Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immunostimulatory cellular responses of cured Leishmania‐infected patients and hamsters against the integral membrane proteins and non‐membranous soluble proteins of a recent clinical isolate of Leishmania donovani

Development of an effective immunoprophylactic agent for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) has become imperative due to the increasing number of cases of drug resistance and relapse. Live and killed whole parasites as well as fractionated and recombinant preparations have been evaluated for vaccine potential. However, a successful vaccine against the disease has been elusive. Because protective immunity in human and experimental leishmaniasis is predominantly of the Th1 type, immunogens with Th1 stimulatory potential would make good vaccine candidates. In the present study, the integral membrane proteins (IMPs) and non‐membranous soluble proteins (NSPs), purified from promastigotes of a recent field isolate, Leishmania donovani stain 2001, were evaluated for their ability to induce cellular responses in cured patients (n = 9), endemic controls (n = 5) of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) and treated hamsters (n = 10). IMPs and NSPs induced significant proliferative responses (SI 6·3 ± 4·1 and 5·6 ± 2·3, respectively; P < 0·01) and IFN‐γ production (356·3 ± 213·4 and 294·29 ± 107·6 pg/ml, respectively) in lymphocytes isolated from cured VL patients. Significant lymphoproliferative responses against IMPs and NSPs were also noticed in cured Leishmania animals (SI 7·2 ± 4·7 & 6·4 ± 4·1, respectively; P < 0·01). In addition, significant NO production in response both IMPs and NSPs was also noticed in macrophages of hamsters and different cell lines (J774A‐1 and THP1). These results suggest that protective, immunostimulatory molecules are present in the IMP and NSP fractions, which may be exploited for development of a subunit vaccine for VL.
Management Accounting Research in German‐Speaking Countries

This paper reviews current research and practice in management accounting in Germany, Austria, and (part of) Switzerland based on 240 management accounting articles by authors affiliated to a German institution, published in the leading German‐language journals and in international management accounting journals from 1998 to 2004. I provide insights into the topics, settings, research methods, and underlying theories used in that literature. Economics‐based analytical research is the predominant research method and also had the greatest impact in the international journals. Using examples from theory and practice, I discuss potential reasons for these observations, accomplishments, trends, and potential future developments.
Overlapping 16p13.11 deletion and gain of copies variations associated with childhood onset psychosis include genes with mechanistic implications for autism associated pathways: Two case reports

Copy number variability at 16p13.11 has been associated with intellectual disability, autism, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder. Adolescent/adult‐ onset psychosis has been reported in a subset of these cases. Here, we report on two children with CNVs in 16p13.11 that developed psychosis before the age of 7. The genotype and neuropsychiatric abnormalities of these patients highlight several overlapping genes that have possible mechanistic relevance to pathways previously implicated in Autism Spectrum Disorders, including the mTOR signaling and the ubiquitin‐proteasome cascades. A careful screening of the 16p13.11 region is warranted in patients with childhood onset psychosis. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Agricultural Development in Nigeria: The Role of Market and Non-Market Forces

Policy and Performance in Nigeria's Export Agriculture At independence in 1960, Nigeria was firmly established as a major exporter in the world market for cocoa, groundnuts and oil palm products. Long before this period, marketing arrangements had been formalised to deal with domestic procurements and export arrangements for major agricultural export commodities. Legislation vested monopoly export rights in centralised marketing organs, whose establishment was ostensibly motivated by the desire to protect producers interests. These bodies soon became agents of state control through which peasant surplus could be extracted. Gradually, pricing policy objectives came to be dominated by a desire to raise taxes rather than stabilise producer incomes. Helleiner provides a detailed account of marketing boards' role in generating fiscal resources for development. As instruments for mobilising savings, the marketing board system was effective. The revenues derived from export produce constituted a significant percentage of central and regional financial resources, and the basis for growth until the late sixties, when oil earnings came to dominate the revenue structure. For many of the marketing board-controlled commodities, production reached its peak in the mid-sixties. Between 1970 and the early eighties the production of these commodities steadily declined. This decline is most dramatically exhibited in groundnuts and palm oil output. Not only was their export wiped out but by the late seventies substantial imports were required to fill a domestic supply deficit. A note of caution is warranted at this juncture. Not enough is known about the actual trends in the country's agricultural production. Declining commodity exports alongside rising vegetable oil imports do not necessarily reflect a collapsed and stagnant agricultural sector. Much of this trend may be accountable in terms of an expanded domestic demand. The expansion of demand for Nigeria's agricultural produce has arisen partly from the rapid population growth and urbanisation experienced. It is also a result of income increases associated with the oil-boom. In
Hypermentalizing, Attachment, and Epistemic Trust in Adolescent BPD: Clinical Illustrations

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has been shown to be a valid and reliable diagnosis in adolescents and associated with a decrease in both general and social functioning. With evidence linking BPD in adolescents to poor prognosis, it is important to develop a better understanding of factors and mechanisms contributing to the development of BPD. This could potentially enhance our knowledge and facilitate the design of novel treatment programs and interventions for this group. In this paper, we outline a theoretical model of BPD in adolescents linking the original mentalization-based theory of BPD, with recent extensions of the theory that focuses on hypermentalizing and epistemic trust. We then provide clinical case vignettes to illustrate this extended theoretical model of BPD. Furthermore, we suggest a treatment approach to BPD in adolescents that focuses on the reduction of hypermentalizing and epistemic mistrust. We conclude with an integration of theory and practice in the final section of the paper and make recommendations for future work in this area.
Price, Tobacco Control Policies and Youth Smoking

This paper examines effectiveness of several tobacco control policies in discouraging cigarette smoking among youths. These policies include increased cigarette excise taxes (which result in higher cigarette prices), restrictions on smoking in public places and at private worksites, and limits on the availability of tobacco products to youths. The data employed in this research are taken from the 1992, 1993, and 1994 surveys of eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade students conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research as part of the Monitoring the Future Project. Site specific cigarette prices and measures of tobacco related policies are added to the survey data. The results indicate that tobacco control policies can be effective in reducing youth cigarette smoking. The average overall estimated price elasticity of youth cigarette demand of 1.313 indicates that large increases in cigarette excise taxes would lead to sharp reductions in youth smoking. Similarly, strong restrictions on smoking in public places would reduce the prevalence of smoking among youths, while limits on smoking in schools would reduce average cigarette consumption among young smokers. However, limits on youth access to tobacco products appear to have little impact on youth cigarette smoking. This is most likely the result of the relatively weak enforcement of these laws.
A model of glutting: human capital and labour markets in the long-run

For over a century and a half, there have been cyclical phases of saturation and shortage in the numbers of students enrolled at German and Prussian universities. Starting from this observations, this article constructs a neoclassical glutting theory. A twofold hypothesis is put forward. First, the behaviour of students in their choice of curriculum depends on the expected rewards. Indeed, the allocation of students to the various faculties depends on the comparative yields of the latter in terms of expected earnings and job availability in the corresponding professional sectors. Thus, the rewards expected by a student are represented by the earnings on the labour market at a given moment and that he or she considers to be sustainable in time. Second, an attraction phenomenon may appear for certain curricula when a shortage occurs in different professional sectors. Once the shortage has been made up, the demand effect continues as a result of delay in the perception of the situation by young people. This may gradually lead to comparative over-production of qualified university leavers. This unbalanced situation diverts new cohorts of students to other sectors of education and may cause a new shortage, finally resulting in a cyclical movement modulated according to job availability.
Robust LFM Target Detection in Wideband Sonar Systems

Linear frequency modulation (LFM) signals have been widely used for target detection in active sonar systems due to their robustness to reverberation. However, LFM active sonar requires a large number of reference signals for detecting targets moving with unknown speeds. To obtain more accurate detection results, more reference signals are required, resulting in an increased computational burden and memory size. To cope up with this problem, we propose a new fast target detection method that is robust to the variation of unknown target speed. A large number of reference signals come into a single reference signal by aligning them with precalculated time-shifts, which is followed by a summation process. Both narrowband and wideband cases are considered. The proposed method secures a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), approaching that of the optimal matched filter output, that is also robust to the variation of target speed and thus it is very useful for the practical use in antitorpedo torpedoes or supercavitating underwater missiles that need to equip low-complexity and robust signal processing systems. Moreover, a rough Doppler estimation is presented using the proposed replica design method. Performance analyses show that the proposed method provides output SNR close to the optimal performance and that the computational load is extremely reduced as compared to the conventional LFM target detection method.
High reliability LTCC BGA for telecom applications

The trend in the telecommunications industry is towards the usage of smaller packaging options while improving electrical and reliability performance. National Semiconductor, a producer of low temperature cofired ceramics (LTCC) and wireless components, strives to integrate these products into small, high performance modules. In particular, the module under development requires an LTCC substrate with ball grid array (BGA) ball attachment technique. This paper describes a series of experiments focused on materials selection required to produce high performance solder joints. Further evaluations were also performed to determine the printed circuit board (PCB) level reliability during thermal cycle life evaluation. This study evaluated commercially available LTCC pad metallizations and solder alloys, while also comparing several pad construction methods as a function of thermal cycle life. The results identify the key factors for material selection, which produced the maximum thermal cycle life for the LTCC BGA module.
Supply-Side Innovation and Technology Commercialization

The majority of research and practice tends to conceptualize innovation as a vertically coupled, intra-organizational process. We expand this perspective by conceptualizing innovation as a vertically decoupled, inter-organizational process and by studying the role of research universities as suppliers of discoveries to this market for innovation. We combined logic from agency and real options theories to explain why the outcomes of technology commercialization are a function of licensing strategies, the autonomy of technology licensing offices (TLOs), and the incentives bestowed on scientists, research departments, and TLO officers. We rely on data from licensing surveys, interviews with 128 TLO directors, and - for convergent validity - from web-based searches of the TLOs of American universities and the US Patent and Trademark Office. Results suggest that commercialization outcomes (in this case, revenue and start-up creation) are enhanced when TLOs employ diverse licensing strategies, TLOs enjoy greater autonomy, universities share revenues with scientists' departments, and universities compensate TLOs officers well. Results also show that late entrants - typically underperforming universities - inflate royalty shares to scientists as a means to rectify their commercialization record. We conclude with a discussion of this study's contribution to the literature on innovation and technology commercialization.
Japanese Macroeconomic Policy and the Current Account Under Alternative International Monetary Regimes

Empirical estimates of the effect of monetary and fiscal policy on the Japanese current account are provided. To assess the quantitative importance of international monetary factors, these estimates are computed under three different exchange rate regimes: flexible exchange rates, fixed exchange rates with a "yen standard" and fixed exchange rates with a "multi-currency standard. " For all exchange rate regimes, monetary policy has a much smaller impact on the current account than fiscal policy, but the impact of fiscal policy on the current account is even larger when exchange rates are fixed than when exchange rates are flexible. The estimates are based on a quarterly multicountry econometric model with rational expectations estimated during the 1972-1986 period.
National versus European: Party Control over Members of the European Parliament

This article examines different strategies of national governmental parties to influence ‘their’ Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), posing the following questions: Do national parties try to control voting behaviour of their MEPs? And do control mechanisms enhance the probability that an MEP toes a national party line rather than following his or her European party group? The analysis reveals differences between individual parties, indicating that at least some national parties actively attempt to control their MEPs. Furthermore, the article evaluates the success of the various approaches, taking compliance with the position of the minister in the Council as a benchmark. The results show that the overall effect of control mechanisms remains small. Instead of toeing the line of their national party's minister, MEPs tend to vote with their European group.
Spiders: Where are the Bugs

This article examines the characteristics and performance of an exchange-traded index fund known by the name of Standard & Poor's Depository Receipts or SPDR or Spiders. The Spiders' net asset value is kept close to market price by the ability to create and delete them by in-kind transactions. Spiders underperform the S&P Index by 28 basis points and low-cost index funds by 18 points. This is primarily due to the lost income caused by holding dividends received on the underlying shares in cash. Nevertheless, Spiders are the most actively traded stock and the instrument of choice for most hedging.
Hypothalamic Hamartoma : A Model of ubcortical Epileptogenesis and Encephalopathy

Although uncommon, the hypothalamic hamartoma (HH) is often associated with a devastating clinical syndrome, which may include refractory epilepsy, progressive cognitive decline, and deterioration in behavioral and psychiatric functioning. Contrary to conventional thinking which attributed seizure origin to cortical structures, the hamartoma itself has now been firmly established as the site of intrinsic epileptogenesis for the gelastic seizures (ie, characterized by unusual mirth) peculiar to this disorder. It also appears that the HH contributes to a process of secondary epileptogenesis, with eventual cortical seizure onset of multiple types in some patients. Anticonvulsant medications are known to be poorly effective in this disorder. Treatment, including some innovative approaches to surgical resection, is now targeted directly at the HH itself, with impressive results. Younger patients, in particular, may avoid the deteriorating course described earlier. Access to tissue from larger numbers of patients at single or collaborating centers specializing in HH surgery will allow for research into the fundamental mechanisms producing this little understood disorder. Refractory epilepsy associated with HH is the premier human model for subcortical epilepsy and an excellent model for secondary epileptogenesis and epileptic encephalopathy. Semin Pediatr Neurol 12:119-131 © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Tautology checking using cross-controllability and cross-observability relations

A novel method is described for verifying the equivalence between a combinational circuit and its specification, when both are given in a modular (e.g., factored) form. It is based on the notion of cross-controllability and cross-observability relations that exist between the internal logic values across a cut of the joint composition of the circuit and the specification. It is proven that even after abstracting input and other internal variables the relations are sufficient to verify the equivalence. The abstraction allows reduction of the size of the relation, thus permitting the verification of much larger circuits. A report is presented on the verification of an 8*8 parallel multiplier using at most 527 BDD (binary decision diagram) cells of 21 variables. Extensions to sequential circuits are also discussed. <<ETX>>
Corporate Leverage and Financial Fragility in General Equilibrium

We provide analytical and empirical underpinnings for the notion that the financial fragility of the aggregate economy depends on the balance sheet conditions of the corporate sector. First, we obtain time-varying semiparametric estimates of the relationship between the debt-equity ratio and the credit spread on publicly-traded bonds using a newly-constructed firm-level dataset. The estimated leverage-spread schedule exhibits statistically significant nonlinearity that is consistent with the theoretical predictions of a canonical debt-contracting problem with asymmetric information. We then proceed to analyze the aggregate implications of this nonlinearity by obtaining a second-order approximation of a dynamic general equilibrium model with financial market frictions. Finally, using this framework, we quantify the degree of financial fragility of the U.S. economy during the high-leverage period of the late 1980s compared with the low-leverage period of the late 1990s
Kunde Temporal response-effect compatibility

This study investigated the impact of durationvarying response effects on the generation and execution of duration-varying responses. Participants performed short or long keypresses which produced auditory effects of corresponding duration (short response ->short tone, long response ->long tone) or of noncorresponding duration (short response ->long tone, long response ->short tone). Experiment 1 revealed faster responding with a corresponding than with a noncorresponding Response-Effect (R-E) mapping; that is, a temporal R-E compatibility effect. Additionally, increasing effect duration increased response latencies, whereas it decreased keypress duration. Experiment 2 showed that the influence of temporal R-E compatibility persists even when responses are cued in advance, suggesting that at least part of it originates from response generation processes occurring later than a traditional response selection stage. These findings corroborate and complement effect-based theories of action control which assume that the selection, initiation, and execution of movements is mediated by anticipation of their sensory effects.
Next Steps in Choice-based Letting in the Dutch Social Housing Sector

In the Dutch social housing sector, after almost 20 years of allocating dwellings with choice-based letting (CBL), there is a growing need to adapt the allocation systems currently in use. The policy debate on improvements in housing allocation centres around three main themes. First, many policymakers are torn between the egalitarian idea of freedom of choice for all customers in the social housing market and the desire of housing associations to provide preferential treatment to certain categories of customers, such as low income groups, large households, elderly people, local residents, occupational groups, or residents from redeveloping neighbourhoods. Second, housing associations would rather do away with long waiting lists and find the right balance between doing justice to those customers needing urgent housing and those seeking a dwelling in the longer term to better suit their needs, thus improving the efficiency of housing allocation. Third, both housing associations and local governments are discussing ways of using the allocation system to change disadvantaged neighbourhoods into sustainable communities. All through The Netherlands housing associations are carrying out experiments to find solutions to these three dilemmas. This review details the current debates and experiments, and places them into the wider context of the role and function of housing associations in society.
The Effect of Parental Wealth on Tenure Choice. A Study of family background and young adults housing situation

The aim with this paper is to investigate whether parental wealth influences the tenure choice of young adults. Sweden as a welfare state has historically been considered as strong and with an ambitious housing policy. However, since the early 1990’s there has been a decrease in housing subsidies and a rolling back of the welfare state. These changes have been associated with rising house prices and costs which have worsened young adults’ chances on the housing market. Such problems may increase the importance of parental wealth. Data from three birth-cohorts that entered the housing market during different periods suggest that family background has now become an important factor in describing young adults’ housing situation. Young adults with parents who are owner occupiers and whose fathers have a university degree seem to have become more likely to buy their housing. The results also indicate that growing up with a single parent – a factor that has been shown to put children at risk – now also seems to have become a constraint on choice in the housing market. The result from this three-cohort study indicates that housing opportunities of young adults may have become a matter of class affiliation.