Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Would You Trust An Italian Politician? Preliminary Evidence From Italian Regional Politics

This paper evaluates the erosion of electoral accountability of the "Governors" of the Italian Regions in three subsequent political moments: 1) the elections; 2) the inaugural speeches of the Governor; 3) their first important policy decision, the long-term regional budget (DPEFR). We use content analysis (Laver et al., 2003) to assess the position of each Governor on a left to right distribution at the moment of the inaugural speeches and of the DPEFR. We then analyze the correlation between the distributions of 1) the electoral results and the inaugural speeches and 2) the inaugural speeches and the DPEFR, under the hypothesis that greater similarity can be interpreted as greater accountability. The analysis detects some erosion of accountability from the elections to the inaugural speeches, and a more serious one from the inaugural speeches to the DPEFR. A series of ANOVA tests suggests that the Region's relative economic position/dependency on transfers from the central governments partly explains such loss of accountability.
Tumor-cell-derived microvesicles as carriers of molecular information in cancer

Purpose of review Exosomes and microvesicles are secreted particles of 30–200 nm in diameter, delimited by a lipid bilayer and containing a wide range of membrane-bound or free proteins and nucleic acids (in particular mRNA and miRNA). Here, we review the properties of tumor-cell-derived microvesicles as carriers of molecular information in relation to cancer progression and promotion of metastasis. Recent findings Microvesicles from tumor cells operate as signaling platforms that diffuse in the extracellular space to target cells in the microenvironment, modulating the interactions of tumor cells with stromal, inflammatory, dendritic, immune or vascular cells and priming the formation of the metastatic niche. Summary Because of their stability, exosomes and microvesicles can be retrieved in bodily fluids as biomarkers for cancer detection and monitoring. They offer a range of molecular targets for controlling cell–cell interactions during invasion and metastasis.
Cost-minimizing regulation of sulfur emissions: regional gains in electric power.

Environmental regulations set maximum allowable rates for sulfur dioxide emissions from electric utilities. By ignoring firm differences in marginal abatement costs and preventing emissions trading, these standards do not minimize the cost of reducing einissions. This paper estimates marginal abatement cost functions for 56 utilities for 1973-79. Marginal costs vary substantially across firms due to differences in the price of low and high sulfur fuels and the intensity of regulation. The potential savings from a cost minimizing reallocation of abatement resources are estimated for five regions. Current expenditures are found to be 47% higher than cost minimizing levels. I MPLEMENTATION of the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments relies extensively on technology-based emission standards. Economists long have recognized that these standards can result in an inefficient allocation of pollution control resources. ' Engineering-based restrictions ignore or oversimplify differences in abatement costs among polluters. Limited empirical research suggests that current standards result in substantially higher costs, as much as ten times higher, than a cost-minimizing regulatory scheme.2 These studies, however, are based on engineering estimates of marginal abatement costs. The models often assume that all polluters adopt control technologies that are required only for new plants and that have been largely unadopted by polluting firms.3 The impact of changing factor prices on marginal abatement costs typically is ignored. The difficulty is that the resulting estimates of the cost of regulation neither adequately reflect the range of control options available to polluters nor take into account how polluters actually have responded to environmen-
Do Investors Trade Around Social Rating Announcements?

This paper investigates trading around Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rating announcements. Focusing on CSR rating announcements made by Vigeo on European markets, we use Euronext intraday data to prove that trading volume drops sharply before announcements and increases afterwards. Willingness to trade depends mainly on prior private information and the content of the announcement. Our results show effects from disaggregated scores, but not from overall scores. More specifically, we find that some topics like business behaviour, human resources and human rights significantly influence investor trades. Environmental risk does not have an impact on trading behaviour.
A decision support system for risk analysis and diagnosis of hereditary cancer

The complexity associated with the process of the capture of medical decisions resides in the managing of considerable information deriving sometimes in a series of clinical mistakes. Due to this, the clinical decision support systems are receiving a major importance nowadays in the context of medicine. The family identification with a high risk of suffering hereditary cancer is an arduous labor. The aim of the present work is the improvement of the process of identification of suspicious families that can suffer cancer of genetic character with the development of a decision support system for risk analysis and diagnosis of hereditary cancer. Keywords—Clinical decision support system, cancer, genogram, genetic factors, probandus
Market interactions for aquaculture products

Abstract For two decades significant expansion in the volume of intensively farmed fish has occurred accompanied by substantial price reductions. This more competitive aquaculture sector has generated concerns over the impact on the market for fish. Market interactions for three groups of farmed fish species ‐ salmon, catfish and sea bass/sea bream are reviewed. Evidence suggests there is little substitution between farmed and cultured product, apart from species available both farmed and wild. Nonetheless the expansion of aquaculture supplies asserts growth in the market and the capture of market share from some other products. Existing data deficiencies may preclude identification of these changes and more detailed data especially from further along the value chain are required. Furthermore, the various unique attributes differentiating farmed product from captured may also explain the lack of integration. It is concluded that a combination of more refined price and non‐price data will be critical to future research.
"EMU and the Euro: An American Perspective"

Has the euro been a success, in its first 1 1⁄2 years life? The answer is simple. It has been a success as a new international currency. But it has not been a success as a currency in which to invest; that is, it has gone down in value. These are two distinct aspects of a currency -the extent to which it is used internationally and its value on the foreign exchange market. It would be wrong to say that there are no connections whatsoever between international use and foreign exchange value. Indeed, there are causal links in both directions. If there is a decline in the use of a currency as a store of value, e.g., if central banks around the world switch their reserves out of that currency into others, that may cause a depreciation. And conversely, a currency that has a reputation for losing value will not be a good candidate for international use. But the correlation is less than one would think. In particular, the rankings of the currencies in international use -euro, dollar, pound, yen, DM, Swiss franc, SDR -tend to change quite slowly over time -on the scale of decades -whereas the exchange rates among them can change rapidly -large movements on the scale of months, or even days. The financial press from time to time goes through a period when it confuses the international currency question with the exchange rate question, and I think it may be doing so again now with the euro.
Binary countdown anti-collision protocol for RFID tag collision problem

The rapid proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) entails the ubiquitous tagging of millions of objects. Radio frequency identification (RFID) are used to uniquely tag and automatically identify objects without human interference. RFID is a reliable technology for Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) used in real world applications. The problem of tag identification arises when the number of tags present in the realm of a single RFID reader is large. The response from the tags can collide thus cancelling each other leading to delays, wastage of power and bandwidth. The objective of our work is to propose a novel anti-collision protocol for RFID system which supports high speed detection with high accuracy in a multi access communication system.
The role of the personnel function: roles, perceptions and processes in an NHS trust

Ulrich's recent influential claim is that the personnel function needs to be seen in terms of its multiple roles. This paper aims to deepen this kind of analysis in two ways: by focusing on specific areas of personnel work and by looking at the processes - in particular, the relationships with other organizational actors - through which these roles are assumed. A case study of the personnel function in a UK health service trust examines three areas: local pay, competence-based recruitment and skill mix. In looking at the development of the function's role in each of these, the analysis concentrates on its relationship with middle-level operational managers. The case reveals differences in perception between the personnel function and the middle managers, and shows how the relationship between the two groups shapes the role the function takes on in each of the areas examined.
The transitional zone between limbus and peripheral cornea. An immunohistochemical study.

PURPOSE The authors investigated the phenotypic characteristics of basally located "transitional cells" in peripheral superior cornea, characterized previously by their coexpression of cytokeratin 19 and vimentin and their negativity for AE5. METHODS Twenty adult human corneas were studied, using in situ immunohistochemical techniques and a panel of specific monoclonal antibodies against various surface and cytoplasmic molecules. RESULTS The transitional cells shared staining characteristics with limbal basal cells in their expression of alpha 6 beta 4-integrin, metallothionein, AE1, and transferrin receptor. CONCLUSIONS These "transitional" epithelial cells exhibit a unique phenotype differing from that of the surrounding basal epithelial cells in the peripheral cornea but analogous to that of limbal basal cells. These findings further corroborate the hypothesis that, at least from an immunohistochemical point of view, transitional cells in the superior peripheral cornea exhibit stem cell characteristics.
Developing and evaluating cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) for adolescents with anorexia nervosa: A feasibility study

Background: Cognitive Remediation Therapy (CRT) aims at improving neuropsychological weaknesses and associated thinking styles in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN). It has only recently been developed for adolescents with AN, and evidence of its applicability for this particular patient group is limited. This study aimed to test the feasibility of individually tailored and delivered CRT for young females with AN. Methods: A sample of 20 in- and outpatients (13–18 years) with AN participated in once- or twice weekly individual CRT sessions. The CRT materials used were available in a “CRT Resource Pack. ” Feasibility was assessed with regards to the recruitment process, the delivery of the intervention, the materials used and clinical experiences. Results: Overall results indicate that the intervention was feasible with regards to (a) the recruitment of both in- and outpatients, (b) individual tailoring and delivery, (c) the CRT materials adapted to suit young females with AN, and (d) the acceptability for clinicians involved in the study. There were no voluntary dropouts, with 19 of 20 patients completing the entire course of treatment. Conclusions: The findings have implications for the refinement of CRT for the youngest AN population, and strengthens our understanding of the core components in the development and evaluation of novel interventions targeting AN. This study will help inform the design of a subsequent randomized controlled trial.
The Impact of Women's Employment on Second and Third Births in Modern Sweden

This paper demonstrates some striking and sometimes initially surprising differentials and developments in Swedish fertility patterns during the 1960s and 1970s. The surprise will often have been due to untenable preconceptions. For instance, we question the assumption that the opportunity cost of a second or third birth is necessarily higher for Swedish women with a better education, or otherwise with a firm position in the labour force than for others. In our opinion, the situation may plausibly be the reverse. Also, total time in the labour force has turned out not to be the useful predictor of demographic behaviour that economists seem to have expected. A more adequate summary of a woman's employment history should capture more directly her role orientation and any signals of changes in childbearing and employment plans. Her early demographic history seems to contain similar information for the analyst, manifested here as a strong influence of age at first birth and first inter-birth interval on third.
Relationship Induced Multi-Template Learning for Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment

As shown in the literature, methods based on multiple templates usually achieve better performance, compared with those using only a single template for processing medical images. However, most existing multi-template based methods simply average or concatenate multiple sets of features extracted from different templates, which potentially ignores important structural information contained in the multi-template data. Accordingly, in this paper, we propose a novel relationship induced multi-template learning method for automatic diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and its prodromal stage, i.e., mild cognitive impairment (MCI), by explicitly modeling structural information in the multi-template data. Specifically, we first nonlinearly register each brain's magnetic resonance (MR) image separately onto multiple pre-selected templates, and then extract multiple sets of features for this MR image. Next, we develop a novel feature selection algorithm by introducing two regularization terms to model the relationships among templates and among individual subjects. Using these selected features corresponding to multiple templates, we then construct multiple support vector machine (SVM) classifiers. Finally, an ensemble classification is used to combine outputs of all SVM classifiers, for achieving the final result. We evaluate our proposed method on 459 subjects from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database, including 97 AD patients, 128 normal controls (NC), 117 progressive MCI (pMCI) patients, and 117 stable MCI (sMCI) patients. The experimental results demonstrate promising classification performance, compared with several state-of-the-art methods for multi-template based AD/MCI classification.
Climate Change and Its Impact on Nepalese Agriculture

Exponential growth of CO 2 and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is causing climate change. It affects agriculture, forestry, human health, biodiversity, snow coverand aquatic to mountain ecosystems. Changes in climatic factors like temperature, solar radiation and precipitation have potentials to influence crop production. Despite many efforts possible on combating impacts of climate change, there are still difficulties in Nepalese agriculture. With an average of 0.06oC/yea, a rise in temperature from 1975 to 2006 by 1.8oC has been recorded in the country. Problem of frequent drought, severe floods, landslides and mixed type of effects in agricultural crops have been experienced in Nepal because of climate change. Study done on CO 2 enrichment technology at Khumaltar revealed that the yield of rice and wheat increased by 26.6% and 18.4% due to double CO 2 , 17.1% and 8.6% due to increase in temperature respectively. A crop simulation model (DSSAT) to study the effects of CO 2 , temperature and rain in NARC showed positive effect in yield of rice and wheat in all regions, but negative effect in maize especially in Terai. In Nepalese agriculture, the time has come for the authorities to find out adaptive measures to mitigate the effects to reduce untold natural calamities and miseries due to recent erratic weather pattern. Key words: Agricultural crops; GHGs and CO 2 ; Temperature; Precipitation The Journal of Agriculture and Environment Vol:. 9, Jun.2008 page:62-71
Effects of damage to the suprachiasmatic area of the anterior hypothalamus on the daily melatonin and cortisol rhythms in the rhesus monkey

The effects of lesions of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) on the circadian rhythms in melatonin and cortisol were examined in the rhesus monkey. The concentrations of the two hormones were monitored in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) withdrawn from two sham-operated animals, two animals with complete bilateral SCN lesions, and two animals with partial SCN damage at 4 and 8 months after surgery. In the sham- operated animals, as in the intact animal, the daily melatonin rhythm was entrained to the daily light-dark cycle, was suppressed in constant light, and persisted in constant darkness. In contrast, neither animal with complete SCN ablation exhibited a daily pattern of CSF melatonin in diurnal lighting at 4 months after surgery nor were their melatonin levels at constant low values. Furthermore, CSF melatonin concentrations were not suppressed in either animal by constant light. Surprisingly, at 8 months after surgery, spectral analysis revealed a 24-hr component to the melatonin patterns for each animal with complete SCN ablation in both diurnal lighting and constant darkness. The two animals with partial SCN damage exhibited a daily melatonin rhythm in diurnal lighting, but constant light did not suppress CSF melatonin concentrations consistently. Daily rhythms persisted in both for a 6 1/2-d period of study in constant darkness. In contrast to the alterations in the melatonin rhythm after SCN damage, there was no apparent effect of either partial or complete SCN ablation on the daily CSF cortisol rhythm. These data indicate that, in the rhesus monkey, the SCN is important for the generation, photic entrainment, and photic suppression of the melatonin rhythm. However, circadian oscillators located outside of the SCN region may control the normal daily cortisol rhythm and perhaps the melatonin rhythm in the absence of the SCN.
Acute HIV-1 infection is as common as malaria in young febrile adults seeking care in coastal Kenya

Background:Febrile adults are usually not tested for acute HIV-1 infection (AHI) in Africa. We assessed a strategy to diagnose AHI among young adult patients seeking care. Methods:Young adults (<30 years) who met predefined AHI criteria at care seeking, including fever, sexually transmitted disease symptoms, diarrhoea, body pains or multiple partners were referred from five pharmacies and screened at five health facilities. Prevalent HIV-1 was diagnosed by nationally recommended serial rapid HIV-1 testing. Willing HIV-1-negative patients were evaluated for AHI, defined as a positive p24 antigen test, and subsequent seroconversion or RNA detection. Febrile patients evaluated for AHI were also screened for malaria using a rapid test, with PCR confirmation of positives. Results:In 3602 adults seeking care, overall HIV-1 prevalence was 3.9%: 7.6% (68/897) among patients meeting AHI criteria vs. 2.6% (71/2705) among those who did not (P < 0.001). AHI was diagnosed in five of 506 HIV-1-negative or discordant patients who met AHI risk criteria and were completely evaluated [prevalence 1.0%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.3–2.3%]. Of these five AHI cases, four were diagnosed among the 241 patients with fever (prevalence 1.7%, 95% CI 0.5–4.2%), vs. one among 265 non-febrile patients (prevalence 0.4%, 95% CI 0.0–2.0%, P = 0.1). Malaria was confirmed by PCR in four (1.7%) of the 241 febrile patients. Conclusion:AHI was as common as confirmed malaria in young febrile adults seeking care. An AHI detection strategy targeting young febrile adults seeking care at pharmacies and health facilities is feasible and should be considered as an HIV-prevention strategy in high-transmission settings.
The Ubiquitin Ligase PUB22 Targets a Subunit of the Exocyst Complex Required for PAMP-Triggered Responses in Arabidopsis [C][W]

Exo70B2, a subunit of the exocyst complex, which is involved in exocytosis, is targeted for degradation by the ubiquitin ligase PUB22 upon activation of the immune system. This work also reveals that Exo70B2 is required for the activation of PAMP-triggered responses. Plant pathogens are perceived by pattern recognition receptors, which are activated upon binding to pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). Ubiquitination and vesicle trafficking have been linked to the regulation of immune signaling. However, little information exists about components of vesicle trafficking involved in immune signaling and the mechanisms that regulate them. In this study, we identified Arabidopsis thaliana Exo70B2, a subunit of the exocyst complex that mediates vesicle tethering during exocytosis, as a target of the plant U-box–type ubiquitin ligase 22 (PUB22), which acts in concert with PUB23 and PUB24 as a negative regulator of PAMP-triggered responses. We show that Exo70B2 is required for both immediate and later responses triggered by all tested PAMPs, suggestive of a role in signaling. Exo70B2 is also necessary for the immune response against different pathogens. Our data demonstrate that PUB22 mediates the ubiquitination and degradation of Exo70B2 via the 26S Proteasome. Furthermore, degradation is regulated by the autocatalytic turnover of PUB22, which is stabilized upon PAMP perception. We therefore propose a mechanism by which PUB22-mediated degradation of Exo70B2 contributes to the attenuation of PAMP-induced signaling.