Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY OF

Analysing survey data collected in the framework of the Eurosystem’s Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) on patterns of firm-level adjustment to shocks, we document that the relative intensity and the character of price vs. cost and wage vs. employment adjustments in response to cost-push shocks depends in statistically significant and theoretically sensible ways on the intensity of competition in firms’ product markets, on collective wage bargaining, and on other structural and institutional features of firms and of their environment.
The Diversification of Communes’ Revenue from Real Estate across Provinces

Abstract The aim of this paper is to identify the spatial differentiation of revenue from real estate in communes’ budgets across Polish provinces. We discuss property fees and taxes which feed into the communes’ budgets. We also present the assumptions of the research procedure which enabled us to distinguish classes of provinces according to revenues from real estate. In a further section of the paper, we analyze per capita revenues from real estate and the share of these revenues in the own income of communes among the distinguished classes of distance from the province capital. The results of our study show that, in the years under discussion, there are clear differences between spatial regularities in both scopes of analysis (the level of per capita income from real estate and the share of revenue from properties in the communes’ own income).
Optimal expected utility risk measures

Abstract This paper introduces optimal expected utility (OEU) risk measures, investigates their main properties and puts them in perspective to alternative risk measures and notions of certainty equivalents. By taking the investor’s point of view, OEU maximizes the sum of capital available today and the certainty equivalent of capital in the future. To the best of our knowledge, OEU is the only existing utility-based risk measure that is (non-trivial and) coherent if the utility function u has constant relative risk aversion. We present several different risk measures that can be derived with special choices of u and illustrate that OEU is more sensitive than value at risk and average value at risk with respect to changes of the probability of a financial loss.
The Role of Process Standardization in Achieving IT Business Value

We empirically investigate the interplay and impact of process standardization and IT intensity on business process performance in terms of efficiency, quality, control, and processing time. To this aim we surveyed the retail advisory operations of Germany's largest banks. We find that standardization enhances efficiency, quality and control of the advisory process. Additionally, IT intensity on its own shows positive effects on efficiency and quality as well, while it leads to more customer facing time needed for a single customer. Also, the interaction effect with process standardization is relevant. We conclude that IT creates business value through facilitating process standardization and process control. Our results strongly indicate that managers have to look carefully at the type of the processes before standardizing it.
A randomized controlled trial of vocational intervention for young people with first‐episode psychosis: method

Young people who are experiencing first‐episode psychosis (FEP) are at increased risk of being unemployed compared to either their same age peers in the general population, or those with other mental illnesses. Significant research has been conducted examining employment interventions for those with chronic psychotic illness. This has yielded strong results in favour of an intervention called individual placement and support (IPS). However, significantly less work has examined the benefit of this approach to those in FEP when the potential for vocational rehabilitation is perhaps greater. This study adds to the knowledge of vocational intervention in first‐episode psychotic illness. Additionally, it expands this work into the areas of cognition, social cognition, social inclusion and economics.
Characterization of environmental chemicals with potential for DNA damage using isogenic DNA repair‐deficient chicken DT40 cell lines

Included among the quantitative high throughput screens (qHTS) conducted in support of the US Tox21 program are those being evaluated for the detection of genotoxic compounds. One such screen is based on the induction of increased cytotoxicity in seven isogenic chicken DT40 cell lines deficient in DNA repair pathways compared to the parental DNA repair‐proficient cell line. To characterize the utility of this approach for detecting genotoxic compounds and identifying the type(s) of DNA damage induced, we evaluated nine of 42 compounds identified as positive for differential cytotoxicity in qHTS (actinomycin D, adriamycin, alachlor, benzotrichloride, diglycidyl resorcinol ether, lovastatin, melphalan, trans‐1,4‐dichloro‐2‐butene, tris(2,3‐epoxypropyl)isocyanurate) and one non‐cytotoxic genotoxic compound (2‐aminothiamine) for (1) clastogenicity in mutant and wild‐type cells; (2) the comparative induction of γH2AX positive foci by melphalan; (3) the extent to which a 72‐hr exposure duration increased assay sensitivity or specificity; (4) the use of 10 additional DT40 DNA repair‐deficient cell lines to better analyze the type(s) of DNA damage induced; and (5) the involvement of reactive oxygen species in the induction of DNA damage. All compounds but lovastatin and 2‐aminothiamine were more clastogenic in at least one DNA repair‐deficient cell line than the wild‐type cells. The differential responses across the various DNA repair‐deficient cell lines provided information on the type(s) of DNA damage induced. The results demonstrate the utility of this DT40 screen for detecting genotoxic compounds, for characterizing the nature of the DNA damage, and potentially for analyzing mechanisms of mutagenesis. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. , 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.y
Cardioprotective Effect Afforded by Transient Exposure to Phosphodiesterase III Inhibitors: The Role of Protein Kinase A and p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase

Background—Phosphodiesterase III inhibitors (PDEIII-Is) improve the hemodynamic status of heart failure via inotropic/vasodilatory effects attributable to the increase in intracellular cAMP level. Direct cardioprotection by PDEIII-Is and its underlying mechanisms, however, have not been identified. We tested the infarct size–limiting effect of PDEIII-Is and the roles of cAMP, protein kinase (PK) A, PKC, and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) families in open-chest dogs. Methods and Results—Milrinone, olprinone (PDEIII-Is), or dibutyryl-cAMP (db-cAMP) was injected intravenously 30 minutes before 90-minute ischemia, followed by 6 hours of reperfusion. Olprinone was also examined with an intracoronary cotreatment with a PKA inhibitor (H89), a PKC inhibitor (GF109203X), an extracellular signal–regulated kinase kinase (MEK) inhibitor (PD98059), or a p38 MAPK inhibitor (SB203580) throughout the preischemic period. Either PDEIII-Is or db-cAMP caused substantial hemodynamic changes, which returned to control levels in 30 minutes. Collateral flow and percent risk area were identical for all groups. Both PDEIII-Is and db-cAMP increased myocardial p38 MAPK activity during the preischemic period, which was blocked by H89, but not by GF109203X. Both PDEIII-Is and db-cAMP reduced infarct size (19.1±4.1%, 17.5±3.3%, and 20.3±4.8%, respectively, versus 36.1±6.2% control, P <0.05 each). Furthermore, the effect of olprinone was blunted by either H89 (35.5±6.4%) or SB203580 (32.6±5.9%), but not by GF109203X or PD98059. H89, GF109203X, PD98059, or SB203580 alone did not influence infarct size. Conclusions—Pretreatment with PDEIII-Is has cardioprotective effects via cAMP-, PKA-, and p38 MAPK–dependent but PKC-independent mechanisms in canine hearts.
WSN power management with battery capacity estimation

Wireless sensor nodes are now cheap and reliable enough to be deployed in different environments. However, their limited energy capacity limits their lifespan. In this paper, a Management strategy at network-level of a set of nodes is implemented, taking into account an estimation of the remaining energy in each sensor node. The control formulation is based on Model Predictive Control with constraints and binary optimization variables, leading to a Mixed Integer Quadratic Programming problem. The estimation of the remaining energy in batteries must be simple enough to be implemented in low-cost, low-power, low-computational-capability sensor nodes.
A computational strategy for the search of regulatory small RNAs in Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae

Bacterial regulatory small RNAs (sRNAs) play important roles in gene regulation and are frequently connected to the expression of virulence factors in diverse bacteria. Only a few sRNAs have been described for Pasteurellaceae pathogens and no in-depth analysis of sRNAs has been described for Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, the causative agent of porcine pleuropneumonia, responsible for considerable losses in the swine industry. To search for sRNAs in A. pleuropneumoniae, we developed a strategy for the computational analysis of the bacterial genome by using four algorithms with different approaches, followed by experimental validation. The coding strand and expression of 17 out of 23 RNA candidates were confirmed by Northern blotting, RT-PCR, and RNA sequencing. Among them, two are likely riboswitches, three are housekeeping regulatory RNAs, two are the widely studied GcvB and 6S sRNAs, and 10 are putative novel trans-acting sRNAs, never before described for any bacteria. The latter group has several potential mRNA targets, many of which are involved with virulence, stress resistance, or metabolism, and connect the sRNAs in a complex gene regulatory network. The sRNAs identified are well conserved among the Pasteurellaceae that are evolutionarily closer to A. pleuropneumoniae and/or share the same host. Our results show that the combination of newly developed computational programs can be successfully utilized for the discovery of novel sRNAs and indicate an intricate system of gene regulation through sRNAs in A. pleuropneumoniae and in other Pasteurellaceae, thus providing clues for novel aspects of virulence that will be explored in further studies.
A Case Study on Context Maintenance in Dynamic Hybrid Race Detectors

Many dynamic hybrid race detectors aim at detecting violations of the lockset discipline in execution traces of multithreaded programs. They are designed to abstract memory accesses appearing in traces as contexts. Nonetheless, they keep these contexts in different extents and partition the sets of contexts into equivalent classes of different granularity. In our case study, we compare three detectors using the PARSEC benchmark suite to examine the impact of using unrestricted strategy or restricted strategy for keeping these contexts in sequence on detection effectiveness, and the impact of partitioning context sequences by different granularities on scalability in time cost. The case study results indicate that using restricted context sequences sufficed to detect very high proportions of locking discipline violations detectable by using unrestricted context sequences, and the partitioning of context sets into finer equivalent classes significantly lowers the scalability in time cost with increasing number of threads to handle the same input workload.
Aalborg Universitet Flow whitelisting in SCADA networks

Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks are commonly deployed to aid the operation of large industrial facilities. Modern SCADA networks are becoming more vulnerable to network attacks, due to the now common use of standard communication protocols and increased interconnection to corporate networks and the Internet. In this work, we propose an approach to improve the security of these networks based on flow whitelisting. A flow whitelist describes the legitimate traffic solely using four properties of network packets: the client address, the server address, the server-side port, and the transport protocol. The proposed approach consists in learning a flow whitelist by capturing network traffic and aggregating it into flows for a given period of time. After this learning phase is complete, any non-whitelisted connection observed generates an alarm. The evaluation of the approach focuses on two important whitelist characteristics: size and stability. We demonstrate the applicability of the approach using real-world traffic traces, captured in two water treatment plants and a gas and electric
Preventive effect of S‐allyl cysteine sulfoxide (alliin) on cardiac marker enzymes and lipids in isoproterenol‐induced myocardial injury

The present study was designed to evaluate the preventive effect of S‐allyl cysteine sulfoxide (SACS) in isoproterenol (ISO)‐induced myocardial ischaemia in male Wistar rats. Rats were pretreated with SACS (40 and 80 mg kg−1 body‐weight) for 5 weeks. After the treatment period, ISO (150 mg kg−1 body‐weight) was administered subcutaneously to rats at intervals of 24 h for 2 days. The activities of creatine kinase, creatine kinase‐MB, lactate dehydrogenase, aspartate transaminase and alanine transferase were significantly increased in serum and significantly decreased in the hearts of ISO‐treated rats. Pretreatment with SACS decreased the activities of these enzymes significantly in serum and significantly increased the activities in heart in ISO‐treated rats. The levels of cholesterol, triglycerides and free fatty acids increased in serum and heart, while the levels of phospholipids increased in serum and decreased in heart in ISO‐treated rats. SACS pretreatment showed a significant effect on the lipids studied. The activity of 3‐hydroxy 3‐methyl glutaryl coenzyme A (HMG CoA) reductase was significantly increased and the activity of lecithin cholesterol acyl transferase (LCAT) was significantly reduced in ISO‐induced rats. Oral pretreatment with SACS significantly decreased the activity of HMG CoA reductase and significantly increased the activity of LCAT in ISO‐induced rats. The levels of plasma thiobarbituric acid reactive substances and hydroperoxides were increased in ISO‐treated rats. Pretreatment with SACS significantly decreased the levels of lipidperoxides in ISO‐treated rats. The effect at a dose of 80 mg kg−1 body‐weight was more effective than at a dose of 40 mg kg−1 body‐weight and brought back all the biochemical parameters to near normal levels. Thus our study shows that SACS has a lipid‐lowering effect in ISO‐induced rats. Our study may have clinical relevance.
Frequency of Von Hippel‐Lindau germline mutations in classic and non‐classic Von Hippel‐Lindau disease identified by DNA sequencing, Southern blot analysis and multiplex ligation‐dependent probe amplification

The current clinical diagnosis of Von Hippel‐Lindau (VHL) disease demands at least one specific a sporadic VHL manifestation in a patient with familial VHL disease, or, in asporadic patient, at least two or more hemangioblastomas or a single hemangioblastoma in combination with a typical visceral lesion. To evaluate this definition, we studied the frequency of germline VHL mutation in three patients groups: (i) multi‐organ involvement (classic VHL), (ii) limited VHL manifestations meeting criteria (non‐classic VHL) and (iii) patients with VHL‐associated tumors not meeting current diagnostic VHL criteria. In addition, we validated multiplex ligation‐dependent probe amplification (MLPA) as a rapid and reliable quantitative method for the identification of germline VHL deletions. The frequency of germline VHL mutations was very high in classic VHL cases with multi‐organ involvement (95%), lower in non‐classic cases that meet current diagnostic criteria but have limited VHL manifestations or single‐organ involvement (24%) and low (3.3%), but tangible in cases not meeting current diagnostic VHL criteria. The detection of germline VHL mutations in patients or families with limited VHL manifestations, or single‐organ involvement is relevant for follow‐up of probands and early identification of at‐risk relatives.
Methylopila jiangsuensis sp. nov., an aerobic, facultatively methylotrophic bacterium.

The taxonomic status was determined of an aerobic, facultatively methylotrophic strain, JZL-4(T), isolated from activated sludge. The cells were gram-negative, asporogenous, colourless, motile, short rods. The strain utilized methanol, methylamine, formate and a variety of polycarbon compounds, but not methane, dichloromethane or CO(2)/H(2), as carbon and energy sources. C(1) compounds were assimilated via the isocitrate lyase-negative serine pathway. Optimal growth occurred at 30 °C, pH 6.5-7.5 and 0.5 % (w/v) NaCl. The major cellular fatty acids were C(18 : 1)ω7c and C(18 : 0). The major phospholipids were phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylmonomethylethanolamine (PME); PME, the main phospholipid of strain JZL-4(T), was absent or present in only minor amounts in Methylopila capsulata IM1(T), Methylopila helvetica DM9(T) and Albibacter methylovorans DM10(T). The major ubiquinone was Q-10. The DNA G+C content of strain JZL-4(T) was 70.4 mol% (T(m)). Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that the strain showed high sequence similarities to M. capsulata IM1(T) (97.2 %), A. methylovorans DM10(T) (94.9 %) and M. helvetica DM9(T) (94.1 %), and showed less than 94 % similarity to strains of other species with validly published names. Strain JZL-4(T) had a low level of DNA-DNA relatedness (34 %) with M. capsulata IM1(T). On the basis of phenotypic, genetic and phylogenetic data, strain JZL-4(T) is proposed to represent a novel species of the genus Methylopila, with the name Methylopila jiangsuensis sp. nov. The type strain is strain JZL-4(T) ( = ACCC 05406(T) = DSM 22718(T) = VKM B-2555(T)).
Closed-Form Optimization on Saliency-Guided Image Compression for HEVC-MSP

High efficiency video coding (HEVC) is the latest video coding standard, and it has the best performance among all the existing standards. HEVC main still picture profile (HEVC-MSP) also achieves top performance in image compr-ession. In this paper, we propose a closed-form bit allocation approach to optimize the saliency-guided PSNR (viewed as perceptual distortion) such that the coding efficiency of HEVC-based image compression can be significantly improved from a subjective perspective. Specifically, a bit allocation formulation is established to minimize perceptual distortion with a constraint on bit-rates. Then, this formulation is solved using the proposed recursive Taylor expansion method with a closed-form solution. On the basis of our solution, a bit allocation and re-allocation process is developed in our approach to minimize perceptual distortion, meanwhile accurately controlling bit-rates. In addition, we provide both theoretical and numerical analyses of the computational complexity, verifying the little extra time cost of our approach. The experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our approach over the state-of-the-art HEVC-MSP, and the BD-rate savings are approximately 40% and 24% for face and generic images, respectively.
Software Quality Assurance Methodologies and Techniques

1 Department of Computer Science and Institute of Information Systems and Applications, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan 2 Department of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong 3 Department of Computer Science, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616, USA 4 Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Kyoto 606-8585, Japan
Does the Speed of Change over the House Price Cycles Matter

Housing price boom-bust cycles lied at the heart of the latest global financial crisis. Many countries experienced booms from 2000 to 2006 which turned into bursts at about the same period, leading to a crisis of global scale. As housing booms are defined as periods in which housing price exceeds its fundamental value, the earlier literature devised several approaches to identify and analyze housing price cycles. Those studies have been successful in finding associations between housing price booms-busts and a number of macroeconomic indicators. However, the speed of change of house prices over the cycles remained untouched. So we aim at identifying housing price episodes with special emphasis placed on the pace of price changes and we document associations between housing cycles, macroeconomic factors and financial development for 26 countries. Our finding that these associations depend on the speed of change of prices over the housing price cycles rather than being uniform might be indicative of a missed spot in understanding housing price bubbles and policy design.
Initial Experience with Non-Contrast Enhanced Renal Angiography at 7 . 0 Tesla

INTRODUCTION: The goal of this work was to develop the methods to perform non-contrast enhanced (non-CE) angiography studies of the renal vasculature at 7 Tesla. The potential advantage of performing these studies at 7T includes increased vessel conspicuity which would benefit a multitude of clinical applications including the evaluation of patients with renal insufficiency or failure, uncontrolled hypertension, and preoperative evaluation of renal vascular anatomy. The subset of patients with renal insufficiency or failure poses a unique clinical challenge in that their renal impairment may preclude the use of gadolinium-based contrast agents due to the possibility of developing nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, a debilitating and potentially fatal disease. A common strategy to acquire non-CE renal angiography involves the use of an inversion magnetization preparation followed by a delay and data acquisition relying on in-flow enhancement of the vasculature. The inversion delay time (TI) is chosen to maximally suppress background signal from the parenchyma and venous blood. Performing these studies at 7T has the potential to improve the visualization of the first and second order branches as well as more distal arteries compared to lower field strengths and CE acquisitions (1). Along with the increased SNR expected at 7T, the higher T1s will result in longer inversion delays for background suppression and thus better in-flow enhancement. Previous studies at lower fields have shown similar techniques to compete with contrast-enhanced studies at identifying significant renal artery stenosis (2,3) and for evaluating the vasculature post transplantation (4). In this paper we address the technical and methodological challenges of performing these studies at 7T.
Computer modeling of substrate binding to lipases from Rhizomucor miehei, Humicola lanuginosa, and Candida rugosa

The substrate‐binding sites of the triacyl glyceride lipases from Rhizomucor miehei, Humicola lanuginosa, and Candida rugosa were studied by means of computer modeling methods. The space around the active site was mapped by different probes. These calculations suggested 2 separate regions within the binding site. One region showed high affinity for aliphatic groups, whereas the other region was hydrophilic. The aliphatic site should be a binding cavity for fatty acid chains. Water molecules are required for the hydrolysis of the acyl enzyme, but are probably not readily accessible in the hydrophobic interface, in which lipases are acting. Therefore, the hydrophilic site should be important for the hydrolytic activity of the enzyme.