some features of Hegel’s views that are particularly amenable to appropriation by that tradition. I want to say a bit about each of these topics. Redding is good on the origin myth that Bertrand Russell concocted, which locates the wellsprings of the analytic movement in a principled recoil from what the British Idealists made of Hegel. At the core of Russell’s story is the opposition between Hegelian holism, viewed through a Bradleyan lens, and the atomism he saw as demanded by the new quantificational logic. The overarching choice he saw was between ontological monism and pluralism: as he memorably put it, between seeing the universe as a bowl of jelly and seeing it as a bucket of shot. On such an understanding, semantic, logical, and metaphysical atomism is an, indeed the, essential, founding principle of analytic philosophy. But the early analytic tradition did not speak with just this one, Russellian, voice. Redding also reminds us that the first step on the holistic road to Hegel was taken already by Kant, who broke with the traditional order of semantic and logical explanation by insisting on the primacy of judgment. He understood particular and general representations, intuitions and concepts, only in terms of the functional role they played in judgment. (I think that is because judgments are the minimal units of responsibility, so that the primacy of judgment should be understood as an immediate consequence of the normative turn Kant had given
Connexin46, a novel lens gap junction protein, induces voltage-gated currents in nonjunctional plasma membrane of Xenopus oocytes

Gap junctions are composed of a family of structural proteins called connexins, which oligomerize into intercellular channels and function to exchange low molecular weight metabolites and ions between adjacent cells. We have cloned a new member of the connexin family from lens cDNA, with a predicted molecular mass of 46 kD, called rat connexin46 (Cx46). Since a full-length cDNA corresponding to the 2.8-kb mRNA was not obtained, the stop codon and surrounding sequences were confirmed from rat genomic DNA. The RNA coding for this protein is abundant in lens fibers and detectable in both myocardium and kidney. Western analysis of both rat and bovine lens membrane proteins, using the anti- MP70 monoclonal antibody 6-4-B2-C6 and three anti-peptide antibodies against Cx46 demonstrates that Cx46 and MP70 are different proteins. Immunocytochemistry demonstrates that both proteins are localized in the same lens fiber junctional maculae. Synthesis of Cx46 in either reticulocyte lysate or Xenopus oocytes yields a 46-kD polypeptide; all anti-Cx46 antisera recognize a protein in rat lens membranes 5-10 kD larger, suggesting substantive lenticular posttranslational processing of the native translation product. Oocytes that have synthesized Cx46 depolarize and lyse within 24 h, a phenomenon never observed after expression of rat connexins 32 or 43 (Cx32 and Cx43). Lysis is prevented by osmotically buffering the oocytes with 5% Ficoll. Ficoll- buffered oocytes expressing Cx46 are permeable to Lucifer Yellow but not FITC-labeled BSA, indicating the presence of selective membrane permeabilities. Cx43-expressing oocytes are impermeable to Lucifer Yellow. Voltage-gated whole cell currents are measured in oocytes injected with dilute concentrations of Cx46 but not Cx43 mRNA. These currents are activated at potentials positive to -10 mV. Unlike other connexins expressed in Xenopus oocytes, these results suggest that unprocessed Cx46 induces nonselective channels in the oolemma that are voltage dependent and opened by large depolarizations.
Multipath aggregation of heterogeneous access networks

The explosive deployment of wired and wireless communication infrastructure has recently enabled many novel applications and sparked new research problems. One of the unsolved issues in today's Internet - the main topic of this thesis - is the goal of increasing data transfer speeds of end hosts by aggregating and simultaneously using multiple network interfaces. This objective is most interesting when the Internet is accessible through several, relatively slow and variable (typically wireless) networks, which are unable to single-handedly provide the required data rate for resource-intensive applications, such as bulk file transfers and high-definition multimedia streaming.
Newborn Screening for Primary Immune Deficiencies with a TREC/KREC/ACTB Triplex Assay—A Three-Year Pilot Study in Sweden

Background: Screening newborns for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) has become essential, since efficient methods to identify infants with these disorders exist and early stem cell transplantation is life-saving. Method: We performed a three-year screening trial in Stockholm comprised of 89,462 newborn infants. The number of T-cell receptor excision circle (TREC)/kappa-deleting recombination excision circle (KREC)/β-actin (ACTB) copies were quantified simultaneously by real time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in 3.2 mm punches from dried blood samples taken in the regular neonatal screening program. Results: Five patients with immune deficiencies were identified: two with SCID caused by mutations in the Artemis- and adenosine deaminase gene, respectively, one with ataxia telangiectasia and two with reversible agammagloblinemia, which so far, is of unknown cause. This points to an incidence of SCID at the same level as in other studies (around 1:50,000). In 19 recalled infants, low KREC levels and in one case, also low TREC levels, were caused by immunosuppressive treatment of the mother during pregnancy. The levels normalized within a month in all these infants. The total recall rate was 0.10%, and 40% of the recalled infants were born prematurely (<37 weeks gestation). Among 69 patients with inborn errors of metabolism screened retrospectively, only two, who were severely ill with organic acidemias when the sample was taken, and two with mitochondrial disorders, screened positive.
Overexpression of the fragile histidine triad (FHIT) gene in inflammatory bowel disease.

OBJECTIVE FHIT gene encodes human diadenosine triphosphate hydrolase involved in the regulation of cell cycle and nucleotide metabolism and is a candidate tumor suppressor gene. AIM To investigate expression of FHIT gene at the mRNA and protein levels in sporadic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). MATERIALS AND METHODS FHIT mRNA was quantified by the validated real-time PCR (QPCR) and FHIT protein was detected by immunohistochemistry (IHC) in mucosal biopsies of 139 ulcerative colitis (UC), 19 Crohn's disease (CD) and 37 control patients. RESULTS Significant FHIT gene overexpression was found in 78% of active UC but not in CD. IHC showed comparable results to QPCR. CONCLUSION The local up-regulation of FHIT gene and protein expression in active UC may represent an adequate response against inflammatory challenge of epithelial cell homeostasis and protect against DNA damage and cell cycle disturbances.
Behavioral Irradiation Effects in the Developing Chick

Among currently interesting topics regarding early experiences and the development of behavior is the role of certain changes in the physical aspects of the organism's environment. Some of these, through the nature of the organism's reactions to the changes, are termed "physiological insults. " As with other changes that may be made in the environment and to which the organism is responsive, research dealing with these insults has related the age of incidence with particular facets of behavioral development. Typically, during certain "critical" periods of development, the fetus is uniquely sensitive to an agent whereas at other periods it is uniquely resistant (1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 15). In this laboratory we have been concerned with the effects of prenatal anoxia upon the behavior of the chick (9, 11). Well-defined changes in behavior have been related to exposure to oxygen deprivation at specified stages in fetal growth. Since the histological data have been non-differentiating ( l o ) , we have considered the direct physiological action of the deprivation as transitory. We have held, further, that if these transitory changes occur during the critical periods, the fetus, through alterations in its activity and reactivity, "misses" some of the necessary experiences for the normal growth of its behavior. To check one aspect of this hypothesis, we tried another physiological insult, X-irradiation. Although the physiological action of this agent on the fetus is believed to be considerably different from that of anoxia (5, 12, 13) , the effects on behavior, by our hypothesis, could be the same. The data gathered from this part of our research program are the basis of this
Evidence for a Direct Link between Glutathione Biosynthesis and Stress Defense Gene Expression in Arabidopsisw⃞

The mutant regulator of APX2 1-1 (rax1-1) was identified in Arabidopsis thaliana that constitutively expressed normally photooxidative stress-inducible ASCORBATE PEROXIDASE2 (APX2) and had ≥50% lowered foliar glutathione levels. Mapping revealed that rax1-1 is an allele of γ-GLUTAMYLCYSTEINE SYNTHETASE 1 (GSH1), which encodes chloroplastic γ-glutamylcysteine synthetase, the controlling step of glutathione biosynthesis. By comparison of rax1-1 with the GSH1 mutant cadmium hypersensitive 2, the expression of 32 stress-responsive genes was shown to be responsive to changed glutathione metabolism. Under photo-oxidative stress conditions, the expression of a wider set of defense-related genes was altered in the mutants. In wild-type plants, glutathione metabolism may play a key role in determining the degree of expression of defense genes controlled by several signaling pathways both before and during stress. This control may reflect the physiological state of the plant at the time of the onset of an environmental challenge and suggests that changes in glutathione metabolism may be one means of integrating the function of several signaling pathways.
Turning experience into learning: Educational contributions of collaborative peer songwriting during music therapy training

This article reports on a study of 21 Australian and United States (US) tertiary/university students involved in training to become professional music therapists. The study aimed to identify the learning outcomes – musical, professional, and personal – that occurred when students participated in collaborative peer songwriting experiences. Student dyads (and one triad) co-created two songs with peers related to their clinical experiences. After the study, participants provided written reflections on pre-determined questions to identify students’ perceived learning. A content analysis of their responses was undertaken by the authors and forwarded to students for verification. Analysis of student reflections revealed that students developed a deeper understanding of the therapeutic potential of songwriting, including its capacity to express mixed emotions. Their professional skills were enhanced, particularly that of insight and reflection. Further, learning about the self was evident in their identification of their own strengths and weaknesses, the way they respond to stress, and how they can utilize songwriting as a tool for managing their emotional states. In addition to how these results relate to music therapist training, we outline how these findings relate to and may be applied within music teacher education training as well.
Brain Natriuretic Peptide: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Implications in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

Brain or B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is one of the new biomarkers employed within the last decade to help clarify difficult cardiovascular problems. Plasma BNP is elevated in cardiac ventricular dysfunction and plays a key role in protecting the body from volume overload by maintaining renal function and sodium balance. Studies in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) have demonstrated that plasma BNP levels are raised proportionally to the extent of right ventricular (RV) dysfunction. There is growing evidence that BNP may be a potential biomarker for PAH in screening for occult disease, diagnostic evaluation, prognosis, and estimating a response to therapy. Additionally, augmentation of the natriuretic peptide system through exogenous administration of BNP or by preventing its degradation may be a promising option for the management of decompensated RV failure. Because plasma BNP levels rise in a variety of cardiopulmonary conditions and are affected by several physiological factors, BNP interpretation must not occur in isolation but rather within the context of good clinical judgment.
Evaluation of spectral transforms for music signal analysis

In this paper we present a study on the spectral analysis of music signals comparing the time domain representation, the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and the constant-Q transform (CQT) which are additionally combined with different signal-dependent transforms. The comparison is carried out with respect to the spectral compactness, the data compression ability and the temporal continuity of transform coefficients for which we propose measures in this paper. In addition, we investigate the performance of these transforms in a source separation task in which we strive for recovering the main melody line from a mixed instrument recording. Our experiments reveal that performing a rank-reduced principal component analysis based on a CQT representation exhibits the best results in terms of instrumental source separation measures and listening impression which points towards the potential of the CQT for improving existing source separation methods which are currently often based on the STFT.