Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social Polarisation and Inequality in London: The Earnings Evidence, 1979–95

The last few years have seen a major debate on the scale, extent, and causes of social polarisation in global cities and in Western societies in general. But the debate has often been characterised more by theoretical assertion than by empirical analysis. In particular, the concept of social polarisation has often been confused with inequality. The authors use General Household Survey data and New Earnings Survey data from 1979 to 1995 to examine the existence and extent of polarisation in London. It is argued that the evidence for polarisation is relatively weak, and that to the extent that polarisation exists it is asymmetric, with much greater growth in the size of groups at the top of the earnings distribution than at the bottom. But it is also argued that both London and Great Britain as a whole have seen a marked increase in earnings inequality over the last twenty-five years. Although most groups have improved earnings in real terms, the increase has been much greater at the top end of the earnings scale. As a result, the interquartile and interdecile earnings ratios have risen sharply. It is concluded that London has seen an increase in earnings inequality rather than growth of social polarisation.
Role of NAD in regulating the adhE gene of Escherichia coli

The fermentative alcohol dehydrogenase of Escherichia coli is encoded by the adhE gene, which is induced under anaerobic conditions but repressed in air. Previous work suggested that induction of adhE might depend on NADH levels. We therefore directly measured the NAD+ and NADH levels for cultures growing aerobically and anaerobically on a series of carbon sources whose metabolism generates different relative amounts of NADH. Expression of adhE was monitored both by assay of alcohol dehydrogenase activity and by expression of phi(adhE'-lacZ) gene fusions. The expression of the adhE gene correlated with the ratio of NADH to NAD+. The role of NADH in eliciting adhE induction was supported by a variety of treatments known to change the ratio of NADH to NAD+ or alter the total NAD+-plus-NADH pool. Blocking the electron transport chain, either by mutation or by chemical inhibitors, resulted in the artificial induction of the adhE gene under aerobic conditions. Conversely, limiting NAD synthesis, by introducing mutational blocks into the biosynthetic pathway for nicotinic acid, decreased the expression of adhE under anaerobic conditions. This, in turn, was reversed by supplementation with exogenous NAD or nicotinic acid. In merodiploid strains carrying deletion or insertion mutations abolishing the synthesis of AdhE protein, an adhE-lacZ fusion was expressed at nearly 10-fold the level observed in an adhE+ background. Introduction of mutant adhE alleles producing high levels of inactive AdhE protein gave results equivalent to those seen in absence of the AdhE protein. This finding implies that it is the buildup of NADH due to lack of enzyme activity, rather than the absence of the AdhE protein per se, which causes increased induction of the phi(adhE'-lacZ) fusion. Moreover, mutations giving elevated levels of active AdhE protein decreased the induction of the phi(adhE'-lacZ) fusion. This finding suggests that the enzymatic activity of the AdhE protein modulates the level of NADH under anaerobic conditions, thus indirectly regulating its own expression.
Selection of Main Design Variables for Low-Speed Permanent Magnet Machines Devoted to Renewable Energy Conversion

Permanent magnet machines are great candidates to be chosen as the preferred option in many low-speed applications. The improvement in the magnetic material's characteristics and the reduction in their cost are the key factors for this trend. The level of irreversibility achieved by a permanent magnet machine, i.e., the losses for a given power output, may be reduced to almost half of that got by an electrically excited synchronous machine, being the stator copper loss virtually the only source. The efficiency is, therefore, directly related with the ratio between the stator copper loss and the torque developed through the machine's air gap, being the minimization of this ratio the way to get a better machine design, once some other design constraints are fixed. In this paper, the authors provide a methodology devoted to the selection of the main dimensions of a permanent magnet machine in order to achieve an optimal machine's performance in low-speed applications, reaching a set of conclusions that may be applied to any machine of this kind.
Prevalence and Precipitants of Aggression in Psychiatric Inpatient Units

Objective: Aggression is a significant clinical problem in psychiatric facilities. The present study reviews data on aggression collected from psychiatric inpatient units in order to determine prevalence and causal factors. Method: Data on aggressive incidents were gathered from four adult psychiatric units in the Illawarra, Australia. Information obtained included diagnosis, causal factors and patient sociodemographic characteristics. Results: During the 18-month period, a total of 1269 psychiatric patients were admitted and 174 patients (13.7%) were recorded as being aggressive. Patients with bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia had a 2.81 and 1.96 significantly increased risk of aggression, respectively, while depression and adjustment disorder conferred a significantly lower risk. Aggression was most likely to occur within 2 days of admission and length of stay was greater for aggressive than non-aggressive patients. The greater number of incidents occurred on day shift. Most patients who displayed aggression did so on one occasion, but a small proportion of total patients (6.0%) accounted for a large number of incidents (71.0%). High-risk patients were identified as those who were under 32 years of age, were actively psychotic, detained and known to have a history of aggression and substance misuse. The most frequent form of aggression was physical and staff were most often the victims. Conclusions: These results have important implications for predicting and thereby reducing inpatient aggression. Organisations need to ensure aggression management strategies are in place and periodically identify and assess the level of risk for workers.
METAL-ION ABSORPTION IN CONDUCTIVELY EVAPORATING CLOUDS

We present computations of the ionization structure and metal-absorption properties of thermally conductive interface layers that surround evaporating warm spherical clouds embedded in a hot medium. We rely on the analytical steady-state formalism of Dalton and Balbus to calculate the temperature profile in the evaporating gas, and we explicitly solve the time-dependent ionization equations for H, He, C, N, O, Si, and S in the conductive interface. We include photoionization by an external field. We estimate how departures from equilibrium ionization affect the resonance-line cooling efficiencies in the evaporating gas, and determine the conditions for which radiative losses may be neglected in the solution for the evaporation dynamics and temperature profile. Our results indicate that nonequilibrium cooling significantly increases the value of the saturation parameter σ0 at which radiative losses begin to affect the flow dynamics. As applications, we calculate the ion fractions and projected column densities arising in the evaporating layers surrounding dwarf-galaxy-scale objects that are also photoionized by metagalactic radiation. We compare our results to the UV metal-absorption column densities observed in local highly ionized metal absorbers, located in the Galactic corona or intergalactic medium. Conductive interfaces significantly enhance the formation of high ions such as C3+, N4+, and O5+ relative to purely photoionized clouds, especially for clouds embedded in a high-pressure corona. However, the enhanced columns are still too low to account for the O vi columns (∼1014 cm−2) observed in the local high-velocity metal-ion absorbers. We find that column densities larger than ∼1013 cm−2 cannot be produced in evaporating clouds. Our results do support the conclusion of Savage and Lehner that absorption due to evaporating O vi likely occurs in the local interstellar medium, with characteristic columns of ∼1013 cm−2.
Myotonic dystrophy kinase-related Cdc42-binding kinases (MRCK), the ROCK-like effectors of Cdc42 and Rac1

Cdc42 is a member of the Rho GTPase protein family that plays key roles in local F-actin organization through a number of kinase and non-kinase effector proteins. The myotonic dystrophy kinase-related Cdc42-binding kinases (MRCKs), and the RhoA binding coiled-coil containing kinases (ROCKs) are widely expressed members of the Dystrophia myotonica protein kinase (DMPK) family. The MRCK proteins are ∼190 kDa multi-domain proteins expressed in all cells and coordinate certain acto-myosin networks. Notably MRCK is a key regulator of myosin18A and myosin IIA/B, and through phosphorylation of their common regulatory light chains (MYL9 or MLC2) to promote actin stress fiber contractility. The MRCK kinases are regulated by Cdc42, which is required for cell polarity and directional migration; MRCK links to the acto-myosin complex through interaction with a coiled-coil containing adaptor proteins LRAP35a/b. The biological activities of MRCK in model organisms such as worms and flies confirm it as a myosin II activator. In mammalian cell culture MRCK can be critical for cancer cell migration and neurite outgrowth. We review the current literatures regarding MRCK and highlight the similarities and differences between MRCK and ROCK kinases.
A Methodology for the Design and Implementation of Resilient CAPM Systems

In 1986 a comprehensive study into the state of the art in Computer Aided Production Management (CAPM) in UK industry commissioned by the ACME (Application of Computers to Manufacturing Engineering) directorate of the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) revealed a number of deficiencies in existing CAPM systems and approaches. As a consequence of this report, a number of specific sectors were identified including the small company sector, large company sector, make to order sector and the electronics sector. This article outlines the results of the work of the research team engaged in developing a CAPM implementation methodology for the electronics sector, which was the largest of the ACME CAPM projects. The research team believe that the results are equally applicable for CAPM implementation in other manufacturing sectors.
State and Irredentism: Some Reflexions on the Case of Greece

The state has been traditionally viewed as a political organization whose main components are government (legitimate authority), people and territory. While these elements are essential to any consideration of the state, they cannot in themselves suffice. The traditional view fails both to analyse the division of the population into distinct if sometimes vague socioeconomic entities with conflicting interests and to examine the nature of the legitimate authority. Moreover, it lacks an understanding of the legitimation process, i.e. the manner by which the different sections of class-divided socioeconomic structures attempt to gain control and impose their authority on the decision-making process. Any adequate concept of the state must include a realisation that there is an indissoluble link between its formative process and the realm of private relations (civil society), and that the state structure thus formed is relatively autonomous. ' In addition, the state being forced to co-exist (peacefully or not) in an international community, is constantly shaped through the process of integration in the international system. Foreign policy therefore constitutes the organic interaction of a state with the international community.2
Trust in Sharing Economy

This research explores factors that impact people’s trust and subsequently their willingness to participate in the sharing economy and how the factors are different from those identified in e-commerce context. The study was conducted in two phases. The Phase I study was an exploratory study with open-ended questions. The Phase II study will be conducted to test seven hypotheses. The Phase I study revealed that the sharing economy is still in its early stage but is gaining momentum. The results indicated that the biggest inhibitor for the sharing economy might be the physical security. The evidences seem to highlight the importance of enhanced background checks on participating members as well as adoption of additional security measures such as security certificate and safety insurance.
EEG-Based Attention Tracking During Distracted Driving

Distracted driving might lead to many catastrophic consequences. Developing a countermeasure to track drivers' focus of attention (FOA) and engagement of operators in dual (multi)-tasking conditions is thus imperative. Ten healthy volunteers participated in a dual-task experiment that comprised two tasks: a lane-keeping driving task and a mathematical problem-solving task (e.g., 24 + 15=37? ) during which their electroencephalogram (EEG) and behaviors were concurrently recorded. Independent component analysis (ICA) was employed as a spatial filter to separate the contributions of independent sources from the recorded EEG data. The power spectra of six components (i.e., frontal, central, parietal, occipital, left motor, and right motor) extracted from single-task conditions were fed into support vector machine (SVM) based on the radial basis function (RBF) kernel to build an FOA assessment system. The system achieved 84.6 ± 5.8% and 86.2 ± 5.4% classification accuracies in detecting the participants' FOAs on the math versus driving tasks, respectively. This FOA assessment system was then applied to evaluate participants' FOAs during dual-task conditions. The detected FOAs revealed that participants' cognitive attention and strategies dynamically changed between tasks to optimize the overall performance, as attention was limited and competed. The empirical results of this study demonstrate the feasibility of a practical system to continuously estimating cognitive attention through EEG spectra.
Kinase Activity of Overexpressed HipA Is Required for Growth Arrest and Multidrug Tolerance in Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Overexpression of the HipA protein of the HipBA toxin/antitoxin module leads to multidrug tolerance in Escherichia coli. HipA is a “toxin” that causes reversible dormancy, whereas HipB is an antitoxin that binds HipA and acts as a transcriptional repressor of the hipBA operon. Comparative sequence analysis shows that HipA is a member of the phosphatidylinositol 3/4-kinase superfamily. The kinase activity of HipA was examined. HipA was autophosphorylated in the presence of ATP in vitro, and the purified protein appeared to carry a single phosphate group on serine 150. Thus, HipA is a serine kinase that is at least partially phosphorylated in vivo. Overexpression of HipA caused inhibition of cell growth and increase in persister formation. Replacing conserved aspartate 309 in the conserved kinase active site or aspartate 332 in the Mg2+-binding site with glutamine produced mutant proteins that lost the ability to stop cellular growth upon overexpression. Replacing serine 150 with alanine yielded a similarly inactive protein. The mutant proteins were then examined for their ability to increase antibiotic tolerance. Cells overexpressing wild-type HipA were highly tolerant to cefotaxime, a cell wall synthesis inhibitor, to ofloxacin, a fluoroquinolone inhibitor of DNA gyrase, and to topoisomerase IV and were almost completely resistant to killing by mitomycin C, which forms DNA adducts. The mutant proteins did not protect cells from cefotaxime or ofloxacin and had an impaired ability to protect from mitomycin C. Taken together, these results suggest that the protein kinase activity of HipA is essential for persister formation.
Does Drug Use Lower Wages?

This study, using microdata from the 1980 and 1984 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, examines the effects of drug use on wages and employment. Contrary to most previous researchers' findings that illegal drug use negatively affects earnings, this analysis suggests that, once an allowance is made for self-selection effects (that is, unobservable factors simultaneously affecting wages and the decision to use drugs), drug users actually received higher wages than non-drug users. A similar analysis of employment effects shows that the sample of all drug users (which included users of “hard” and “soft” drugs) had lower employment levels than non-drug users, but the smaller sample consisting only of users of hard drugs, surprisingly, did not.
Econometric Modelling of the Sterling Effective Exchange Rate

The exchange rate is recognised as a particularly tricky subject for modelling and prediction. The problems of unobservables such as expectations, of simultaneity, and of policy changes (both overt and covert) in the sample period to which models must be fitted may account for the disappointing results of recent attempts to test theories of exchange rate determination. This paper develops an appropriate empirical model to deal with these problems; it allows consideration of the proper interpretation of theoretical assumptions and determination of how far modelling for ex ante prediction can succeed.
Mentors, supervisors and role models: do they reduce the effects of psychological contract breach?

Psychological contract breach has become a significant problem for many organisations in today's business environment because it fosters a belief within employees that the organisation does not support them. Accordingly, we examine whether organisations can diminish the negative impact of psychological contract breach on perceived organisational support (POS) by providing employees with mentors, supportive supervisors and role models. In Study 1, we found that mentor relationships moderated the relationship between psychological contract breach and POS six months later. In Study 2, we showed that mentor relationships and supervisor support reduced the negative impact of contract breach on POS. Contrary to expectations, employees who maintained relationships with role models reported lower levels of POS in response to psychological contract breach than those employees who reported that they did not have role models in their organisations. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
In vivo effect of 1,25‐dihydroxycholecalciferol on the proliferation and differentiation of avian chondrocytes

A combination of immunocytochemistry and in situ biochemistry has been used to determine the in vivo effects of 1,25‐dihydroxycholecalciferol [1,25‐(OH)2D3] on the proliferation and differentiation of chondrocytes. Chicks were fed a diet supplemented with 1,25‐(OH)2D3 (2.5, 5, or 10 μg/kg diet) for 3 weeks, and measurements were made in sections of growth plate of chondrocyte proliferation and rate of maturation through the growth plate [using bromodeoxyuridine (BrdUrd) labeling] and also chondrocyte differentiation [assessed by alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity]. The labeling indices of the control and supplemented chicks were similar (23.1 ± 1.3 versus 23.2 ± 1.6%); however, within a 21 h period the BrdUrd‐positive cells of the supplemented chicks had moved down the growth plate significantly farther than in the control chicks (71.0 ± 2.8 versus 52.6 ± 1.8%). Greater ALP (mean integrated absorbance) activity higher up the growth plate of the supplemented chicks indicated a more differentiated phenotype in cells closer to the epiphyseal junction. Within individual transitional chondrocytes ALP activity in the 10 μg/kg supplemented chicks was 26.6 ± 0.85, which was significantly higher (p < 0.01) than that of the control chicks (19.2 ± 0.9). These results suggest that 1,25‐(OH)2D3 in vivo does not increase the rate of chondrocyte prolferation but accelerates the onset of maturation.
Pensioner income inequality

One-and-a-half million pensioners are dependent on the minimum means-tested benefit, income support. But the numbers on income support have barely changed in two decades despite substantial increases in its value and that of its precursor, supplementary benefit. At least another 2 million receive means-tested housing benefit or council tax benefit. At the same time, in 1992-93, 3 million pensioners paid over £5 billion in income tax, a small minority at the higher rate of income tax. Pensioners are poorer than the working population, and some are on very low incomes, but they are not uniformly poor.
Learning texture discrimination masks

Texture segmentation using multichannel filtering involves applying a set of masks to an input image, and then grouping the pixels based on the responses to these masks. We solve the problem of finding an optimal set of masks by designing a neural network which is trained to maximize a relevant function. Two algorithms, the centroid algorithm and the gradient descent algorithm, are used to train the network. Experimental results on segmenting two natural textures and extracting barcodes in an image are reported, and the error rates compared for both the algorithms with different network configurations. The centroid algorithm gives better results in small parameter spaces, whereas the gradient descent algorithm works better with more parameters. Our method of automatically generating texture discrimination masks not only results in a good segmentation performance, but also reduces the dimensionality of the feature space compared to previously published multichannel filtering methods. <<ETX>>
Treadmill exercise ameliorates depressive symptoms through increasing serotonin expression in postpartum depression rats

Postpartum depression (PPD) is defined as the depressive symptoms that occur from the moment of delivery until 12 months after delivery. PPD symptoms are closely associated with reduced activity of the serotonergic system. Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of depression. Tryptophan hydroxylase (TPH) catalyzes the rate-limiting step of 5-HT biosynthesis in the serotonergic neurons. Exercise exerts anti-depressive effect on depression patients as well as on animal models of depression. In the present study, the effect of treadmill exercise on PPD was investigated using rats. For this study, open field test for activity and forced swimming test for depressive symptoms, and immunohistochemistry for 5-HT and TPH were conducted. The rats in the exercise groups were forced to run on a motorized treadmill for 30 min once a day for 2 weeks. Activity in the open field test was decreased in the postpartum rats, however, performing treadmill running increased activity in the postpartum rats. The climbing time was decreased and the immobility time was increased in the postpartum rats. Treadmill exercise increased climbing time and suppressed immobility time in the postpartum rats. 5-HT and TPH expressions in the dorsal raphe were suppressed in the postpartum rats, and treadmill exercise enhanced 5-HT and TPH expressions in the postpartum rats. Treadmill exercise ameliorated the PPD very effectively by enhancing serotonin level.
EU Federalism in Crisis

In the run-up to this week’s European Council, Karel Lannoo offers his assessment of what has been put on the table so far in response to the euro crisis – and what more needs to be done. He starts with an assessment of the measures taken in the ‘six-pack’ and the debate on the Euro-plus Pact and then addresses some operational elements of the European Stability Mechanism and the question whether the EU is, as often alleged, a transfer union. The CEPS Chief Executive concludes his brief by proposing a pragmatic agenda of items on which the EU could advance towards a more federal economic union.