Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased Mutagenic Joining of Enzymatically-Induced DNA Double-Strand Breaks in High-Charge and Energy Particle Irradiated Human Cells

The carcinogenic risk of high-charge and energy (HZE) particle exposure arises from its ability to both induce complex DNA damage and from its ability to evoke deleterious, non-DNA targeted effects. We investigate here whether these nontargeted effects involve dysregulation of double-strand break repair, such that a history of HZE exposure heightens the risks from future injury. We used a new human cell reporter line, in which expression of the I-SceI meganuclease stimulates both translocations on different chromosomes, and deletions on the same chromosome. Exposure to 1.0 Gy of 600 MeV/u 56Fe ions led to a doubling in the frequency of I-SceI-mediated translocations and a smaller, but nevertheless significant, increase in the frequency of I-SceI-mediated deletions. This mutagenic repair phenotype persisted for up to two weeks and eight population doublings. The phenotype was not induced by low-linear energy transfer radiation or by a lower dose of HZE-particle radiation (0.3 Gy) indicating that the effect is radiation quality and dose dependent. The mutagenic repair phenotype was associated with the presence of micronuclei and persistent DSB repair foci, consistent with a hypothesis that genomic stress is a causative factor.
Ionic and metabolic dependence of axotomy‐induced somatic membrane changes in crayfish.

1. Axotomy induces a transient change in the soma membrane from non‐spiking to spiking in many neurones of the crayfish abdominal C.N. S. The ionic and metabolic dependence of this phenomenon was investigated in one identified neurone. 2. The inward current of axotomy‐induced soma spikes is carried primarily by Na ions. 3. Addition of 50 mM‐tetraethylammonium to the external saline unmasks predominantly Ca‐mediated soma spikes in control cells. The calcium spikes are not affected by axotomy. 4. Axotomy induces a transient increase in delayed rectification of the soma membrane. 5. Membrane potential is dependent on the external potassium concentration as predicted by the Nernst function while external sodium has essentially no effect. This is not changed following axotomy. 6. The inward current of the axon spike is primarily carried by sodium ions both before and after axotomy. The overshoot of the axon spike is not dramatically changed between the time when axotomy‐induced soma spikes are present and when they have disappeared. 7. Following axotomy, both the onset and offset of axotomy‐induced soma spikes occur earlier when the temperature is raised by 10 degrees C. 8. Cycloheximide retards or prevents soma spikes normally seen following axotomy. 9. The results indicate that axotomy induces a transient increase in voltage‐dependent Na and K conductances but not Ca conductance, and that these changes are dependent on axotomy‐inhibited protein synthesis.
Disposition Effect: A Review of Literature

Behavioural Finance has emerged as a serious contender to the Efficient Markets Hypothesis in the study of asset pricing and capital markets. A major tenet on which it rests is the investor’s aversion to loss-induced regret and the consequent tendency to hold losing stocks too long and sell winners too soon. Shefrin and Statman (1985) called this ‘the Disposition Effect’. This paper surveys literature on the subject and creates a broad framework documenting evidence of the effect across various geographies, differential susceptibility among investor segments and the potential for creating abnormal returns using strategies based on the disposition effect.
Women and family-friendly policies in the Korean government

This paper discusses the desires and realities of women and family-friendly policies in the Korean government. The implementation of policies for gender equality during the past two decades has increased the ratio of women in the civil service. As the number of women in the government has increased, family-friendly policies have been provided for civil servants to balance work and personal life. Family-friendly policies are expected to positively affect the civil servants and government performance. However, the family-friendly policies are not effectively implemented because they are not properly bundled, and civil servants are reluctant to take advantage of these policies under male-centered organizational practices. To aid civil servants in balancing the role requirements of work and family, government organizations should create family-friendly work environments by not only instituting various proper family-friendly programs but also by promoting a supportive culture. Several efforts for establishing such a supportive culture are suggested. Points for practitioners To aid civil servants in balancing the role requirements of work and family, government organizations should create family-friendly work environments by instituting various family-friendly programs and by promoting supportive work—family culture. Only providing family-friendly programs without promoting cultural change is insufficient. Several efforts are essential to establish a supportive work—family culture. First of all, the organizational leaders should be aware of the positive effects of family-friendly programs on employees' attitude and behavior and organizational performance. They need to make civil servants believe that their careers will not be negatively affected by using family-friendly benefits through providing them with counseling and education on family-friendly programs and work—life balance. They should also make every effort to reduce the male-centered organizational practices and to support the work—family concerns of the civil servants.
A Simple Model of Pharmaceutical Price Dynamics*

Branded pharmaceutical firms use price and promotional strategy to manage public knowledge about their drugs. We propose a dynamic theory of pharmaceutical pricing and conduct an exploratory empirical analysis inspired by the theory. Our theory predicts a pattern of increasing prices and decreasing promotional activities over a drug’s life cycle. Prices are kept low and advertising levels high early in the life cycle in order to build public knowledge about the drug. As knowledge grows, prices rise and advertising falls. If the management of this stock is important enough, this tendency of prices to rise can overwhelm the price‐decreasing effect of entry by generic competitors late in the drug life cycle. We argue that our theory of price dynamics explains empirical regularities in this industry.
Vaccine prevention of maternal cytomegalovirus infection.

BACKGROUND Congenital infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV) is an important cause of hearing, cognitive, and motor impairments in newborns. METHODS In this phase 2, placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind trial, we evaluated a vaccine consisting of recombinant CMV envelope glycoprotein B with MF59 adjuvant, as compared with placebo. Three doses of the CMV vaccine or placebo were given at 0, 1, and 6 months to CMV-seronegative women within 1 year after they had given birth. We tested for CMV infection in the women in quarterly tests during a 42-month period, using an assay for IgG antibodies against CMV proteins other than glycoprotein B. Infection was confirmed by virus culture or immunoblotting. The primary end point was the time until the detection of CMV infection. RESULTS We randomly assigned 234 subjects to receive the CMV vaccine and 230 subjects to receive placebo. A scheduled interim analysis led to a stopping recommendation because of vaccine efficacy. After a minimum of 1 year of follow-up, there were 49 confirmed infections, 18 in the vaccine group and 31 in the placebo group. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the vaccine group was more likely to remain uninfected during a 42-month period than the placebo group (P=0.02). Vaccine efficacy was 50% (95% confidence interval, 7 to 73) on the basis of infection rates per 100 person-years. One congenital infection among infants of the subjects occurred in the vaccine group, and three infections occurred in the placebo group. There were more local reactions (pain, erythema, induration, and warmth) and systemic reactions (chills, arthralgias, and myalgias) in the vaccine group than in the placebo group. CONCLUSIONS CMV glycoprotein B vaccine has the potential to decrease incident cases of maternal and congenital CMV infection. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00125502.)
Priorities in Palliative Care Research Research Priorities in Subspecialty Palliative Care: Policy Initiatives

Palliative care demonstrably improves quality of life for the seriously ill in a manner that averts preventable health crises and their associated costs. Because of these outcomes, palliative care is now broadening its reach beyond hospitals, and hospice care for those near death, to patients and their families living in the community with chronic multimorbidities that have uncertain or long expected survival. In this article, we address research needed to enable policies supportive of palliative care access and quality, including changes in regulatory, accreditation, ﬁnancing, and training approaches in the purview of policy makers. Mr. K. is an 86-year-old male with multimorbidities, including severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, pe-ripheral vascular disease, and atrial ﬁbrillation requiring anticoagulation therapy. He fell in his mobile home and was unable to reach the telephone to call for help. Six hours later, his neighbor found him lying on the bedroom ﬂoor in pain and confused, and called 911. On examination, he was found to have a cold blue foot complicated by a large hematoma. The vascular surgery service was consulted to evaluate Mr. K. for revas-cularization or amputation. Although Mr. K. had several risk factors complicating his candidacy for general anesthesia, the team thought the beneﬁts of surgery would outweigh the risks. Mr. K’s daughter agreed to surgery telling her father ‘‘the doctors know best. ’’ Mr. K. replied ‘‘I just want to be out of pain. ’’ Six months later, Mr. K. remains in a skilled nursing facility due to post-op complications, including pneumonia, worsened confusion, and the inability to recover to enough function to live safely at home. He now suffers from depression, cognitive deﬁcits, and social isolation. His daughter has had to take on a second job because she is struggling to pay for his continued long-term care, which costs $6000 per month. Money she had saved for her own retirement and her daughter’s college tuition is already gone. In retrospect, she realizes the surgical team did not discuss the possibility of his survival with chronic debility and long-term functional dependency, nor the fact that Medicare would not pay for the care he now requires.
Increased Expression of the Polycomb Group Gene, EZH2, in Transitional Cell Carcinoma of the Bladder

Purpose: The Polycomb group gene, EZH2, functions as a transcriptional repressor involved in gene silencing. Amplification of EZH2 has been reported in several malignancies, including prostate, breast, and lymphoma. We evaluated EZH2 mRNA and protein expression in bladder specimens from patients and the EZH2 mRNA expression in five bladder cancer cell lines. Experimental Design:EZH2 mRNA expression was assessed by reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) in 38 bladder tissue specimens. We also evaluated 39 bladder cancer specimens for EZH2 protein expression using immunohistochemistry with affinity-purified antibodies to human EZH2. In addition, five human bladder cancer cell lines were analyzed by RT-PCR for EZH2 mRNA expression. Results: Five of 14 (36%) nontumor bladder specimens versus 21 of 24 (88%) bladder tumors showed EZH2 mRNA expression (P = 0.003). All of the invasive tumors (10 of 10) had detectable EZH2 mRNA expression, compared with 11 of 14 (79%) superficial tumors. In addition, EZH2 mRNA expression was noted in 100% (16 of 16) of high-grade bladder tumors versus 50% (4 of 8) of low-grade tumors (P = 0.01). EZH2 protein expression, meanwhile, was increased in neoplastic tissue compared with nontumor urothelium (78% versus 69% of nuclei, P < 0.005). There were no differences in EZH2 protein levels between superficial and invasive tumors. High-grade tumors had increased EZH2 staining compared with normal urothelium (78% versus 68%, P < 0.005), whereas low-grade lesions did not. Four of five human bladder cancer cell lines expressed high levels of EZH2, whereas only low levels were detected in one cell line. Conclusions: We report a significant increase in EZH2 expression in transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder compared with normal urothelium. These data suggest that similar to other human malignancies, increased EZH2 expression correlates with oncogenesis of the bladder.
Equilibrium Mechanisms in a Decentralized Market

Abstract A large decentralized market where buyers have private information about the idiosyncratic value of an exchange opportunity with a seller is studied. The seller offers the buyer a contract or mechanism as soon as he is matched. It is shown that if the discount factor is high enough, there will be a symmetric market equilibrium in which all sellers offer simple fixed price mechanisms. Along the equilibrium path these mechanisms will be ex ante inefficient. Prices will be too high and the extent of search by buyers too low. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D82, D83, D44.
Learning the 'Craft' of Auditing: A Dynamic View of Auditors' On-the-Job Learning

We investigate how auditors learn the technical aspects of their professional role while performing client engagements, and how that learning process has been shaped by changes in societal, economic and regulatory forces. Prior studies explicitly recognize that auditors need social skills and demeanor consistent with professional norms as well as requisite knowledge, but those studies generally focus on the processes through which new auditors are molded toward consistency with social norms. In contrast, we focus on forces affecting the transfer of technical knowledge from supervisor (guide) to subordinate (learner) in the everyday work setting. Our evidence derives from semi-structured interviews with 30 relatively new and more experienced audit partners at one Big 4 firm, thus spanning multiple "generations" of experience. Results confirm that auditors primarily acquire technical knowledge on the job, through the interactions among individual engagement team members. However, partners express concern about changes in the practice environment that may limit effectiveness of on-the-job learning, including characteristics of personnel, the approach to formal training at induction, supervisors' reluctance to provide candid feedback, regulatory and economic pressures, and the increased distraction and reduced interpersonal contact associated with use of information technology. At the end of the day, our findings raise implications for practice regarding the difficulty of developing effective learning conditions for auditors in the face of these challenges.
Reliability assesment in the design of interleaved converters under multi-physical constraints

This paper presents the integration of the reliability assessment in a pre-design approach of interleaved converters for embedded automotive applications. This approach is based on a multi-physic optimization to pre-size the entire converter and its components. The design constraints are progressively integrated, in addition the reliability aspect of power components is considered in the early steps of the design. The proposed method is applied to an Interleaved Buck Converter IBC. It allows to pre-size converter determining the optimal number of cells under multi-physics constraints such as electric, efficiency, thermal, volume and in particularly the reliability, which is considered in same level of pre-design to eliminate all risk of feasibility. This paper describes the reliability assessment approach of the converter using the FIDES methodology for components reliability. Therefore, this approach takes account of mission profile associated with operating conditions to assess the lifetime of power converter.
Developing an Assurance Standard for Carbon Emissions Disclosures

A new assurance service on carbon emissions disclosures in Australia would provide an appropriate response by the auditing profession to the challenges posed by climate change. Recognising the difficulties in developing an assurance standard on broad sustainability information, this paper focuses on the case for developing a standard on the more specific issue of corporations' carbon emissions disclosures. Credibility of disclosure of carbon emissions and any associated trading scheme would be strengthened by the implementation and enhancement of assurance standards and services.
Rapidly locating and accurately tracking the center of mass using statically equivalent serial chains

This paper presents a center of mass (CoM) estimation technique that uses the statically equivalent serial chain (SESC). A SESC is a representation of any multilink branched chain whose end-effector locates the CoM. Locating the CoM is useful for modeling humans and humanoid robots. The method starts with an experimental phase involving a force plate and a motion capture system (MoCap) to construct a model to predict the CoM location. Subsequent motion of the subject updates the CoM model based on the MoCap node positions without need of a force plate, overcoming disadvantages of some other CoM estimation methods. The results show that the SESC methodology allows rapid and accurate real time estimation of the CoM. This paper includes the CoM estimation for a human from low-end and high-end MoCap and force plate sensors. The CoM in the plane of the force plate is shown to have an average error of less than 5 mm. A discussion of the accuracy of the vertical component of the CoM is also presented. Additionally, the presence of a static body in the workspace (a walker or chair, for example) to create stability in test subjects is presented.
Patterns of Consensual Law-making in the Italian Parliament

The transformation of the Italian political system, which began in the early 1990s, should have had an impact upon internal parliamentary dynamics, and in particular upon the degree of consensualism within the legislative process. In this article we are going to examine this hypothesis in the light of the new empirical evidence we have regarding the analysis of Italy's legislative process, and we shall provide a series of explanations for the unexpected degree of persistence of those legislative patterns characteristic of the so-called ‘first republic’.
High resolution DNA fingerprinting by AFLP to study the genetic variation among Oesophagostomum bifurcum (Nematoda) from human and non-human primates from Ghana

An AFLP approach was established to investigate genetic diversity within Oesophagostomum bifurcum (order Strongylida) from human and non-human primates. Evaluation of different combinations of restriction enzymes (n=8) and primers (n=29) demonstrated that the use of HindIII/BglII digested templates and primers with the selective nucleotides +AG/+AC, respectively, was the most effective for the analysis of O. bifurcum DNA. A total of 63 O. bifurcum adults from human, Patas monkey, Mona monkey and Olive baboon hosts from different geographical regions in Ghana were subjected to analysis using this method. Cluster analysis revealed 4 genetically distinct groups, namely O. bifurcum from the Patas monkey (I), from the Mona monkey (II), from humans (III) and from the Olive baboon (IV). These findings were concordant with those achieved previously using RAPD analysis and supports population genetic substructuring within O. bifurcum according to host species. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the present AFLP method for establishing genetic variation within O. bifurcum, and indicates its applicability to other parasitic nematodes of human and/or veterinary health importance.
An Empirical Examination of the Black‐Scholes Call Option Pricing Model

THIS STUDY IS A descriptive analysis of how market prices of call options compare with prices predicted by the Black and Scholes [2], B-S, option pricing model. Although tests of alternative call option valuation models are not conducted, it is possible to relate some of the deviations which we observe between market and B-S model prices to predictions of other models, and thereby reconcile conflicting statements in the empirical literature regarding the relationship between market prices and B-S model prices. The B-S model: C = S-N(d1) - Xe-'-N(d2)
Contract Formalization and Governance of Exporter-Importer Relationships

Exporting relationships between manufacturers and foreign importers pose unique coordination problems because, on the one hand, transactions are recurrent and both firms make non-trivial relationship-specific investments, but at the same time, the exchange partners maintain separate legal entities with individual profit claims. This study examines the role of contracts as a governance mechanism in these relationships that are neither market-based discrete transactions, nor can be governed through ownership-based hierarchies. Drawing upon recent research on contract law and interorganizational relationships, we develop and empirically test a model that incorporates both the antecedents and performance implications of the nature of contract governing exporter-importer relationships. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007.
U.S. Multinationals and the Control of Subsidiary Employment Policies

The authors examine whether U.S. multinational companies (MNCs) are distinctive in the degree to which they exert direct control over policy on human resources and employment relations (HR/ER) in their foreign subsidiaries. The results confirm the distinctiveness of U.S. MNCs in their greater degree of direct control of policy, compared not only with non-U.S. firms but with every other major nationality or national grouping of MNCs: France, Germany, the Nordic group, the rest of Europe, and Japan. U.S. control of HR/ER policy is greater not just in the aggregate, but for most individual items. Finally, while levels of control over subsidiaries vary among host countries studied (Canada, Ireland, Spain, and the United Kingdom) the greater U.S. orientation to control relative to non-U.S. MNCs holds regardless of host.
International R&D Spillovers

Investment in research and development (R&D) affects a country's total factor productivity. Recently new theories of economic growth have emphasized this link and have also identified a number of channels through which a country's R&D affects total factor productivity of its trade partners. Following these theoretical developments we estimate the effects of a country's R&D capital stock and the R&D capital stocks of its trade partners on the country's total factor productivity. We find large effects of both domestic and foreign R&D capital stocks on total factor productivity. The foreign R&D capital stocks have particularly large effects on the smaller countries in our sample (that consists of 22 countries). Moreover, we find that about one quarter of the worldwide benefits of investment in R&D in the seven largest economies are appropriated by their trade partners.
An Interactive, Cognitive Simulation of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

The Maryland Virtual Patient (MVP) Project seeks to create realistically functioning virtual humans endowed with automatic physiological and cognitive function that can be used in the training of medical personnel. Physiologically, the state of an MVP changes in response to internal pathophysiological stimuli and external stimuli, the latter initiated by either by the patient or the trainee. Cognitively, the MVP can communicate with trainees about current symptoms, lifestyle, history, adherence to prescribed treatments, etc. We will demonstrate simulation in the MVP environment using the example of patients suffering from gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).