Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BDNF, and NT‐4/5 enhance glutamatergic synaptic transmission in cultured hippocampal neurones

THE effects of BDNF, and NT-4/5 on AMPA receptor-mediated synaptic transmission were investigated with the patch clamp technique applied to embryonic, and postnatal rat hippocampal neurones, cultured in serum-free medium. Spatially restricted application of neurotrophin-containing solution on to the recorded cells was performed, and evoked as well as miniature excitatory postsynaptic currents (mepscs) were monitored. In approximately 25% of neurones tested a transient augmentation of evoked synaptic currents, and a transient increase in the frequency of mepscs occurred with a delay of 0.5–5 min after the onset of BDNF or NT-4/5 application. The amplitudes of the AMPA receptor mediated mepscs were unaffected, suggesting a presynaptic action of BDNF, and NT-4/5.
Principles and Practices of Knowledge Creation: On the Organization of “Buzz” and “Pipelines” in Life Science Communities

abstract This article links up with the debate in economic geography on “local buzz” and “global pipelines” as two distinct forms of interactive knowledge creation among firms and related actors and argues for a rethinking of the way social scientists should approach interactive knowledge creation. It highlights the importance of combining the insights from studies of clusters and innovation systems with an activity-oriented approach in which more attention is paid to the specific characteristics of the innovation processes and the conditions underpinning their organization. To illustrate the applicability and added value of such an alternative approach, the notion of embeddedness is linked with some basic ideas adopted from the literature on knowledge communities. The framework is then applied to a study of innovation activities conducted by firms and academic research groups working with biotechnology-related applications in the Swedish part of the Medicon Valley life science region. The findings reveal that local buzz is largely absent in these types of activities. Most interactive knowledge creation, which appears to be spontaneous and unregulated, is, on closer examination, found safely embedded in globally configured professional knowledge communities and attainable only by those who qualify.
Autonomous Waypoint Generation with Safety Guarantees: On-Line Motion Planning in Unknown Environments

On-line motion planning in unknown environments is a challenging problem as it requires (i) ensuring collision avoidance and (ii) minimizing the motion time, while continuously predicting where to go next. Previous approaches to on-line motion planning assume that a rough map of the environment is available, thereby simplifying the problem. This paper presents a reactive on-line motion planner, Robust Autonomous Waypoint generation (RAW), for mobile robots navigating in unknown and unstructured environments. RAW generates a locally maximal ellipsoid around the robot, using semi-definite programming, such that the surrounding obstacles lie outside the ellipsoid. A reinforcement learning agent then generates a local waypoint in the robot's field of view, inside the ellipsoid. The robot navigates to the waypoint and the process iterates until it reaches the goal. By following the waypoints the robot navigates through a sequence of overlapping ellipsoids, and avoids collision. Robot's safety is guaranteed theoretically and the claims are validated through rigorous numerical experiments in four different experimental setups. Near-optimality is shown empirically by comparing RAW trajectories with the global optimal trajectories.
The Economic Determinants of Professional Sports Franchise Values

This article examines the effect of team nomenclature, team relocation, and new stadiums on franchise values for the four major professional sports. The results indicate that market size, team performance, and the presence of a new facility increase a team’s franchise value, as many would expect. Moreover, the authors find that the use of a regional identity increases franchise value in Major League Baseball (MLB) but not in the other professional sports. The authors believe this may reflect the fact that the other sports have institutional arrangements that minimize any differences among the various teams, unlike MLB.
The Role of CD40-CD154 Interactions in the Regulation of Cell Mediated Immunity

CD40 is expressed on a diverse array of cell types from the hematopoeitic and non-hematopoeitic compartments. Within the hematopoeitic compartment, CD40 is found constitutively expressed on B cells, dendritic cells (DC) and macrophages. The function of CD40 in B cells has been documented as being essential in the control of humoral immunity. In DCs and macrophages, CD40 has been shown to be important in the induction of antigen-presenting cell (APC) maturation and effector function. CD40 is also expressed on non-hematopoeitic cells like keratinocytes, epithelial cells, and vascular endothelial cells and has been shown to be functionally important on these cell types. CD 154, the ligand for CD40, is a type II transmembrane glycoprotein of the TNF family. The human protein consists of a 22 aa cytoplasmic tail, a single 24 aa transmembrane domain and a 215 aa extracellular region (214 aa in the mouse), and human CD154 is 83% identical to murine CD154 at the nucleotide level. It is predominantly expressed on mature, activated CD4+ T cells, and can be inducibly expressed on THO, TH1 and TH2 cells. The expression of CD154 is tightly regulated, peaking 6–8 hr. postactivation in vitro and returning to resting levels by 24–48 hr. In addition to CD4+ T cells, CD 154 is reportedly found in a small population of activated CD8-t T cells, purified NK cells, monocytes, basophils, mast cells, activated eosinophils, and platelets. As one might expect due to the wide distribution of both the receptor and its ligand, especially on highly proliferative cells and antigen presenting cells, CD40-CD154 interactions have a very broad physiological role in the regulation of immune responses, as reviewed (1,2).
Fuzzy rule-based analysis of spatio-temporal ATM usage data for fraud detection and prevention

We present a novel approach for detecting fraudulent behaviors from automated teller machine (ATM) usage data by analyzing geo-behavioral habits of the customers describe the use of a fuzzy rule-based system capable of classifying suspicious and non-suspicious transactions. We first compute the geographic entropies of ATM cardholders to form customer classes based on these entropies. ATM transactions are spatio-temporal by inclusion of location information. The transition data can be generated by using transaction data from the current location to the next one. Once, the transition data are generated, statistical outlier detection techniques can be utilized. On top of classical methods, we can easily use crisp unsupervised methods to detect outliers in the transition data. In addition, fuzzy C-Means algorithm can also easily be implemented to determine outliers. We analyze ATM usage dataset which contains around two years' worth of data, provided by a mid-size Turkish bank. We have shown that a significant bulk of ATM users does not leave the vicinity of their living places. We also present some insightful business rules that can be extracted from geo-tagged ATM transaction data by means of using a fuzzy rule-based system.
A 0.4 V 1.94 fJ/conversion-step 10 bit 750 kS/s SAR ADC with Input-Range-Adaptive Switching

This paper presents a low-voltage and power-efficient 10 bit successive-approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The input-range-adaptive (IRA) switching method is proposed to reduce the average switching power of capacitive digital-to-analog convertor (DAC) by 91% compared with the conventional approach. By utilizing the comparator as a voltage-to-time converter (VTC) with a time-domain quantizer, the implemented early-late (E/L) detection circuit, the input range is detected to eliminate the unnecessary DAC switching power efficiently. A prototype ADC chip is fabricated in 90 nm CMOS technology with an active area of 0.038 mm2. At 0.35-to-0.5 V supply voltage and 0.3-to-2 MS/s sampling rate with a Nyquist input, the ADC achieves a signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio (SNDR) of 55.5 dB to 56.3 dB and a corresponding effective number of bits (ENOB) of 8.92 bit to 9.06 bit respectively with a power consumption of 0.3 μW to 2.5 μW and a resulting figure of merit (FoM) from 1.94 fJ/conversion-step to 2.32 fJ/conversion-step.
Nitric oxide and mitochondrial biogenesis

The characteristic structural organization of mitochondria is the product of synthesis of macromolecules within the mitochondria together with the import of proteins and lipids synthesized outside the organelle. Synthetic and import processes are required for mitochondrial proliferation and might also facilitate the growth of pre-existing mitochondria. Recent evidence indicates that these events are regulated in a complex way by several agonists and environmental conditions, through activation of specific signaling pathways and transcription factors. A newly discovered role of this organelle in retrograde intracellular signaling back to the nucleus has also emerged. This is likely to have far-reaching implications in development, aging, disease and environmental adaptation. Generation of nitric oxide (NO) appears to be an important player in these processes, possibly acting as a unifying molecular switch to trigger the whole mitochondrial biogenesis process. High levels of NO acutely inhibit cell respiration by binding to cytochrome c oxidase. Conversely, chronic, smaller increases in NO levels stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis in diverse cell types. NO-induced mitochondrial biogenesis seems to be linked to proliferation and differentiation of normal and tumor cells, as well as in aging.
The Base for Direct Taxation

The traditional starting place for a study of tax reform is a definition of an ideal tax base, which is then adjusted in light of additional issues. After arguing briefly that this is not a good starting place, the essay reviews the optimal taxation literature inferences for tax base policy, focusing on three questions. - If there is annual non-linear (progressive) taxation of earnings, how should annual capital income be taxed - not at all, linearly (flat rate, as in the Nordic dual income tax), by relating the marginal tax rates on capital and labour incomes (as in the US), or by taxing all income the same? - If there is annual non-linear taxation of earnings, should there be a deduction for net savings? - If there is annual non-linear taxation of earnings, is it worth having a more complex tax structure, particularly age-dependent tax rates? Would greater use of age-dependent rules in capital income taxation be worthwhile? The essay presents the Atkinson-Stiglitz and Chamley-Judd results that capital income should not be taxed, but concludes that the required conditions are too restrictive and not robust enough for policy purposes. Hence there should be some role for including capital income as a part of the tax base. The essay discusses some empirical underpinnings for two key elements in the conclusion - differences in savings propensities and the shape of earnings (and uncertainty about earnings) over the lifetime. The conclusion that capital income should be taxed does not lead to the conclusion that the tax base should be total income, the sum of labour income and capital income. The chapter leans toward relating marginal tax rates on capital and labour incomes as opposed to the Nordic dual tax. Also examined are age-dependent taxes (for example different taxation of earnings for workers of different ages).
The Anatomy of Unemployment Dynamics

This paper examines the relation between individual unemployment durations and incidence on the one hand, and the time-varying macroeconomic conditions in the economy on the other. We allow for calendar time effects acting on the exit probabilities for all currently unemployed. We also allow for the composition of the inflow into unemployment to depend on calendar time at the moment of inflow. In both cases we distinguish between business cycle effects and seasonal effects. We apply the model to aggregate unemployment duration data, in which we allow for unobserved heterogeneity and correlated measurement errors. We do not make parametric assumptions on the genuine duration dependence pattern or the unobserved heterogeneity distribution. The results enable us to give a complete decomposition of the dynamics of unemployment over calendar time. This is also used to test the popular ranking model of unemployment.
Image Segmentation and Labeling Using Free-Form Semantic Annotation

In this paper we investigate the problem of segmenting images using the information in text annotations. In contrast to the general image understanding problem, this type of annotation guided segmentation is less ill-posed in the sense that for the output there is higher consensus among human annotations. In the paper we present a system based on a combined visual and semantic pipeline. In the visual pipeline, a list of tentative figure-ground segmentations is first proposed. Each such segmentation is classified into a set of visual categories. In the natural language processing pipeline, the text is parsed and chunked into objects. Each chunk is then compared with the visual categories and the relative distance is computed using the word-net structure. The final choice of segments and their correspondence to the chunked objects are then obtained using combinatorial optimization. The output is compared to manually annotated ground-truth images. The results are promising and there are several interesting avenues for continued research.
Empirical Studies of Exchange Rates: Price Behavior, Rate Determinationand Market Efficiency

Theoretical and empirical research completed over the last decade has dramatically increased our understanding of exchange rate behavior. The major insight to come from this decade of research is that foreign exchange is a financial asset. In an asset pricing framework, current exchange rates reflect the expected values of future exogenous variables. The purpose of this paper is to survay the empirical evidence on exchange rate behavior, market efficiency and related topics. Section 2 presents a stylized history of exchange rate behavior during 1970's. Alternative measures of volatility and transaction costs are reviewed. Tests of specific exchange rate determination models are presented in Section 3. Empirical studies have been fairly successful in constructing models to explain cross-sectional exchange rate differences and to explain time series exchange rate developments over the medium-run and long-run. Following the asset market framework , recent studies have demonstrated that unanticipated exchange rate changes are significantly correlated with "news" concerning fundamental macroeconomic variables. Evidence on foreign exchange market efficiency is summurized in Section 4. Efficiency studies remain difficult to formulate (because of small samples and unobserved variables) and difficult to interpret ( because of the joint hypothesis problem). Several recent studies claim that speculative profit opportunities are present, but it is unclear whether these are related to risk premiums or actual market inefficiencies.
Equal Access and Miller's Equilibrium

Controversy over the implications of debt and the rationale belying capital structure has seemingly come to rest upon a plateau defined by Miller's equilibrium analysis of aggregate corporate debt [10]. In “Debt and Taxes,” Miller reasserts his contention that whether capital is obtained through debt or equity has no bearing on the market value of the firm and is, therefore, irrelevant--a notion which has long been accepted with some reluctance by the finance academe. When the Modigliani-Miller model was first offered some 20 years ago [11], it was accompanied by a set of assumptions which portrayed the world of corporate finance in such malleable terms as to make the irrelevancy propositions palatable. Adaptation of this theoretical model (by its originators) to its secular counterpart through the imposition of corporate taxes [12] brought about a reassuring reversal of the irrelevancy doctrine, but left in its stead the disconcerting prescription to maximize firm value by financing exclusively via debt. Consideration of tax effects at the personal level by Farrar and Selwyn [7] marked the next concession to reality by capital structure theorists. Instead of alienating the original model still further from observed corporate behavior, this step provided a means of reconciling the overwhelming advantage of debt financing at the corporate level with the ultimate after-tax “consumption possibilities” afforded to individual investors. Miller's analysis explains that corporations are forced to “gross up” nominal interest rates to attract bondholders who must be compensated for their personal tax liability [10]. Potential increases in market value due to the taxdeductibility of interest payments are exhausted in the competitive drive toward equilibrium—at which point there are no gains from leverage. The sanctity of the irrelevance theorem thus appears to have been restored at the aggregate level.
High reliability of nanometer-range N/sub 2/O-nitrided oxides due to suppressing hole injection

Hole transport and trapping in N/sub 2/O-nitrided oxides have been studied. It is shown that N/sub 2/O-nitridation of oxides suppresses hole injection into the oxides. The suppression of hole injection is a mechanism leading to the enhancement of reliability of the nitrided oxides under channel hot-hole and F-N stresses.
Stakeholder Red Tape: Comparing Perceptions of Public Managers and Their Private Consultants

Despite the abundance of red tape literature and the growing popularity of outsourcing in the public sector, no previous study investigates red tape in consulting relationships. Using survey data from public managers and the contractors with whom they work, we investigate public managers' and private consultants' perceptions of organizational and contracting red tape. We identify the determinants of red tape perceptions, variation in those perceptions, and the characteristics of respondents with stronger divergent views of contracting red tape. Results indicate that government managers perceive higher levels of organizational red tape and contracting red tape than do their consultants. Public manager perceptions of red tape are associated with job satisfaction and time spent managing and communicating with consultants. Consultant perceptions of red tape are associated with perceptions of the appropriateness of the government agency's rules, the number of years the firm has worked with the agency, and the percentage of the firm's cost-plus contracts.
Worker Substitutability and Patterns of Unionisation

A strategic three party bargaining model is developed in which one distinguished party, the firm, has to reac h agreements with the other two, each of which is a group of workers. In the prebargaining stage, the two worker groups decide whether to organize jointly or separately. The main observation relates the equi librium pattern of unionization to the substitutability in production between the two groups: the outcome is joint or separate unions acco rding to whether the two groups are substitute or complementary facto rs of production. The analysis also considers possibilities for firm' s strategic intervention in the unionization process. Copyright 1988 by Royal Economic Society.
Impact of owner's knowledge of information technology (IT) on strategic alignment and IT adoption in US small firms

Purpose – This study seeks to examine the impact of owner's knowledge of information technology (IT) on business and IT strategic alignment, as well as on IT use in the small firm context, using the resource‐based view as a theoretical foundation.Design/methodology/approach – A random sample of 217 small manufacturers and financial services firms in the USA answered a two‐page survey containing questions pertaining to the company's business strategies, the extent IT supported each business strategy, types of IT used, and the level of owner's IT knowledge.Findings – Owner's knowledge of IT was found to be a significant predictor of IT strategic alignment, as well as adoption of traditional IT and internet technologies, while controlling for differences in firm attributes (size, age, industry affiliation, and strategic focus). Practical implications – Small firm owners are well advised to seek ways of improving their knowledge of IT, integrating IT use in firm‐level business planning, as well as reexamining .
Identification of Conserved Amino Acid Residues of the Salmonella σS Chaperone Crl Involved in Crl-σS Interactions

ABSTRACT Proteins that bind σ factors typically attenuate the function of the σ factor by restricting its access to the RNA polymerase (RNAP) core enzyme. An exception to this general rule is the Crl protein that binds the stationary-phase sigma factor σS (RpoS) and enhances its affinity for the RNAP core enzyme, thereby increasing expression of σS-dependent genes. Analyses of sequenced bacterial genomes revealed that crl is less widespread and less conserved at the sequence level than rpoS. Seventeen residues are conserved in all members of the Crl family. Site-directed mutagenesis of the crl gene from Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and complementation of a Δcrl mutant of Salmonella indicated that substitution of the conserved residues Y22, F53, W56, and W82 decreased Crl activity. This conclusion was further confirmed by promoter binding and abortive transcription assays. We also used a bacterial two-hybrid system (BACTH) to show that the four substitutions in Crl abolish Crl-σS interaction and that residues 1 to 71 in σS are dispensable for Crl binding. In Escherichia coli, it has been reported that Crl also interacts with the ferric uptake regulator Fur and that Fur represses crl transcription. However, the Salmonella Crl and Fur proteins did not interact in the BACTH system. In addition, a fur mutation did not have any significant effect on the expression level of Crl in Salmonella. These results suggest that the relationship between Crl and Fur is different in Salmonella and E. coli.
L'INDUSTRIALISATION A PETITE ECHELLE : UNE NOUVELLE APPROCHE DU DEVELOPPEMENT DANS LES PAYS DU SUD

Despite Asian dynamism, traditional approaches to development have, on the whole, shown their limits. In reaction to the evident limitations, new practices of development have been observed in the last fifteen years. These rely notably on the spatial concentration of small highly interdependent firms, generating real processes of 'small-scale industrialization'. In substance, the objective of this paper is to question these processes and show in which way they are cogently a different approach to Southern development. Two concrete examples are examined: the 'medina' of Sfax in Tunisia and the 'bazar' of Koumassi in Ghana. Although it is not question of establishing these two examples as 'model' experiences, analysis of them nonetheless highlights the specificity of these new forms of development. The paper aims at identifying six main trends of demarcation in small-scale industrialization, in comparison with conventional models of development. Region & Developpement 33