Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing Anti-ageism Routes to Older Worker Re-engagement

Measures that challenge ageism in employment are among the most prominent policy approaches towards reversing the dramatic decline over the last two decades in the labour market participation of older workers in developed economies. In Britain, such measures have evolved through three related phases: the `business case' approach; equality routes, incorporating equal opportunities and diversity policies; and progress towards anti-age discrimination legislation. Discriminatory attitudes displayed by employers have been overemphasized in explaining early exit from the labour market. Paradoxically, targeting such prejudice and ignorance through the business case approach has narrowed the scope for challenging more covert forms of ageism in employment. Nor is age easily incorporated into equal opportunities and diversity agendas in effective ways. Moreover, legislation will need to depart significantly from the principles underlying voluntary approaches if it is to be successful. The ambiguity and fluidity of the ageism concept also allow scope for opportunistic responses on the part of labour market actors that can be detrimental to the interests of older workers, and preoccupation with ageism may therefore act to impede progress towards more targeted, co-ordinated and effective policy responses.
Response to the Sexual Pheromone and Wounding in the Green Alga Volvox: Induction of an Extracellular Glycoprotein Consisting Almost Exclusively of Hydroxyproline*

The extracellular matrix (ECM) ofVolvox is modified during development or in response to external stimuli, like the sex-inducing pheromone. It has recently been demonstrated that a number of genes triggered by the sex-inducing pheromone are also inducible by wounding. By differential screening of a cDNA library, a novel gene was identified that is transcribed in response to the pheromone. Its gene product was characterized as an ECM glycoprotein with a striking feature: it exhibits a hydroxyproline content of 68% and therefore is an extreme member of the family of hydroxyproline-rich glycoproteins (HRGPs). HRGPs are known as constituents of higher plant ECMs and seem to function as structural barriers in defense responses. The Volvox HRGP is also found to be inducible by wounding. This indicates that the wound response scenarios of higher plants and multicellular green algae may be evolutionary related.
Isolation of Cell Lines That Show Novel, Murine Leukemia Virus-Specific Blocks to Early Steps of Retroviral Replication

ABSTRACT In order to identify cellular proteins required for early stages of retroviral replication, a high volume screening with mammalian somatic cells was performed. Ten pools of chemically mutagenized Chinese hamster ovary (CHO-K1) cells were challenged with a murine leukemia virus (MLV) vector pseudotyped with the vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein (VSV-G), and cells that failed to be transduced were enriched by cell sorting. Each pool yielded a clonally derived cell line with a 5-fold or greater resistance to virus infection, and five cell lines exhibited a >50-fold resistance. These five cell lines were efficiently infected by a human immunodeficiency virus vector pseudotyped with VSV-G. When engineered to express the TVA receptor for subgroup A avian sarcoma and leukosis virus (ASLV-A), the five cell lines were resistant to infection with a MLV vector pseudotyped with the ASLV-A envelope protein but were fully susceptible to infection with an ASLV-A vector. Thus, the defect in these cells resides after virus-cell membrane fusion and, unlike those in other mutant cell lines that have been described, is specific for the MLV core. To identify the specific stages of MLV infection that are impaired in the resistant cell lines, real-time quantitative PCR analyses were employed and two phenotypic groups were identified. Viral infection of three cell lines was restricted before reverse transcription; in the other two cell lines, it was blocked after reverse transcription, nuclear localization, and two-long terminal repeat circle formation but before integration. These data provide genetic evidence that at least two distinct intracellular gene products are required specifically for MLV infection. These cell lines are important tools for the biochemical and genetic analysis of early stages in retrovirus infection.
Preparation and Characterisation of Phenytoin-Loaded Alginate and Alginate-Chitosan Microparticles

We aimed to prepare and investigate microparticles with the varying contents of calcium gelling ion, loaded with phenytoin, a standard antiepileptic agent, in its acidic form. Two different methods of alginate-based microparticles preparation were used: with and without treatment with chitosan. Furthermore, two standard procedures, the one-stage and the two-stage, were applied. Microparticle size of 12 one-stage formulations ranged from 466 to 636 μm. Both types of formulations, chitosan-treated and nontreated, appeared to be highly loaded with the model drug (91–96%). The chitosan-coated alginate-based microparticles prepared by the one-stage procedure exhibited kinetics of phenytoin liberation comparable to a similar sustained release system that had been tested at pH 6.8, as published earlier. As the gel erosion of alginate-based microparticles should be potentiated by the higher pH (used in the present study at pH 7.4), the most favorable of 12 formulations, with the liberation half-time of about 2 hr, seemed to be eligible for further modifications. Counterintuitively, the applied two-stage procedure did not appear to beneficially affect the dissolution behavior of phenytoin when tested in two formulations, which makes further modifications necessary.
Near-Complete Extinction of Native Small Mammal Fauna 25 Years After Forest Fragmentation

Futile Forest Fragments Most of the planet's terrestrial biodiversity is found in tropical forests, but much of this critical habitat now persists as fragmented patches surrounded by agriculture. Smaller forest patches sustain fewer species than larger patches or contiguous forest. However, the numbers of species that will disappear from a forest fragment—and the rate of species loss—remain poorly understood. Gibson et al. (p. 1508) surveyed islands in a reservoir in Thailand to measure the rate of loss of small mammals from small forest fragments. Collapse of the entire native community (up to 12 species) from 16 forest fragments was observed after 25 years of isolation. Thus, small forest fragments hold little value for mammalian biodiversity, and conservation efforts should instead focus on the preservation of large forest expanses. The rapid loss of native mammals from isolated Thai forests suggests that forest fragments cannot maintain biodiversity. Tropical forests continue to be felled and fragmented around the world. A key question is how rapidly species disappear from forest fragments and how quickly humans must restore forest connectivity to minimize extinctions. We surveyed small mammals on forest islands in Chiew Larn Reservoir in Thailand 5 to 7 and 25 to 26 years after isolation and observed the near-total loss of native small mammals within 5 years from <10-hectare (ha) fragments and within 25 years from 10- to 56-ha fragments. Based on our results, we developed an island biogeographic model and estimated mean extinction half-life (50% of resident species disappearing) to be 13.9 years. These catastrophic extinctions were probably partly driven by an invasive rat species; such biotic invasions are becoming increasingly common in human-modified landscapes. Our results are thus particularly relevant to other fragmented forest landscapes and suggest that small fragments are potentially even more vulnerable to biodiversity loss than previously thought.
Unmasking Proteolytic Activity for Adult Visual Cortex Plasticity by the Removal of Lynx1

Experience-dependent cortical plasticity declines with age. At the molecular level, experience-dependent proteolytic activity of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) becomes restricted in the adult brain if mice are raised in standard cages. Understanding the mechanism for the loss of permissive proteolytic activity is therefore a key link for improving function in adult brains. Using the mouse primary visual cortex (V1) as a model, we demonstrate that tPA activity in V1 can be unmasked following 4 d of monocular deprivation when the mice older than 2 months are raised in standard cages by the genetic removal of Lynx1, a negative regulator of adult plasticity. This was also associated with the reduction of stubby and thin spine density and enhancement of ocular dominance shift in adult V1 of Lynx1 knock-out (KO) mice. These structural and functional changes were tPA-dependent because genetic removal of tPA in Lynx1 KO mice can block the monocular deprivation-dependent reduction of dendritic spine density, whereas both genetic and adult specific inhibition of tPA activity can ablate the ocular dominance shift in Lynx1 KO mice. Our work demonstrates that the adult brain has an intrinsic potential for experience-dependent elevation of proteolytic activity to express juvenile-like structural and functional changes but is effectively limited by Lynx1 if mice are raised in standard cages. Insights into the Lynx1-tPA plasticity mechanism may provide novel therapeutic targets for adult brain disorders. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Experience-dependent proteolytic activity of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) becomes restricted in the adult brain in correlation with the decline in cortical plasticity when mice are raised in standard cages. We demonstrated that removal of Lynx1, one of negative regulators of plasticity, unmasks experience-dependent tPA elevation in visual cortex of adult mice reared in standard cages. This proteolytic elevation facilitated dendritic spine reduction and ocular dominance plasticity in adult visual cortex. This is the first demonstration of adult brain to retain the intrinsic capacity to elevate tPA in an experience-dependent manner but is effectively limited by Lynx1. tPA-Lynx1 may potentially be a new candidate mechanism for interventions that were shown to activate plasticity in adult brain.
Robustness of distance decay for international pleasure travelers: a longitudinal approach.

Distance decay explains tourism demand in terms of destination distance from the origin. Although travelers tend to travel further over time, scant research studies have examined the relationship between temporal variant and distance decay. This study examines the relationship between distance and destination choice of Hong Kong international pleasure travelers' activity over a decade. A constant pattern of distance decay with two secondary peaks was identified for a decade. This study suggests a threshold of a three-hour flight for a five-day trip before demand declined exponentially. The findings imply that the no traveling zone would result from weak pulling power.
Cross-layer design for IEEE 802.11 wireless ad-hoc network utility maximization with active queue management

In this paper, we study the problem of jointly solving the contention and congestion distributed control problem in a bounded queue wireless ad-hoc network. The resulting flow rates satisfy fairness criteria according to a given Network Utility Maximization (NUM) function. In recent years a number of papers have presented solutions to this problem that are based on network utility maximization algorithms. However, this work typically necessitates either complex computations, heavy signaling/control overhead, and/or approximated sub-optimal results. In this paper, we combine a specific network utility maximization problem with a simple and efficient queue management mechanism that we believe is appropriate for wireless ad-hoc networks. We employ and adapt the IEEE 802.11 protocol to work with the utility maximization algorithm for contention optimization. Finally, we show via NS-3 simulations that the proposed Cross-Layer Design (CLD) significantly outperforms standard protocols such as TFRC.
Analyzing reliability of change in depression among persons with rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE To examine several methods of determining reliability of change constructs in depressive symptoms in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to demonstrate the strengths, weaknesses, and uses of each method. METHODS Data were analyzed from a cohort of 54 persons with RA who participated in a combined behavioral/pharmacologic intervention of 15 months duration. These longitudinal data were used to examine 3 methodologies for assessing the reliability of change for various measures of depression. The specific methodologies involved the calculations of reliable change, sensitivity to change, and reliability of the change score. RESULTS The analyses demonstrated differences in reliability of change performance across the various depression measures, which suggest that no single measure of depression for persons with RA should be considered superior in all contexts. CONCLUSION The findings highlight the value of utilizing reliability of change constructs when examining changes in depressive symptoms over time.
Unexpected consequences of genetic selection in broilers and turkeys: problems and solutions

Abstract 1. Genetic theory leads to the expectation that unexpected consequences of genetic selection for production traits will inevitably occur and that these changes are likely to be undesirable. 2. Both artificial selection for production efficiency and “natural” selection for adaptation to the production environment result in selection sweeps that increase the frequencies of rare recessive alleles that have a negative effect on fitness. 3. Fitness is broadly defined as any trait that affects the ability to survive, reproduce and contribute to the next generation, such as musculoskeletal disease in growing broiler chickens and multiple ovulation in adult broiler parents. 4. Welfare concerns about the negative effects of genetic selection on bird welfare are sometimes exaggerated but are nevertheless real. Breeders have paid increasing attention to these traits over several decades and have demonstrated improvement in pedigree flocks. There is an urgent need to monitor changes in commercial flocks to ensure that genetic change is accompanied by improvements in that target population. 5. New technologies for trait measurement, whole genome selection and targeted genetic modification hold out the promise of efficient and rapid improvement of welfare traits in future breeding of broiler chickens and turkeys. The potential of targeted genetic modification for enhancing welfare traits is considerable, but the goal of achieving public acceptability for the progeny of transgenic poultry will be politically challenging.
A chopper stabilized instrumentation amplifier with dual DC cancellation servo loops for biomedicai applications

A 1V 65nm 4. 3μW differential difference amplifier based instrumentation amplifier for biomedical applications has been presented. To eliminate the DC baseline drift of the biomedical signals, novel and efficient fine-coarse DC offset cancellation servo loops have been proposed. Measured results show that the proposed instrumentation amplifier achieves 0. 8μVrms input referred noise from 0.5Hz to 200Hz with inband gain of 65.5V/V and noise efficiency factor of 5.7 for electrocardiograph signal monitoring.
A Dynamic Conditional Random Field Based Framework for Sentence-Level Sentiment Analysis of Chinese Microblog

With the increasing popularity of social media, the Sentiment Analysis (SA) of the Microblog has raised as a new research topic. In this paper, we present WDCRF: a Word2vec and Dynamic Conditional Random Field (DCRF) based framework for Sentiment Analysis of Chinese Microblog. Our contributions include: firstly, to address drawbacks of Microblog message such as the length and Lexicon limitations, Word2vec technology is leveraged to enrich Microblog message so that each word individual is extended by its Top-k similar words. Secondly, DCRF model is utilized to combine and conduct the Subjectivity Classification and Polarity Classification simultaneously, while in existing works they are designed as independent and the relationship between two types of classifications is ignored. Moreover, the DCRF model considers not only the classification-level relationship but also the relationship between neighboring sentences. Finally, the experiments on real dataset collected from Sina and Tencent Weibo demonstrate that our WDCRF (Word2vec + DCRF) achieves much better than the state-of-the-art.
Concept analysis of reflection in nursing professional development.

AIM The aim of this concept analysis was to describe attributes, antecedents, and consequences of reflection in nursing professional development, as well as surrogate terms and a model case to inform nursing educators, students, and nurses about developing reflective skills. METHODS Rodgers' evolutionary cycle for concept analysis was used. The published work search was conducted using five databases: Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Medline, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Ichushi, and British Nursing Index. The inclusion criteria were: (i) academic articles; (ii) written in English or Japanese; and (iii) including descriptions about reflection. From the pool of extant published work, 50 articles were selected for the thematic analysis. RESULTS For the concept of reflection in nursing professional development, four antecedents were identified: (i) theory and practice gap; (ii) expansion of the role and competency in nursing; (iii) educational and learning needs; and (iv) educational responsibility. The major attribute was the process of learning from experience, and the circular process included emotional reaction, description, internal examination, critical analysis, evaluation, and planning new action. The consequences were transforming new perspective, enhanced communication, professional development, and quality of care. CONCLUSION Reflection is used as a method or tool that connects knowledge and experiences. Through the process of reflection, students/nurses become aware of themselves, which helps them review and improve clinical skills. They also become more able to communicate with patients and colleagues. Reflection enhances self-directed learning and professional maturity. Nurses who use reflection can be better positioned to provide excellent patient care.
On the Consequences of Defensive Professionalism: Recent Changes in the Legal Labour Process

This study of change in the legal profession argues that governmental policies, combined with economic recession and supply-side considerations, have led to decline in the legal profession's historical performance, and a defensive strategy which preserves the status and earning power of equity partners. Related responses include a drive towards organizational consolidation, a long-term increase in the numbers of salaried solicitors, and fewer non-fee-earning support staff. This involves a shift from external (or occupational) closure regimes, which sanction entry to the profession, to internal (or organizational) mechanisms, which regulate progression through the professional hierarchy. The paper challenges hypotheses of deprofessionalization and managerialization, and lends empirical support to Freidson's continuity thesis whereby reorganization is safeguarding traditional privileges and rewards for certain sections of the profession at the cost of a progressive process of intra-occupational stratification.
Freedom of Expression and ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Cases in the Netherlands after Google Spain

Since the Google Spain judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union, Europeans have, under certain conditions, the right to have search results for their name delisted. This paper examines how the Google Spain judgment has been applied in the Netherlands. Since the Google Spain judgment, Dutch courts have decided on two cases regarding delisting requests. In both cases, the Dutch courts considered freedom of expression aspects of delisting more thoroughly than the Court of Justice. However, the effect of the Google Spain judgment on freedom of expression is difficult to assess, as search engine operators decide about most delisting requests without disclosing much about their decisions.
Do University Rankings Matter for Growth

I investigate the relationship between university rankings and economic growth and found that the relationship is statistically significant. The more the number of universities that a country has in international university rankings, the higher its GDP per capita. What is more surprising is that, as I expand the lists of rankings from top 100 to top 500, the relationship becomes more significant. This suggests that as far as economic growth is concerned, it is more important to have a good number of decent universities(eg in the top 500), rather than only a few elite universities(eg in the top 100).
Proteinase inhibitors in Nauphoeta cinerea midgut.

Proteinase inhibitors were studied in the midgut of Nauphoeta cinerea Oliv. (Blattoptera: Blaberidae) in experimental conditions, excluding their nutritional origin. One trypsin inhibitor (TI) with M(r) 8,000 and two subtilisin inhibitors (SI1 and SI2) with M(r) 13,000 and 8,000 were detected after fractionation of total protein preparation on Sephadex G-50. Ninety-four percent of both types of inhibitors was located in anterior midgut (AM). TI was 120-fold purified by FPLC-chromatography on Mono Q. Its isoelectric point was 4.3. TI lost a large part of activity in acidic and especially in alkaline medium. TI, SI1, and SI2 effectively inhibited activities of endogenous proteinases from posterior midgut (PM) of the cockroach. A search for inhibitor of endogenous unusual SH-dependent proteinase from AM revealed in AM a new inhibitor with M(r) 18,000. It was also inactivated in alkaline medium and was effective against proteinases from PM along with unusual SH-dependent proteinase from AM. A mechanism of regulation of activity of midgut proteinases is proposed based on pH-stability of inhibitors.
Aircraft APU failure rate prediction based on improved Weibull-based GRP

Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) is an essential component of civil aircraft. In order to meet demands for aircraft APU maintenance, failure rate of aircraft APU should be predicted. Since aircraft APU is a repairable system, its performance degradation can be considered as a Generalized Renewal Process (GRP). Therefore, aircraft APU failure rate prediction can be implemented by utilizing Weibull-based GRP. However, Aircraft APU maintenance effect which is required in Weibull-based GRP is difficult to quantify. In order to solve this problem, an improved Weibull-based Generalized Renewal Process (IWGRP) model is proposed in this work. To be specific, utilizing some key test parameters after repairs, aircraft APU maintenance effect is estimated. Based on aircraft APU maintenance effect, conditional failure rate and hazard rate of aircraft APU can be obtained. Then, conditional failure rate and hazard rate are utilized to predict aircraft APU failure rate. Finally, the performance of IWGRP is validated by real data from China Southern Airlines (CSA). Experiment results demonstrate that IWGRP is suitable for aircraft APU failure rate prediction.