Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The European Road Pricing Game: How to Enforce Optimal Pricing in High-Transit Countries Under Asymmetric Information

A federal government tries to force local governments to implement welfare optimal tolling and investment. Welfare optimal tolling requires charging for marginal external costs. Local governments have an incentive to charge more than the marginal social cost whenever there is transit traffic. We analyse the pricing and investment issue in an asymmetric information setting where the local governments have better information than the federal government. The case of air pollution and of congestion are discussed. © 2013 LSE and the University of Bath
Erythropoietin, Modified to Not Stimulate Red Blood Cell Production, Retains Its Cardioprotective Properties

Erythropoietin (EPO), a hematopoietic cytokine, possesses strong antiapoptotic, tissue-protective properties. For clinical applications, it is desirable to separate the hematopoietic and tissue-protective properties. Recently introduced carbamylated erythropoietin (CEPO) does not stimulate the erythropoiesis but retains the antiapoptotic and neuroprotective effects. We tested the ability of CEPO to protect cardiac tissue from toxin-induced and oxidative stress in vitro and ischemic damage in vivo and compared these effects with the effects of EPO. CEPO reduced by 50% the extent of staurosporine-induced apoptosis in isolated rats' cardiomyocytes and increased by 25% the reactive oxygen species threshold for induction of the mitochondrial permeability transition. In an experimental model of myocardial infarction induced by permanent ligation of a coronary artery in rats, similarly to EPO, a single bolus injection of 30 μg/kg b.wt. of CEPO immediately after coronary ligation reduced apoptosis in the myocardial area at risk, examined 24 h later, by 50%. Left ventricular remodeling (ventricular dilation) and functional decline (fall in ejection fraction) assessed by repeated echocardiography were significantly and similarly attenuated in CEPO- and EPO-treated rats. Four weeks after coronary ligation, the myocardial infarction (MI) size in CEPO- and EPO-treated rats was half of that in untreated coronary-ligated animals. Unlike EPO, CEPO had no effect on hematocrit. The antiapoptotic cardioprotective effects of CEPO, shown by its ability to limit both post-MI left ventricular remodeling and the extent of the myocardial scar in the model of permanent coronary artery ligation in rats, demonstrate comparable potency to that of native (nonmodified) EPO.
Characterization of Serologically Dominant Outer Membrane Proteins of Neisseria gonorrhoeae

The proteins of the outer membrane of Neisseria gonorrhoeae play an important role in the serotyping system defined by K. H. Johnston et al. (J. Exp. Med. 143:741–758, 1976). This study attempted to delineate the molecular arrangement of the major proteins of the outer membrane of the gonococcus by using three approaches. First, natural protein-protein relationships were demonstrated by symmetrical, two-dimensional sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Second, proteins exposed on the surface of outer membrane vesicles were cross-linked by using the bifunctional reagents dimethyl-3,3′-dithiobispropionimidate and dithiobis[succinimidyl propionate]. Third, specific antigen-antibody interactions on the surface of membrane vesicles were analyzed by radioautographic techniques. The major proteins of the outer membrane of the gonococcus were defined, and a nomenclature was devised to take into account the effects of heat and reducing agents on the resolution of these proteins by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Results of cross-linking experiments strongly suggest that two of the major proteins of the gonococcal outer membrane (proteins 1 and 3) form a hydrophobically associated trimeric unit in situ which can be stabilized by selective cross-linking reagents. Results substantiated that these proteins are responsible for imparting serotypic specificity.
Dichotomous Dopaminergic Control of Striatal Synaptic Plasticity

At synapses between cortical pyramidal neurons and principal striatal medium spiny neurons (MSNs), postsynaptic D1 and D2 dopamine (DA) receptors are postulated to be necessary for the induction of long-term potentiation and depression, respectively—forms of plasticity thought to underlie associative learning. Because these receptors are restricted to two distinct MSN populations, this postulate demands that synaptic plasticity be unidirectional in each cell type. Using brain slices from DA receptor transgenic mice, we show that this is not the case. Rather, DA plays complementary roles in these two types of MSN to ensure that synaptic plasticity is bidirectional and Hebbian. In models of Parkinson's disease, this system is thrown out of balance, leading to unidirectional changes in plasticity that could underlie network pathology and symptoms.
Performance Evaluation of Soft Decode-and-Forward in Fading Relay Channels

In this paper, we analyze the block error rate (BLER) and bit error rate (BER) of soft decode-and-forward (SDF) using distributed Turbo codes, which is proposed recently to mitigate error propagation caused by decoding error in the relay node. Union bound (UB) in fading channels is derived and compared with simulation results. In order to get tight bounds for block fading case, limit-before-average technique is used. Furthermore, we extend our analysis to the space-time cooperation framework. The analysis and simulation show that the derived bound is very tight.
Mental Health Treatment Patterns in Perinatally HIV-Infected Youth and Controls

BACKGROUND: Youths perinatally infected with HIV often receive psychotropic medication and behavioral treatment for emotional and behavioral symptoms. We describe patterns of intervention for HIV-positive youth and youth in a control group in the United States. METHODS: Three hundred nineteen HIV-positive youth and 256 controls, aged 6 to 17 years, enrolled in the International Maternal Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials 1055, a prospective, 2-year observational study of psychiatric symptoms. One hundred seventy-four youth in the control group were perinatally exposed to HIV, and 82 youth were uninfected children living in households with HIV-positive members. Youth and their primary caregivers completed Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition–referenced symptom-rating scales. Children's medication and behavioral psychiatric intervention histories were collected at entry. We evaluated the association of past or current psychiatric treatment with HIV status, baseline symptoms, and impairment by using multiple logistic regression, controlling for potential confounders. RESULTS: HIV-positive youth and youth in the control group had a similar prevalence of psychiatric symptoms (61%) and impairment (14% to 15%). One hundred four (18%) participants received psychotropic medications (stimulants [14%], antidepressants [6%], and neuroleptic agents [4%]), and 127 (22%) received behavioral treatment. More HIV-positive youth than youth in the control group received psychotropic medication (23% vs 12%) and behavioral treatment (27% vs 17%). After adjusting for symptom class and confounders, HIV-positive children had twice the odds of children in the control group of having received stimulants and >4 times the odds of having received antidepressants. Caregiver-reported symptoms or impairment were associated with higher odds of intervention than reports by children alone. CONCLUSIONS: HIV-positive children are more likely to receive mental health interventions than control-group children. Pediatricians and caregivers should consider available mental health treatment options for all children living in families affected by HIV.
Viability of Wi-Fi caches in an era of HTTPS prevalence

Caches are often employed to better manage the ever-growing amount of global Internet traffic. Particularly, reverse proxies are often used to free up congested peering links and reduce inter-domain traffic. In addition, caches place content close to the edge, leading to lower latency which can be beneficial for many applications. In an effort to bring content even closer to end devices, home routers and public access points are now in the spotlight as a novel location for caches. Compared to CDNs, a Wi-Fi router only offers scarce storage and processing capabilities, putting an increased emphasis on resource management. In addition, a large share of traffic is transmitted through secured connections preventing the use of forward caches and other middle boxes. This paper strives to analyze how effective caching can be in public Wi-Fi routers. For this purpose, we conducted a field study with caches at public Wi-Fi hotspots in a field study. In addition, we present a queueing model for caches that we use to perform a mean-value analysis. We compare results from both methods in a performance analysis. Our results provide insights into difficulties of caching systems that are caused by an increase in the ratio of secured connections in the Internet.
Species‐specific quantification of probiotic lactobacilli in yoghurt by quantitative real‐time PCR

Lactobacilli strains with probiotic effects have been widely used in dairy products such as yoghurts as well as in food additives and pharmaceuticals. Despite their successful commercial application, the current species identification and quantification methods of the genus Lactobacillus are time‐consuming and labour‐intensive.
Knights and Dragon - animating UCB Motes toward Pervasive Computing Environments

We report on our first results in integrating multi-agent interactions into UCB motes. This work is part of our efforts to explore the development of pervasive and context-aware environments. We have developed an augmented reality version of the Knights and Dragon game. In this article we introduce the multi-agent paradigm, explain how it could help tackle the challenges associated with creating pervasive and context-aware environment, share the experience acquired while developing the Knights and Dragon application and propose an agenda of further open issues.
How useful is the concept of somatization in cross-cultural studies of maternal depression? A contribution from the Mothers in a New Country (MINC) study

Somatization of depression symptoms has been assumed to characterize particular cultural groups, yet evidence for this has often been anecdotal. The Mothers in a New Country (MINC) study aimed to explore cultural assumptions about somatization in three groups of immigrant women who had recently given birth in Melbourne, Australia. Physical health (SF-36 physical health dimensions and a symptom list) and depression (EPDS, SF-36 mental health dimension and self assessment) data from personal interviews with Vietnamese (n = 104), Turkish (n = 107) and Filipino (n = 107) women, conducted in women's language of choice, six to nine months after childbirth were analyzed. Comparisons with data from a statewide postal survey of Victorian women are also made. Contrary to the study hypothesis that Turkish and Vietnamese women in particular would exhibit a high degree of somatization (leading to low depression scores on the standard measures and greater reporting of somatic symptoms), Turkish women were in fact most likely of the three groups to be assessed as depressed on the two psychological measures and by self-assessment, to report high levels of somatic symptoms, and Vietnamese and Filipino women had a low prevalence of depression on all measures and relatively lower levels of somatic symptom reporting. The MINC study findings thus call into question some common cultural assumptions about depression and demonstrate the importance of designing studies which can put hypothesized cultural differences to the test.
Car finding with a pedestrian navigation system

Mobile communication services and Location based services are challenging application areas of wireless communications. Many applications were developed which require mobile navigation. The most known navigation systems are car navigation systems. Fewer advances have been made in pedestrian navigation systems (PNSs). There are some targeted achievements but the most challenging task is to develop PNSs for guiding people in different areas, outdoor or/and indoor, especially in metropolitan areas. Car navigation systems and PNSs have the main requirement but also differences: restrictions of the movement and data entries. This paper presents an application which belongs to Mobile communication services and Location based services, namely a PNS for finding a car. It will be included in the car's key and will guide the user to find his/her car previously left in a certain place.
Schistosoma mansoni triggers Dectin-2, which activates the Nlrp3 inflammasome and alters adaptive immune responses

The propensity of helminths, such as schistosomes, to immunomodulate the host's immune system is an essential aspect of their survival. Previous research has demonstrated how soluble schistosomal egg antigens (SEA) dampen TLR-signaling during innate immune responses. We show here that the suppressive effect by SEA on TLR signaling is simultaneously coupled to the activation of the Nlrp3 (NLR family, pyrin domain containing 3) inflammasome and thus IL-1β production. Therefore, the responsible protein component of SEA contains the second signal that is required to trigger proteolytic pro-IL-1β processing. Moreover, the SEA component binds to the Dectin-2/FcRγ (Fc receptor γ chain) complex and activates the Syk kinase signaling pathway to induce reactive oxygen species and potassium efflux. As IL-1β has been shown to be an essential orchestrator against several pathogens we studied the in vivo consequences of Schistosoma mansoni infection in mice deficient in the central inflammasome adapter ASC and Nlrp3 molecule. These mice failed to induce local IL-1β levels in the liver and showed decreased immunopathology. Interestingly, antigen-specific Th1, Th2, and Th17 responses were down-regulated. Overall, these data imply that component(s) within SEA induce IL-1β production and unravel a crucial role of Nlrp3 during S. mansoni infection.
Roles of microRNA-206 in osteosarcoma pathogenesis and progression.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS MicroRNA-206 has proven to be down-regulated in many human malignancies in correlation with tumour progression. Our study aimed to characterize miR-206 contributions to initiation and malignant progression of human osteosarcoma. METHODS MiR-206 expression was detected in human osteosarcoma cell line MG63, human normal osteoblastic cell line hFOB 1.19, and paired osteosarcoma and normal adjacent tissues from 65 patients using quantitative RT-PCR. Relationships of miR-206 levels to clinicopathological characteristics were also investigated. Moreover, miR-206 mimics and negative control siRNA were transfected into MG63 cells to observe effects on cell viability, apoptosis, invasion and migration. RESULTS We found that miR-206 was down-regulated in the osteosarcoma cell line MG63 and primary tumor samples, and decreased miR-206 expression was significantly associated with advanced clinical stage, T classification, metastasis and poor histological differentiation. Additionally, transfection of miR-206 mimics could reduce MG- 63 cell viability, promote cell apoptosis, and inhibit cell invasion and migration. CONCLUSIONS These findings indicate that miR-206 may have a key role in osteosarcoma pathogenesis and development. It could serve as a useful biomarker for prediction of osteosarcoma progression, and provide a potential target for gene therapy.
Immunization with meningococcal outer-membrane protein vesicles containing lipooligosaccharide protects mice against lethal experimental group B Neisseria meningitidis infection and septic shock.

Detergent-treated group B Neisseria meningitidis outer membrane vesicles (D-OMVs) from wild-type M986 and from nonencapsulated mutant M986-non-capsule variant (NCV) were compared as immunogens. Eight weeks after 3 consecutive immunizations with the immunogens, mice were challenged with a lethal dose of purified endotoxin or heat-killed or living N. meningitidis, plus d-galactosamine (400 mg/kg). D-OMVs from M986 induced bactericidal antibodies to both M986 (B : 2a : P1.5,2 : L3,7) and 6275 (B : 2a : P1.2,5 : L3) and protected the animals against both strains, whereas D-OMVs from M986-NCV did not protect the animals against infection with 6275 even when high serum bactericidal activity was induced. Tumor necrosis factor-alpha detected after bacterial infection was high in both protected and unprotected mice; interleukin (IL)-6 was high in mice that died but low in animals that survived. Exogenous administration of recombinant mouse IL-6 reversed the immunogens' protective effects. Protection against infection in mice does not necessarily correlate with the measured levels of serum bactericidal antibody alone, opsonic antibody alone, or cytokine profile alone. A comprehensive assessment of the preclinical efficacy of group B outer-membrane protein vaccines should include monitoring humoral antibodies, cytokine response, and protective effects against lethal infection.
Term Limits, Electoral Competition, and Representational Diversity: The Case of Florida

The article assesses two predictions made by term limits advocates: that term limits would increase electoral competition and enhance demographic representation in state legislatures. Although term limits may indeed have these consequences in some places and some times, their early effects in Florida do not provide support for these predictions. Our analysis suggests that state legislative seats that have opened up as the result of term limits yielded races with no smaller margins of victory than in previous elections, nor were they more likely to be contested by the two major political parties. Likewise, we found no significant increase in the representation of minorities or women in the Florida State Legislature after term limits.
A novel timing estimation method for OFDM systems

We present a novel timing offset estimation method for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing(OFDM) systems. The proposed estimator is designed to avoid the ambiguity in timing offset estimation. The performance of proposed scheme is presented in terms of mean and mean-square error (MSE) sense. The simulation results show that the proposed estimator is unbiased and has significantly smaller MSE.
Activation of Myosin-I by Members of the Ste20p Protein Kinase Family*

The heavy chain of myosin-ID isolated from Dictyostelium was identified as an in vitro substrate for members of the Ste20p family of serine/threonine protein kinases which are thought to regulate conserved mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways. Yeast Ste20p and Cla4p and mammalian p21-activated protein kinase (PAK) phosphorylated the heavy chain to 0.5-0.6 mol of Pi/mol and stimulated the actin-dependent Mg2+-ATPase activity to an extent equivalent to that of the Ste20p-like myosin-I heavy chain kinase isolated from Dictyostelium. PAK purified from rat brain required GTPγS-Cdc42 to express full activity, whereas recombinant mouse mPAK3 fused to glutathione S-transferase and purified from bacteria, and Ste20p and Cla4p purified from yeast extracts were fully active without GTPγS-Cdc42. These results suggest, together with the high degree of structural and functional conservation of Ste20p family members and myosin-I isoforms, that myosin-I activation by Ste20p family protein kinases may contribute to the regulation of morphogenetic processes in organisms ranging from yeast to mammalian cells.
Is There Any Threshold in the Relationship between Mother's Education and Child Health? Evidence from Nigeria

type="main"> The literature on mother's education and child health casually observes some nonlinearities and also a threshold in the relationship. Even though this nonlinearity or threshold has significant bearing on policy matters such as quality of education, any rigorous attempt to address this issue is missing in the literature. With height for age z-score as a proxy for long-run child health capital, regression results reveal that there are significant effects of mother's education on child health if mothers do not continue past primary school. Rather, poor quality of education at the primary level, especially literacy, is argued to have given rise to this threshold. It indicates that greater public investment in improving quality of education at the primary level is essential for maximizing the nonmarket outcomes of girls’ education in developing countries.
Associations Between Clinical Evidence of Inflammation and Synovitis in Symptomatic Knee Osteoarthritis: A Cross‐Sectional Substudy

Painful knee osteoarthritis (KOA) has been associated with joint inflammation. There is, however, little literature correlating signs of localized inflammation with contrast‐enhanced (CE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of synovium. This study examined the relationship between clinical and functional markers of localized knee inflammation and CE MRI–based synovial scores.
LOUD S OFTWARE

Mobile computing empowers its users to exploit portable computation and context-aware communication, however; a mobile device lacks energy and performance to execute computation and memory intensive tasks. On the contrary, cloud computing exploits the ‘payper-use’ software and hardware services to provide virtually unlimited processing and storage resources. The unification of mobile and cloud computing as Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) enables mobility and context awareness with computation and storage services to provide systems that are portable, yet resource sufficient. In an architectural context for MCC systems that require context-awareness, mobility and scalability, etc., there is a need to capitalise on reusable solutions – utilising patterns and best practices – to architect and develop mobile cloud software. This research aims to build and exploit a catalogue of patterns that support reusable design knowledge for architecture-based development of the MCC systems. We have discovered some patterns as generic and reusable solutions and demonstrate their usage in the context of mobile cloud systems. The proposed research aims to establish the catalogue as patterns repository – facilitating a continuous discovery and documentation of new patterns overtime that support reusable knowledge and practices to develop MCC systems.
Consumption Smoothing and Precautionary Saving under Recursive Preferences

Intertemporal choices simultaneously activate discounting, risk aversion, and intertemporal substitution. Future risk stimulates, more specially, higher-order aspects of preference. While a vast empirical literature has studied discounting, risk preferences, and basic consumption smoothing, empirical knowledge of higher-order preferences is still scarce. Based on a two-period consumption/saving model, we investigate the interaction of risk and time preferences in intertemporal decisions with future risk. We show that the main carriers of saving variation in intertemporal decisions under risk, according to the model, are intertemporal preferences. Risk preferences only play a minor role. The predictions under Expected Utility (EU) resemble those of the intertemporal-substitution component of recursive utility, not the risk component. Our simulations also show that second- and third-derivative effects are the most essential features of preferences in the decisions in question. Effects already from the fourth order on have essentially no impact. While the risk effects under EU are stronger than under recursive preferences, the few-relevance result regarding third- and higher-order risk effects persists. For a deepened understanding of preferences underlying intertemporal choice, correctly identifying intertemporal preference seems to be the single most critical aspect. The quantitative differences in the predictions for EU and recursive preferences may allow to empirically discriminate between the preference concepts.