Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Institutional Quality on Foreign Direct Investment

This study analyzes the impact of institutional quality on foreign direct investment (FDI). We apply panel regressions on a sample of 13 Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries over 2002 – 2019. The empirical results show that institutional quality plays a vital role in determining the flow of foreign investments. Specifically, better regulatory quality tends to increase the inflow. The findings further show that countries with higher Gross Domestic Products (GDP) have greater capacity to attract larger investment flows. Additionally, a lower tax rate is expected to encourage the inflow of foreign investments. Finally, there is evidence that corruption encourages greater inflow of FDI.
The Free Association Task: Proposal of a Clinical Tool for Detecting Differential Profiles of Semantic Impairment in Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease

Backround and Objectives: It is widely agreed that patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and patients suffering from semantic dementia (SD) might fail clinically administered semantic tasks due to a different combination of underlying cognitive deficits: namely, degraded semantic representations in SD and degraded representations plus executive control deficit in AD. However, no easy administrable test or test battery for differentiating the semantic impairment profile in these populations has been devised yet. Materials and Methods: In this study, we propose a new easy administrable task based on a free association procedure (F-Assoc) to be used in conjunction with category fluency (Cat-Fl) and letter fluency (Lett-Fl) for quantifying pure representational and pure control deficits, thus teasing apart the semantic profile of SD and AD patients. Results: In a sample of 10 AD and 10 SD subjects, matched for disease severity, we show that indices of asymmetric performance contrasting F-Assoc and each of the two verbal fluency tasks yield a clearly distinguishable discrepancy pattern across SD and AD. We also provide empirical support for the validity of an asymmetry measure contrasting F-Assoc and Cat-FL as an index of control impairment. Conclusions: The present study suggests that the free association procedure provides a pure measure of degradation of semantic representations avoiding the confound of possible concomitant executive deficits.
Examining Competing Entrepreneurial Concerns in a Social Question and Answer (SQA) Platform

: This study aims to determine the competing concerns of people interested in startup development and entrepreneurship by using topic modeling and sentiment analysis on a social question-and-answer (SQA) website. Understanding the underlying concerns of startup entrepreneurs is critical to society and economic growth. Therefore, greater scientific support for entrepreneurship remains necessary, including data mining from virtual social communities. In this study, an SQA platform was used to identify the sentiment of thirty concerns of people interested in startup entrepreneurship. Based on topic modeling and sentiment analysis of 18819 inquiries in various forums on an SQA, we identified additional questions about founder figures, keys to success, and the location of a startup. In addition, we found that general questions were rated more positively, especially when it came to pitching, finding good sources, disruptive innovation, idea generation, and marketing advice. On average, the identified concerns were considered 48.9 percent positive, 41 percent neutral, and 10.1 percent negative. This research establishes a critical foundation for future research and development of digital startups by outlining a variety of different concerns associated with startup development in the digital age.
Study of gas turbine exhaust diffuser flow and performance characteristics at off-design conditions

An experimental and numerical study has been conducted to assess the effect of inflow conditions on the performance of a generic axial exhaust diffuser design. The inlet conditions differ in magnitude and distribution of Mach number, swirl angle and radial total pressure profile allowing the investigation of various diffuser loads. Results are presented for two off-design loading conditions, representing an over-load and a part-load operating point. Additionally, the impact of tip leakage flow is examined. The results show the prominent role of supporting struts on the diffuser performance characteristics. At off-design conditions, severe inlet swirl reduces pressure recovery due to large strut separations while at the same time the positive effect of an additional energizing leakage flow is weakened.
Directional change for handling tick-to-tick data

ABSTRACT Time Series (TS) records transactions in a market at fixed intervals. Directional Change (DC) is an alternative way to record transactions: it only records transactions that represent significant price changes in the opposite direction in a trend, where ‘significance’ is observer-defined. In this paper, we argue that DC is particularly suitable for recording and analysing tick-to-tick data. Firstly, significant data points and high activities between sampling points that may not be recorded in a TS will always be recorded in DC. Secondly, as transactions take place at irregular times, but TS records transactions at fixed intervals, adjustments are required in the recording process, which may distort the records; no adjustments are required in DC. Thirdly, as DC is data-driven: every new transaction could potentially provide us with new information on the pulse of the market. For these reasons, DC is more suitable than TS for tracking tick-to-tick data for signals.
Gender differences in perceived risk of COVID‐19

Abstract Objective We examine gender‐based differences in perceived risks related to COVID‐19. Methods We analyze published findings from COVID‐related research on beliefs and attitudes about the health risks posed by the pandemic. We also design and administer a pair of online survey experiments (n = 502) to test if and how responsive men's attitudes are to information about male‐specific risks. Results Across 16 studies, men consistently express lower perceived risk of contracting COVID‐19 and less concern about the potential health consequences if they were to catch it. Our experimental results are mixed: Results for one information treatment indicate that men report greater relative risk of adverse outcomes. Men in one of the risk information treatments express less concern for their health if they were to contract the disease. Risk perceptions are positively correlated with self‐reported propensity toward protective behaviors. Conclusion Our review of recent studies finds a small‐but‐consistent gap in men and women's beliefs about their health risks related to the present pandemic. These risk beliefs are crucial determinants of whether individuals take protective measures. Our experimental results suggest that informing men of male‐specific risks associated with COVID‐19 can reduce their risk perceptions and perceptions of risk and widen the gap between men and women's perceptions.
Translating outcomes from the clinical setting to preclinical models: chronic pain and functionality in chronic musculoskeletal pain

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic pain disorder characterized by chronic widespread musculoskeletal pain (CWP), tenderness, and fatigue, which interferes with daily functioning and quality of life. In clinical studies, this symptomology is assessed, while preclinical models of CWP are limited to nociceptive assays. The aim of the study was to investigate the human-to-model translatability of clinical behavioral assessments for pain and muscle function in a preclinical model of CWP. We assessed correlations between pain behaviors and muscle function in a preclinical model of CWP and in women with fibromyalgia to examine whether similar relationships between outcomes existed in both settings, for usability of clinical assays in model systems. For preclinical measures, the acidic saline model of FM which induces widespread muscle pain, was used in adult female mice. Two gastrocnemius injections of acidic or physiological pH saline were given following baseline measures, five days apart. An array of adapted pain measures and functional assays were assessed for three weeks. For clinical measures, pain and functional assays were assessed in adult women with FM. For both preclinical and clinical outcomes, movement-evoked pain (MEP) was associated with mechanical pain sensitivity. Mechanical sensitivity was correlated to shifts in weight-bearing preclinically and was predictive of functionality in patients. Preclinically, it is imperative to expand how the field assesses pain behaviors when studying multi- symptom disorders like FM. Targeted pain assessments to match those performed clinically is an important aspect of improving preclinical to clinical translatability of animal models. Summary Preclinical assessments of chronic musculoskeletal pain recapitulate several outcome measures for clinical assessment of patients with FM, particularly prolonged resting pain, and MEP.
Depression recognition based on text and facial expression

Depression is a kind of mood disorder disease characterized by significant and lasting depression, which seriously affects people's physical and mental health. In recent years, the number of people suffering from depression has gradually increased. In order to improve the recognition rate of depression and reduce the workload of doctors, this paper proposes to apply the deep learning algorithm BiLSTM (Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory) and Attention to recognize depression. Among them, BiLSTM is used to extract contextual temporal information of text features and facial features. Attention is used to learn the correlation between vision and text modalities. This paper undertakes extensive experiments to demonstrate the network's effect. The experimental results show that this method has certain practical application value for depression recognition.
Oxidative Depolymerization of Alkaline Lignin from Pinus Pinaster by Oxygen and Air for Value-Added Bio-Sourced Synthons

In this work, an efficient 3-step process targeting the chemical modification and purification of lignin oligomers from industrial alkaline lignin is described. The oxidative depolymerization process of alkaline lignin with O2 or Air pressure, without use of metal catalyst, led to the production of two fractions of lignin oligomers named ‘precipitated lignin’ and ‘hydrosoluble lignin’ with 40% and 60% yield, respectively. These fractions were characterized with a wide range of methods including NMR spectroscopy (31P, 2D-HSQC), SEC (in basic media), FTIR. NMR analyses revealed the presence of carboxylic acid functions at a ratio of 1.80 mmol/g and 2.80 mmol/g for the precipitated and hydrosoluble lignin, respectively, values much higher than what is generally found in native lignin (between 0.2 and 0.5 mmol/g). SEC analyses revealed the formation of low molar masses for the precipitated (2200 g/mol) and hydrosoluble fractions (1500 g/mol) in contrast to the alkaline lignin (3900 g/mol). It is worth noting that the hydrosoluble fraction of lignin is soluble in water at any pH. Both processes (oxygen and air) were successfully scaled up and showed similar results in terms of yield and functionalization.
The City Metaphor in Software Visualization

A city metaphor has become a popular method of visualizing properties of program code. This paper provides an overview of research projects that employ this metaphor for a wide range of software engineering tasks. Until now, projects employing the city metaphor have primarily focused on visualizing static and semi-static properties of software repositories, such as understanding how a program’s source code structure is changing over time, and who is changing what. This paper compares these existing code cities and suggests likely avenues of future research.
Cox Regression

This routine can be used to study the impact of various factors on survival. You may be interested in the impact of diet, age, amount of exercise, and amount of sleep on the survival time after an individual has been diagnosed with a certain disease such as cancer. Under normal conditions, the obvious statistical tool to study the relationship between a response variable (survival time) and several explanatory variables would be multiple regression. Unfortunately, because of the special nature of survival data, multiple regression is not appropriate. Survival data usually contain censored data and the distribution of survival times is often highly skewed. These two problems invalidate the use of multiple regression. Many alternative regression methods have been suggested. The most popular method is the proportional hazard regression method developed by Cox (1972). Another method, Weibull regression, is available in NCSS in the Distribution Regression procedure.
Listeria monocytogenes GlmR Is an Accessory Uridyltransferase Essential for Cytosolic Survival and Virulence

Bacterial pathogens must adapt to their host environment in order to cause disease. The cytosolic bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes requires a highly conserved protein of unknown function, GlmR (previously known as YvcK), to survive in the host cytosol. ABSTRACT The cytosol of eukaryotic host cells is an intrinsically hostile environment for bacteria. Understanding how cytosolic pathogens adapt to and survive in the cytosol is critical to developing novel therapeutic interventions against these pathogens. The cytosolic pathogen Listeria monocytogenes requires glmR (previously known as yvcK), a gene of unknown function, for resistance to cell-wall stress, cytosolic survival, inflammasome avoidance, and, ultimately, virulence in vivo. In this study, a genetic suppressor screen revealed that blocking utilization of UDP N-acetylglucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc) by a nonessential wall teichoic acid decoration pathway restored resistance to lysozyme and partially restored virulence of ΔglmR mutants. In parallel, metabolomic analysis revealed that ΔglmR mutants are impaired in the production of UDP-GlcNAc, an essential peptidoglycan and wall teichoic acid (WTA) precursor. We next demonstrated that purified GlmR can directly catalyze the synthesis of UDP-GlcNAc from GlcNAc-1P and UTP, suggesting that it is an accessory uridyltransferase. Biochemical analysis of GlmR orthologues suggests that uridyltransferase activity is conserved. Finally, mutational analysis resulting in a GlmR mutant with impaired catalytic activity demonstrated that uridyltransferase activity was essential to facilitate cell-wall stress responses and virulence in vivo. Taken together, these studies indicate that GlmR is an evolutionary conserved accessory uridyltransferase required for cytosolic survival and virulence of L. monocytogenes. IMPORTANCE Bacterial pathogens must adapt to their host environment in order to cause disease. The cytosolic bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes requires a highly conserved protein of unknown function, GlmR (previously known as YvcK), to survive in the host cytosol. GlmR is important for resistance to some cell-wall stresses and is essential for virulence. The ΔglmR mutant is deficient in production of an essential cell-wall metabolite, UDP-GlcNAc, and suppressors that increase metabolite levels also restore virulence. Purified GlmR can directly catalyze the synthesis of UDP-GlcNAc, and this enzymatic activity is conserved in both Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus. These results highlight the importance of accessory cell wall metabolism enzymes in responding to cell-wall stress in a variety of Gram-positive bacteria.
Drivers of Sustainable Performance in European Energy Sector

The main purpose of this study is to identify the drivers of sustainable performance in firms that operate in the energy sector. Under the assumption of bidirectional impacts, we empirically tested the trade-offs between sustainable and financial performance, in light of neoclassical theory, the natural-resources-based view, and instrumental stakeholder theory. We hypothesize that, in the energy sector, sustainable performance is positively associated with firms’ financial performance and that sustainability reporting is an important driver of sustainable performance. We add primarily by considering the relevance of sustainability-policy-oriented factors and revising the role of sustainability reporting within. We provide empirical evidence based on a large panel of firm-year observations within the 2013–2020 time span, for firms that operate in the energy sector and are located in Europe. We have found strong support for the positive link between sustainable performance (proxied with ESG score) and returns, which conforms to the assumptions of the natural-resources-based view. However, we have also found some evidence that more sustainable firms face greater costs input, which is considered in neoclassical theory. We have also confirmed no relevance of the slack-resources-based view. Finally, we found sustainability reporting to be the most influential among the set of sustainability-policy-oriented factors. This evidence demonstrates that stakeholders’ pressure on firms’ transparency could be an important driver of sustainable performance in the energy sector.
Comparative Investigations on Wettability of Typical Marine, Continental, and Transitional Shales in the Middle Yangtze Platform (China)

Wettability is a physico-chemical rock property that plays a crucial role in the efficient development of shale gas and oil. However, a precise characterization of wettability for shale reservoirs is still a challenging task because of their complex pore structure (with a large proportion of pores in nm scale) and shale composition (variable at μm scale). In this work, we conducted the fluid drop wettability test, air–liquid contact angle measurement, and spontaneous imbibition (SI) with two fluids [deionized (DI) water and n-decane (an oil phase)] to evaluate the wettability of typical organic-rich shales (marine Longmaxi, continental Dongyuemiao, and transitional Dalong and Longtan shales), as influenced by total organic carbon (TOC), thermal maturity, mineral composition, effective porosity, and pore size distribution. Marine Longmaxi shales have strong or moderately strong water-wet properties with measured DI water contact angles of 3.4°–16.5°. In contrast, continental Dongyuemiao and transitional Da.
In Vivo Microdialysis in Mice Captures Changes in Alzheimer's Disease Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers Consistent with Developing Pathology.

BACKGROUND Preclinical models of Alzheimer's disease (AD) can provide valuable insights into the onset and progression of the disease, such as changes in concentrations of amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). However, such models are currently underutilized due to limited advancement in techniques that allow for longitudinal CSF monitoring. OBJECTIVE An elegant way to understand the biochemical environment in the diseased brain is intracerebral microdialysis, a method that has until now been limited to short-term observations, or snapshots, of the brain microenvironment. Here we draw upon patient-based findings to characterize CSF biomarkers in a commonly used preclinical mouse model for AD. METHODS Our modified push-pull microdialysis method was first validated ex vivo with human CSF samples, and then in vivo in an AD mouse model, permitting assessment of dynamic changes of CSF Aβ and tau and allowing for better translational understanding of CSF biomarkers. RESULTS We demonstrate that CSF biomarker changes in preclinical models capture what is observed in the brain; with a decrease in CSF Aβ observed when plaques are deposited, and an increase in CSF tau once tau pathology is present in the brain parenchyma. We found that a high molecular weight cut-off membrane allowed for simultaneous sampling of Aβ and tau, comparable to CSF collection by lumbar puncture in patients. CONCLUSION Our approach can further advance AD and other neurodegenerative research by following evolving neuropathology along the disease cascade via consecutive sampling from the same animal and can additionally be used to administer pharmaceutical compounds and assess their efficacy (Bjorkli, unpublished data).
Warming in the land of the midnight sun: breeding birds may suffer greater heat stress at high- vs low-Arctic sites

Rising global temperatures are expected to increase reproductive costs for wildlife as greater thermoregulatory demands interfere with essential breeding activities such as parental care. However, predicting the temperature threshold where reproductive performance is negatively impacted remains a significant hurdle. Using a novel thermoregulatory polygon approach, we predicted the threshold temperature at which an Arctic songbird–the snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis)–would need to reduce activity and perform below the 4-times basal metabolic rate (BMR) required to sustain nestling provisioning to avoid overheating. We then compared this threshold to operative temperatures recorded at high (82°N) and low (64°N) Arctic sites to estimate how heat constraints translate into site-specific impacts on sustained activity level. We predict buntings would become behaviourally constrained at operative temperatures above 11.7°C, whereupon they must reduce provisioning rates to maintain thermal balance. Low Arctic sites had larger fluctuations in solar radiation, producing consistent daily periods when operative temperatures exceeded 11.7°C. However, high-latitude birds faced entire, consecutive days where parents would not be able to sustain required provisioning rates. These data indicate that Arctic warming is likely already disrupting the breeding performance of cold-specialist birds, but also suggests counterintuitive and severe negative impacts of warming at high-latitude breeding locations.
The spectrum of BRCA1 gene mutations in early onset breast cancer patients from Russia

Aim of the study. Aim of the study was to estimate the occurrence of pathogenic mutations in the BRCA1 gene in Russian breast cancer patients.Material and methods. Complete coding sequence of the BRCA1 gene of 445 early onset breast cancer patients (under 40 years) from Novosibirsk region (Russia) were analyzed by targeted Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) using Ion Torrent platform. Results. Forty (9%) carriers of various pathogenic mutations were revealed. Thirty five (7,9%) patients carried 5382insC mutation, described earlier as a founder mutation for Slavic population. Five (1.1%) patients carried various pathogenic mutations, namely C61G, 462delCC, E143X, 4153delA, and IVS18+1G>T. Besides, 29 genetic variants with no clinical significance or with unknown clinical significance were detected in BRCA1 gene among 445 early onset breast cancer patients. Conclusions. Data on the frequency of genetic variations in the BRCA1 gene among early onset breast cancer patients in the Novosibirsk Region (Russia) were obtained. Proportion of the 5382insC mutation is 87.5% of all pathogenic mutations in the BRCA1 gene found in patients.