Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Early development of the neural plate: New roles for apoptosis and for one of its main effectors caspase‐3

Despite its tremendous complexity, the vertebrate nervous system emerges from a homogenous layer of neuroepithelial cells, the neural plate. Its formation relies on the time‐ and space‐controlled progression of developmental programs. Apoptosis is a biological process that removes superfluous and potentially dangerous cells and is implemented through the activation of a molecular pathway conserved during evolution. Apoptosis and an unconventional function of one of its main effectors, caspase‐3, contribute to the patterning and growth of the neuroepithelium. Little is known about the intrinsic and extrinsic cues controlling activities of the apoptotic machinery during development. The BarH‐like (Barhl) proteins are homeodomain‐containing transcription factors. The observations in Caenorhabditis elegans, Xenopus, and mice document that Barhl proteins act in cell survival and as cell type‐specific regulators of a caspase‐3 function that limits neural progenitor proliferation. In this review, we discuss the roles and regulatory modes of the apoptotic machinery in the development of the neural plate. We focus on the Barhl2, the Sonic Hedgehog, and the Wnt pathways and their activities in neural progenitor survival and proliferation. genesis 53:203–224, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Philosophy of research in motor speech disorders

The primary objective of this position paper is to assess the theoretical and empirical support that exists for the Mayo Clinic view of motor speech disorders in general, and for oromotor, nonverbal tasks as a window to speech production processes in particular. Literature both in support of and against the Mayo clinic view and the associated use of oromotor, nonverbal tasks, is reviewed, along with literature from normal speech production and neurophysiology. This literature is organized and analysed to show that theoretical and experimental support for the Mayo view is weak at best, and that the frequent appeal to oromotor, nonverbal tasks is misguided. We conclude that studies of speech production in motor speech disorders, rather than oromotor nonverbal control or of neurological signs, is the correct approach for advancing the field.
An enlarged EMU? The procedural sources of fiscal policy in the new Member States

Ten new countries joined the EU in 2004, and some of them will soon also join the euro. Since their incorporation to the single currency is subject to their fulfilment of the Maastricht criteria that current members already fulfilled in 1998, this paper describes and compares these fiscal adjustments. Because fiscal consolidations vary in their timing, their duration and their composition, the article explores these dimensions and presents a model that enables us to explain such variation. Some empirical evidence pointing to the relationship between budgetary procedures and the level of fiscal discipline is shown.
The ethnic dimension in world politics: Theory, policy and early warning

With the end of the Cold War, the causes of violent conflict are being redefined. No longer can potential or ongoing strife be subsumed within the ideological competition between East and West, which shaped perceptions for almost half a century. Previously repressed by authoritarianism, dormant conflicts have come to the fore. Without an ideological framework, new and emerging issues take on an increasingly ethnic character, because political leaders find it relatively easy to mobilise populations by stimulating a sense of a collective identity. These appeals to ethnicity have often been crucial in the ousting of entrenched elites. In other cases the rallying cry of 'democratisation' results in something other than effective pluralism; byproducts include upsurges in rampant ethno-populism, elite replacement, or the shattering of fragile democratic institutions. The current geopolitical 'map' reveals the potential for ethnic politics to become even more pervasive. Among over 180 states in the international system, only a small number are ethnically homogeneous. According to some estimates there are over 5000 ethnic minorities in the world.3 Recent assessments by the Minorities at Risk Project indicate that ethnic groups currently are involved in over 80 protracted conflicts throughout the globe.4
The Rich Domain of Uncertainty: Source Functions and Their Experimental Implementation

We often deal with uncertain events for which no probabilities are known. Several normative models have been proposed. Descriptive studies have usually been qualitative, or they estimated ambiguity aversion through one single number. This paper introduces the source method, a tractable method for quantitatively analyzing uncertainty empirically. The theoretical key is the distinction between different sources of uncertainty, within which subjective (choice-based) probabilities can still be defined. Source functions convert those subjective probabilities into willingness to bet. We apply our method in an experiment, where we do not commit to particular ambiguity attitudes but let the data speak.
University of Nebraska at Omaha From the SelectedWorks of Yuliya Lierler Fall 2017 Action Languages and Question Answering

This paper describes a methodology for designing Question Answering systems that utilize an action language ALM to allow inferences based on complex interactions of events described in texts. This methodology assumes the extension of the VERBNET lexicon with interpretable semantic annotations in ALM and specifies the use of several other NLP resources to produce ALM system descriptions for input discourses.
Brain‐immune connection: Immuno‐regulatory properties of CNS‐resident cells

Even though the immune privileged status of the central nervous system (CNS) limits access of systemic immune cells through the blood brain barrier (BBB), an immune response can occur in this compartment with or without major breach of the BBB. In this review, we consider properties of resident cells of the CNS, that participate in regulating the neural antigen (Ag)‐directed immune responses implicated in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Under such conditions, the CNS is usually viewed as the target or victim of the immune assault, because such immune responses are thought to be initiated and regulated within the systemic immune compartment. The CNS‐endogenous cells may themselves, however, initiate, regulate and sustain an immune response. We consider the immune regulatory functions within the CNS in terms of events occurring within the CNS parenchyma (microglia, astroglia) and at the vascular interface. These regulatory functions involve antigen presentation to T cells and polarization of the cytokine response of these cells. Such responses may contribute not only to the overall tissue injury in primary immune disorders but also in a wide range of traumatic, ischemic and degenerative processes. GLIA 29:293–304, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Context-dependent GATA Factor Function

GATA factors are fundamental components of developmentally important transcriptional networks. By contrast to common mechanisms in which transacting factors function directly at promoters, the hematopoietic GATA factors GATA-1 and GATA-2 often assemble dispersed complexes over broad chromosomal regions. For example, GATA-1 and GATA-2 occupy five conserved regions over ∼100 kb of the Gata2 locus in the transcriptionally repressed and active states, respectively, in erythroid cells. Since it is unknown whether the individual complexes exert qualitatively distinct or identical functions to regulate Gata2 transcription in vivo, we compared the activity of the -3.9 and +9.5 kb sites of the Gata2 locus in transgenic mice. The +9.5 site functioned as an autonomous enhancer in the endothelium and fetal liver of embryonic day 11 embryos, whereas the -3.9 site lacked such activity. Mechanistic studies demonstrated critical requirements for a GATA motif and a neighboring E-box within the +9.5 site for enhancer activity in endothelial and hematopoietic cells. Surprisingly, whereas this GATA-E-box composite motif was sufficient for enhancer activity in an erythroid precursor cell line, its enhancer function in primary human endothelial cells required additional regulatory modules. These results identify the first molecular determinant of Gata2 transcription in vascular endothelium, composed of a core enhancer module active in both endothelial and hematopoietic cells and regulatory modules preferentially required in endothelial cells.
Role of Organisational Culture on Performance Measurement Practice: The Case of Malaysian Manufacturing Firms

This study aims to examine the influence of the competing values on firm performance mediated by diverse performance measurement system. With a different focus to that of Henri's (2006) concept of dominant culture, we argue that in control dominant firms, flexibility and diverse performance measures (PM) can lead to improved performance. Testing of the two competing values based on dominant culture excludes the chance to test this possibility. Also, we propose that through the use of diverse PM, the flexibility value of the firms will have stronger influence on firms' performance than the control values. As the most developed sector in Malaysian economy, manufacturing companies need to adopt the right mix of PMs to be competitive in facing globalised market, thus, they were selected for the study. The study found that with stronger presence of cogent leadership, use of diverse performance measures can translate flexibility values into firms' improved performance.
Advertising and Liquor

EVIDENCE on postwar changes in the market structure of the legal portion of the liquor industry are presented to test the basic proposition that advertising tends to produce and support non-competitive oligopolistic markets. The liquor industry is chosen because this industry is allegedly an oligopoly with the dominant position of the largest four distillers based almost solely on brand advertising. This article suggests the possible sources of advertising advantage to the large distillers and attempts to assess their importance. The evidence is also used to test the views on competition in the liquor industry made by Bain in his book Barriers to New Competition.2 Bain offers a number of arguments and empirical observations concerning the effects of advertising in impeding entry and in creating dominance of large firms over smaller rivals in the liquor industry, There are actually two reasons for expecting a positive relationship between advertising and concentration. The one discussed here is that advertising is a source of-or causes-monopoly.3 The second reason is that firms which have monopoly market positions are more likely to advertise because they can cap-
Call admission control for H.264 traffic transmission over wireless cellular networks

User mobility, combined with the rapidly growing number of multimedia applications, form a challenging and yet unresolved problem for the development of call admission control schemes over next generation wireless cellular networks. In recent work we have modeled the behavior of H.264 video traces with the use of a discrete autoregressive (DAR(1)) model. Based on this model, we propose in this work a new efficient CAC scheme for H.264 video traffic over cellular networks, which uses precomputed traffic scenarios for its decision-making. Our scheme is shown, via an extensive simulation study, to clearly excel in comparison with well-known existing approaches, in terms of quality of service (QoS) provisioning to users receiving video traffic.
What Explains Developing Country Growth?

Among developing countries, there was no gross relationship between real income per capita in 1960 and subsequent growth in per capita income. However, once other significant influences, such as education, changes in labor force participation rates, inflows of foreign investment, price structures, and fixed investment ratios are taken into account, the lower the 1960 income level, the faster the income growth. This "conditional" convergence was particularly strong among the poorest half of the developing countries, contradicting the idea of a "convergence club" confined to relatively well-off countries. Inflows of direct investment were an important influence on growth rates for higher income developing countries, but not for lower income ones. For the latter group, secondary education, changes in labor force participation rates, and initial distance behind the United States were all major factors.
Assessment of the Binding Characteristics of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Glycoprotein120 and Host Cluster of Differentiation4 Using Digital Signal Processing

Protein residues which contribute to bio-recognition and binding interaction between HIV Surface protein also called Glycoprotein120 (gp120) and Cluster of Differentiation4 (CD4) have been identified. However, this was with limited number of isolates. Notwithstanding, the particular HIV isolate that harbors the gp120 with the greatest binding force to the CD4 has not been investigated. In this paper, protein sequences of gp120 from 43 HIV-1 isolates, 5 isolates each from the HIV-2 and SIV as well as the CD4 of 25 HIV host organisms were analyzed using Resonant Recognition Method (RMM). The results re-confirmed that protein sequences of the HIV and CD4 share common spectral features in relation to bio-recognition and binding. From the large dataset of the HIV and SIV isolates used, MFA group M subtype B (HIV-1) isolate was found to have the greatest affinity for the CD4. Furthermore, the CD4 of the human and chimpanzee were established to possess about same level of binding force to the HIV gp120. Also the CD4 of other species offered more attractive force to another protein in such a manner that the approach taken in this study has also shown to be a useful and reliable tool for clear categorization of species. Finally, clinically experimented results were found to correlate with the computationally obtained results as the gp120 of the HIV-2 and SIV which were recognized to circumvent the CD4 during infection were found to have low peak amplitude. This low peak amplitude observed in the HIV-2 and SIV implies that they have weak affinity or attraction for the host CD4.
The importance of seed nodes in spreading information in social networks: A case study

In today's world, social media is a powerful tool: spreading information, and changing the way we receive news. It often reaches faster and farther than any any other channel. The availability of large scale data on online social media motivates our questions on social behavior in spreading information on the network. We conduct extensive experiments on Twitter data, to determine how important some people are in spreading information to the world. The Twitter data used in this study is stored on an HDFS and manipulated using algorithms framed in the MapReduce paradigm of Hadoop. An information flow network is generated from the Twitter data (81540798 tweets) based on the hashtags #Brexit, #Euro and #Rio. We study the effectiveness of K-core and PageRank algorithms in identifying important seeds in social networks, by comparing their outputs against the true seeds obtained from the two-phase algorithm. K-core performs better by most similarity indices, when compared to PageRank.
Unsmoothing British valuation‐based returns without assuming an efficient market

Summary The United Kingdom is well endowed with property indices, most of which are valuation based. Because valuers have incomplete information they tend to be influenced by past valuations of the subject property or past transaction prices of comparable properties. One result of this is that contemporaneous valuations may contain components of past market values, which induces a lagging and smoothing within an aggregate index. This paper demonstrates how the underlying market values may be recovered from a smoothed index, without assuming that the underlying property market is informationally efficient. The methodology is applied to the Jones Lang Wootton Index of capital values. The characteristics of the smoothed and unsmoothed indices are compared and some resulting implications about the optimal weighting of property in a multi‐asset portfolio are discussed. Our results support the hypothesis that British commercial property markets are ‘weak‐form’ efficient. Implications for optimal valuation proce.
FEER Index - Forecasting Extreme Events Risk

In 2008, the S&P500 aggregated a loss of 30.16% during three selected days. Unfortunately, benchmark risk measures didn't forecast these hazards. Consequently, we witness a growing interest in coherent risk measures, sensitive to high moments and heavy tail risk. Such measures were proposed by Aumann-Serrano (2007) and Foster-Hart (2008). As a generalization of these measures, we construct the FEER Index, coherent down-side risk measure "Forecasting Extreme Events Risk", sensitive to heavy tail risk. We present closed-form solution as a function of the return moments, V aR and CV aR. Furthermore, the FEER Index is dynamically calibrated to the market, becoming a live seismograph for market catastrophes.
Foundations for Growth: How to Identify and Build Disruptive New Businesses

The probability of creating a successful, new growth business is 10 times greater if the innovators pursue a disruptive strategy rather than a sustaining one. A sustaining innovation is one which meets the demands of existing customers in established markets. In contrast, a disruptive innovation is one which creates entirely new markets and business models. One strategy for creating disruptive growth is to compete against non-consumption and target customers who are currently not buying at all (perhaps because existing products are too expensive or complex) with simple, inexpensive products. When it is not possible to compete against non-consumption, the strategy must compete against markets dominated by industry leaders. When the existing market already offers products which are 'more than good-enough' and is 'overserving' its customers, the successful disruptive strategy will be able to target the less demanding customers who would be happy with a product which is just 'good-enough' and is less expensive than those currently available. The business model must also allow the growth company to price the disruptive product with a deep discount. Companies usually fail to capitalize on disruptive opportunities not because they are lacking good ideas, but because they do not have a robust process for creating and launching disruptive innovations. Company should establish a corporate team dedicated to disruptive innovation ideas, made of up select members who intuitively understand the 'litmus tests' that make these ideas successful. (LMH)
Does the Behavioral Immune System Prepare Females to Be Religiously Conservative and Collectivistic?

Previous research has indicated that females are more likely than males to endorse collectivistic values and religious conservatism. The present research investigated an evolutionary explanation for these sex differences. More specifically, the sex differences in social conservatism may be due to variation in the behavioral immune system (BIS). The BIS is a set of psychological mechanisms that are proposed to be evolved solutions to disease threat. Four studies were conducted to examine this evolutionary explanation. In Study 1, BIS measures (e.g., disgust sensitivity) fully mediated sex differences in collectivism. This effect was specific to sexual disgust (Study 2). In Studies 3 and 4, the effect was extended to other forms of social conservatism (i.e., religious conservatism) and measures of the BIS. Together, these results suggest that sex differences in collectivism and religious conservatism may be explained in part by sex differences in the BIS.
‘I think it is the best job … I love it!’ Engendering workplace satisfaction in rural and remote Australian mental health nursing

Abstract Mental health nursing in New South Wales, Australia has experienced considerable change as a profession over the past 20 years. In a climate of reduced funding and heightened service need, rural and remote geographies continue to affect workplace environments and experiences. This article presents qualitative focus group data to identify what workplace strategies and experiences mental health nurses working in rural and remote communities used in their day-to-day practices. Findings demonstrate socially patterned working conditions and experiences consistent with national and international research outcomes, specifically that emotional and physical resilience is required to survive and thrive as a mental health professional. Specific workplace experiences reveal three key themes (workplace culture; professional pride; rewards, people and places) which characterise participants’ perceptions and overall work satisfaction. Examples from each of these themes are presented to illustrate what contributed or detracted from individual mental health nurses’ overall perception of their workplaces, and particularly such positive feelings as, ‘I love my job’. From consideration of these experiences, greater insight into the profession may be gained that fosters policies and practices to address ongoing issues of low retention and high turnover rates.
Antineoplastic potential of Bryophyllum pinnatum lam. on chemically induced hepatocarcinogenesis in rats

Background: Bryophyllum pinnatum Lam. used in folk medicine in tropical Africa, tropical America, India, China and Australia contains a wide range of active compounds, well known for their haemostatic and wound-healing properties. Objective: The present study was designed to evaluate the effect of Bryophyllum pinnatum Lam. on N-diethylnitrosamine (DENA)-induced hepatic injury in rats. Material and Methods: The aerial part of B. pinnatum aqueous and ethanolic extract was prepared in doses of 250 mg/kg and 500 mg/kg. Hepatic injury was induced by DENA. Acute toxicity was also carried out. Result: Treatment with different doses of ethanolic extract of B. Pinnatum (250 mg/kg, p.o.) was not significantly able to treat the liver injury induced by DENA, but 500 mg/kg dose of ethanolic extract of B. Pinnatum protects the liver slightly. Treatment with different doses of aqueous extract of B. Pinnatum (250 and 500 mg/kg, p.o.) significantly (P*<0.05; P**<0.01 and P***<0.001) treated the liver injury induced by DENA. Conclusion: It may be inferred from the present study that the hepatoprotective activities of the aqueous extract of B. Pinnatum leaves in DENA-induced hepatotoxicity may involve its antioxidant or oxidative free radical scavenging activities by alleviating lipid peroxidation through scavenging of free radicals, or by enhancing the activity of antioxidants.