Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Delayed fatherhood

Birth data from developed countries indicates that the average paternal age is increasing. As the trend to older fatherhood has become established, concerns have been raised that this may be linked to adverse outcomes, such as pregnancy complications, congenital anomalies, and long-term health implications for the child. Since the sperm of older fathers may be impaired due to the general effects of ageing, their offspring may be at risk due to defects in sperm quality at conception. A literature search was performed to identify pregnancy complications, fetal anomalies and health issues for the child when the father is in an older age bracket. Evidence for impairment in the sperm and genetic material of older fathers was reviewed. With an older father, there is evidence of an increase in stillbirths and a slightly increased risk of autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in the offspring later in life. The increased risk of achondroplasia has long been recognised. For the mother, there is an increased rate of Caesarean section. Investigations of other possible adverse outcomes have produced mixed findings. Further robust and longitudinal studies are needed to clarify these issues.
Corneal reconstruction with tissue-engineered cell sheets composed of autologous oral mucosal epithelium.

BACKGROUND Ocular trauma or disease may lead to severe corneal opacification and, consequently, severe loss of vision as a result of complete loss of corneal epithelial stem cells. Transplantation of autologous corneal stem-cell sources is an alternative to allograft transplantation and does not require immunosuppression, but it is not possible in many cases in which bilateral disease produces total corneal stem-cell deficiency in both eyes. We studied the use of autologous oral mucosal epithelial cells as a source of cells for the reconstruction of the corneal surface. METHODS We harvested 3-by-3-mm specimens of oral mucosal tissue from four patients with bilateral total corneal stem-cell deficiencies. Tissue-engineered epithelial-cell sheets were fabricated ex vivo by culturing harvested cells for two weeks on temperature-responsive cell-culture surfaces with 3T3 feeder cells that had been treated with mitomycin C. After conjunctival fibrovascular tissue had been surgically removed from the ocular surface, sheets of cultured autologous cells that had been harvested with a simple reduced-temperature treatment were transplanted directly to the denuded corneal surfaces (one eye of each patient) without sutures. RESULTS Complete reepithelialization of the corneal surfaces occurred within one week in all four treated eyes. Corneal transparency was restored and postoperative visual acuity improved remarkably in all four eyes. During a mean follow-up period of 14 months, all corneal surfaces remained transparent. There were no complications. CONCLUSIONS Sutureless transplantation of carrier-free cell sheets composed of autologous oral mucosal epithelial cells may be used to reconstruct corneal surfaces and can restore vision in patients with bilateral severe disorders of the ocular surface.
Hyporesponsiveness of “naive” (CD45RA+) human T cells to multiple receptor‐mediated stimuli but augmentation of responses by co‐stimuli

Much remains to be clarified regarding the functional capacities of the two major reciprocal subsets of human CD4+ cells which we interpret to be naive and memory cells. CD4+ naive (CD45RA+, LFA‐3−) and memory (CD45R0+, LFA‐3+) cells were rigorously purified by immunomagnetic negative selection. Their proliferation was measured in response to four protocols of receptor‐mediated activation: soluble anti‐CD3 mAb, plastic‐immobilized anti‐CD3 mAb, activating pairs of anti‐CD2 mAb, and “superantigens” staphyloccocal entero‐toxins A and B (SEA and SEB). Naive cells proliferated much less than memory cells to each of these four regimens although their capacity to respond was demonstrated by strong PHA‐induced proliferation. Although three of the regimens depend on autologous monocytes, poorer naive cell responses are also observed to anti‐CD3 mAb immobilized on plastic in the absence of monocytes; this implies an intrinsic hyporesponsiveness of naive cells, independent of theirpotentially weaker interaction with monocytes. Naive cells proliferated less than memory cells to superantigens SEA and SEB over a wide dose range; this assumes particular importance because such superantigens are believed to more closely mimic antigen‐specific stimulation than anti‐CD3 mAb. The possibility was explored that hyporesponsiveness of naive cells reflects the fact that naive cells require additional co‐stimuli to facilitate their activation. In support of this concept, we observed that proliferation of naive cells to anti‐CD3 mAb and SEA or SEB (but not to anti‐CD2 mAb pairs) was consistently enhanced by pre‐activation of monocytes present in the culture. Naive cell proliferative responses were augmented further in cultures supplemented with interleukin (IL) 1β and IL 6 or exposed to the co‐stimulating mAb anti‐CD28 and anti‐CD44. The pattern of augmentation was dependent on the specific triggering regimen: anti‐CD44 mAb was particularly effective in augmenting the response to superantigens, anti‐CD28 mAb for the anti‐CD3 response and IL 1β/IL 6 for that induced by anti‐CD2 mAb pairs. With particular combinations of stimulus/co‐stimuli naive cell proliferation was as strong as that of memory cells. We interpret these findings to indicate that naive cells are capable of responding to antigen, but that such responses are critically dependent on the available co‐stimuli in vivo.
International trade, labour migrations and capital flows: long-term evidence for Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The following issues need to be examined when considering the historical links between international factor movements and international trade, and whether increases in factor flows stimulated trade or vice versa: the extent to which increased trade and factor mobility foster economic growth and development, how different factor flows are related, whether labor movements induce capital flows or vice versa, whether alternative types of factor mobility substitutes or complements, and whether trade liberalization promotes factor mobility or there are alternate types of international transactions substitutes as argued by those who ascribe to the classic Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson factor-price-equalization tradition. Accordingly, the historical links between international factor mobility and the extent of international trade are analyzed over the long term for Australia, Canada, and the US, high labor immigration countries; and the UK, a high labor emigration country. Time series data are used. Current international openness is assessed. International factor market integration has increased over time with trade liberalization, suggesting that traditional Heckscher-Ohlin thinking cannot be readily used to account for long-term trends in several important economies. Both trade and factor mobility have an episodic character which makes it misleading to assess current international openness only in terms of post-World War II economic trends.
Age-Related Factor Guided Joint Task Modeling Convolutional Neural Network for Cross-Age Face Recognition

Cross-age face recognition has remained a popular research topic as most regular facial recognition systems have failed in dealing with facial changes through age. In order to enhance the system’s capability of discriminating facial identity features in spite of age changes, this paper proposes a novel deep convolutional network method for cross-age face recognition called age-related factor guided joint task modeling convolutional neural networks, which combines an identity discrimination network with an age discrimination network that shares the same feature layers. By alternatively training the fusion networks and the combined factor model, the cross-age identity features and cross-identity age features can be effectively separated with high inter-class distension and intra-class compactness. Extensive experiments have been performed on the benchmark aging data sets, including MORPH, CACD-VS, and Cross Age LFW. The results have demonstrated the superiority and effectiveness of our model.
Sex Determination in Ceratopteris richardii Is Accompanied by Transcriptome Changes That Drive Epigenetic Reprogramming of the Young Gametophyte

The fern Ceratopteris richardii is an important model for studies of sex determination and gamete differentiation in homosporous plants. Here we use RNA-seq to de novo assemble a transcriptome and identify genes differentially expressed in young gametophytes as their sex is determined by the presence or absence of the male-inducing pheromone called antheridiogen. Of the 1,163 consensus differentially expressed genes identified, the vast majority (1,030) are up-regulated in gametophytes treated with antheridiogen. GO term enrichment analyses of these DEGs reveals that a large number of genes involved in epigenetic reprogramming of the gametophyte genome are up-regulated by the pheromone. Additional hormone response and development genes are also up-regulated by the pheromone. This C. richardii gametophyte transcriptome and gene expression dataset will prove useful for studies focusing on sex determination and differentiation in plants.
Comcast's Web Notification System Design

The objective of this document is to describe one method of providing notifications to web browsers that has been deployed by Comcast, a large Internet Service Provider (ISP). Such a notification system can be used by an ISP to provide near-immediate notifications to their users, such as to warn them that their traffic exhibits patterns that are indicative of malware or virus infection, for example. There are many proprietary systems that can perform such notifications on the market today, some of which use inline-based Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) systems. This document describes one example of such a system that does not rely upon DPI systems, and is instead based in open standards and open source systems. While the system described herein is in some ways specific to the Data-Over- Cable Service Interface Specifications (DOCSIS) networks used by most cable-based broadband ISPs, components and concepts described in this document can generally be applied to many different types of networks.
MARAM: Tool Support for Mobile App Review Management

Mobile apps today have millions of user reviews available online. Such reviews cover a large broad of themes and are usually expressed in an informal language. They provide valuable information to developers, such as feature requests, bug reports, and detailed descriptions of one's interaction with the app. Due to the overwhelmingly large number of reviews apps usually get associated with, managing and making sense of reviews is difficult. In this paper, we address this problem by introducing MARAM, a tool designed to provide support for managing and integrating online reviews with other software management tools available, such as GitHub, JIRA and Bugzilla. The tool is designed to a) automatically extract app development relevant information from online reviews, b) support developers' queries on (subsets of) the user generated content available on app stores, namely online reviews, feature requests, and bugs, and c) support the management of online reviews and their integration with other software management tools available, namely GitHub, JIRA or Bugzilla.
International fuel tax assessment: an application to Chile

Abstract Gasoline and diesel fuel are heavily taxed in many developed and some emerging and developing countries. Outside the United States and Europe, however, there has been little attempt to quantify the external costs of vehicle use, so policy makers lack guidance on whether prevailing tax rates are economically efficient. This paper develops a general approach for estimating motor vehicle externalities, and hence corrective taxes on gasoline and diesel, based on pooling local data with extrapolations from US evidence. The analysis is illustrated for the case of Chile, although it could be applied to other countries.
Cytolethal Distending Toxin Type I and Type IV Genes Are Framed with Lambdoid Prophage Genes in Extraintestinal Pathogenic Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Five types of cytolethal distending toxin (CDT-I to CDT-V) have been identified in Escherichia coli. In the present study we cloned and sequenced the cdt-IV operon and flanking region from a porcine extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC) strain belonging to serogroup O75. We confirmed that similar to other CDTs, CDT-IV induced phosphorylation of host histone H2AX, a sensitive marker of DNA double-strand breaks, and blocked the HeLa cell cycle at the G2-M transition. The cdt-IV genes were framed by lambdoid prophage genes. We cloned and sequenced the cdt-I operon and flanking regions from a human ExPEC O18:K1:H7 strain and observed that cdt-I genes were also flanked by lambdoid prophage genes. PCR studies indicated that a gene coding for a putative protease was always associated with the cdtC-IV gene but was not associated with cdtC genes in strains producing CDT-I, CDT-III, and CDT-V. Our results suggest that the cdt-I and cdt-IV genes might have been acquired from a common ancestor by phage transduction and evolved in their bacterial hosts. The lysogenic bacteriophages have the potential to carry nonessential “cargo” genes or “morons” and therefore play a crucial role in the generation of genetic diversity within ExPEC.
America's Wetland? A National Survey of Willingness to Pay for Restoration of Louisiana's Coastal Wetlands

ABSTRACT A nationwide survey was conducted to estimate welfare associated with large-scale wetland restoration in coastal Louisiana. Binary- and multinomial-choice survey instruments were administered via Knowledge Networks, using the latter to estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for increments in three ecosystem services: wildlife habitat provision, storm surge protection, and fisheries productivity. Results indicate that confidence in government agencies, political leanings, and “green” lifestyle choices were significant explanatory factors. All three ecosystem services significantly affected project support, with increased fisheries productivity having the largest marginal effect, followed by improved storm surge protection and increased wildlife habitat. Mean household WTP, in the form of a one-time tax, is estimated to be $909 (confidence interval $732–$1,185), with resource users being willing to pay substantially more. This figure implies a mean aggregate willingness to pay of $105 billion (confidence interval $84–$136 billion) in excess of the State of Louisiana's estimated $50 billion cost for a statewide restoration program similar to the hypothetical restoration in this study. JEL Codes: Q51, Q57.
DETECTION OF SESQUITERPENE LACTONES IN TEN ARTEMISIA SPECIES POPULATION OF KHORASAN PROVINCES

Objective During the last three decades sesquiterpenoid lactones have emerged as one of the largest groups of plant products with over 3000 naturally occurring substances known. The genus Artemisia characteristically contains this biologically active type of secondary metabolites. With respect to increasing interest in the cytotoxic, antibiotic, phototoxic and antineoplastic activities of sesquiterpene lactones, identification of these compounds in Khorasanian Artemisia species, that some of them are endemic to Iran, can be worth while. Materials and Methods Ten species of Artemisia were collected from different parts of Khorasan Provinces of Iran. IR spectra recorded as KBr disks and in CH2Cl2 on a Unicam dp 110 spectrometer (UK). 1H-NMR (500 MHz) spectra were measured in CDCl3 using a Bruker DRX 500 spectrometer. Number of scans was 32 for all of the samples. The Herz-Hogenauer technique was applied for preparation of the terpenoid extracts. Results Our findings revealed that A. absinthium, A. ciniformis, A. fragrans, A. khorassanica, A. kopetdaghensis, A. santolina and A. sieberi had a high amount of sesquiterpene lactones. A little or no sesquiterpene lactone had been detected in other species. Differentiation of saturated and unsaturated sesquiterpene lactones was one of the advantages of 1H-NMR application in this method. Conclusion Many of tested Khorasanian Artemisia species contained high amounts of sesquiterpene lactones
The role of angiomotin phosphorylation in the Hippo pathway during preimplantation mouse development

The Hippo signaling pathway regulates a number of cellular events, including the control of cell fates in preimplantation mouse embryos. The inner and outer cells of the embryo show high and low levels of Hippo signaling, respectively. This position-dependent Hippo signaling promotes the specification of distinct cell fates. In a recent paper, we identified the molecular mechanism that controls Hippo signaling in preimplantation embryos. The junction-associated scaffold protein Angiomotin (Amot) plays a key role in this mechanism. At the adherens junctions of the inner cells, Amot activates the Hippo pathway by recruiting and activating the protein kinase large tumor suppressor (Lats). In contrast, Amot at the apical membrane of the outer cells suppresses Hippo signaling by interacting with F-actin. The phosphorylation of Amot inhibits its interaction with F-actin and activates Hippo signaling. We propose that Amot acts as a molecular switch for the Hippo pathway and links F-actin with Lats activity.
SECOs as a Mean to Survive? - Case Municipal ICT

Digitalization is putting pressures on municipal ICT services. Human and monetary resources are often very limited but the number of requirements for new services increases. In the country of research (Finland), local governments and their ICT managers are trying to find solutions to their constantly worsening situation. One of the solutions is to create inter-municipal ICT cooperation i.e. to build an ecosystem for the municipal ICT operations for taking care of daily ICT operations and to develop municipal ICT services further. However, due to the size of the municipals, their locations, previous cooperation etc., there are different operating models in use. The purpose of the current research is through three municipal ICT ecosystems to clarify the reasons behind the selected operating models, to find out how successful municipalities have been in cooperation and to understand whether a SECO could be a solution for municipalities. The results of the current research expose the positive opportunities for ecosystems in the municipal ICT environment.
Scalable game design and the development of a checklist for getting computational thinking into public schools

Game design appears to be a promising approach to interest K-12 students in Computer Science. Unfortunately, balancing motivational and educational concerns is truly challenging. Over a number of years, we have explored how to achieve a functional balance by creating a curriculum that combines increasingly complex game designs, computational thinking patterns and authoring tools. Scalable Game Design is a research project exploring new strategies of how to scale up from after school and summer programs into required curriculum of public schools through game design approaches. The project includes inner city schools, remote rural areas and Native American communities. A requirement checklist of computational thinking tools regarding curriculum, teacher training, standards and authoring tools has been developed and is being tested with thousands of students.
Ecosystem response modelling in the Murray–Darling Basin

suggests ‘the biggest advances in sustainability will come from the design and implementation of regimes of care that will have an impact on our landscapes urban and rural and the built form’ (p. 118). The supporting chapters in this Part continue to draw from around the world, exploring: a sustainable urban framework for Ho Chi Minh City; the use of ‘network cities’ in China as an integrated alternative to high density housing; sustainable renewal in London’s South Bank; and the task of making small-scale sustainability accessible beyond the cultural elite. The chapter concludes with the Queenslander style home which offers cultural and environmental sustainability complementing its subtropical landscape. The book ends with a concise summary and provides future guidance on addressing sustainability in cities through these three key design challenges. The book is well structured and simply written; without jargon or technical language, making it accessible to a broad audience. Acknowledging some of the media hype and scepticism around the term ‘sustainability’, the book forgoes these debates to suggest some alternative roadmaps for the future that are inspiring yet grounded in reality. This book would appeal to professionals in the disciplines of planning, urban design, infrastructure, architecture, sustainability, land use management and sociology who require a concise introduction to contemporary land use challenges in building and planning sustainable cities. Certainly the case studies could provide stimulating material to supplement university teaching in these disciplines. The take home message of this book is that positive inroads towards sustainability will not be achieved by sustainable ‘hard’ infrastructure or piecemeal policy alone: rather, like other complex systems, it will require interaction and input in a multi-actor framework, underpinned by a dynamic palette of social and governance processes which, as this book demonstrates, can be achieved at a range of spatial and cultural scales.
Bandwidth Enhancement of RMPA Using 2 Segment Labyrinth Metamaterial at THz

The past few years have been very eventful with respect to the evolution of the concept and implementation of “left-handed materials (LHMs)”. This paper elucidates antenna parameter optimization using 2 Segment Labyrinth metamaterial embedded in antenna substrate at high frequency (THz). Ansoft HFSS has been used to design and analyse the RMPA (rectangular microstrip patch antenna) with design frequency 9.55 THz and operating range of 8.55 THz to 10.55 THz having RT Duroid (er = 2.33) as substrate material. Magnetic properties of labyrinth resonator have been used to mathematically demonstrate the negative refraction. Nicolson Ross Wier (NRW) method has been used to retrieve the material parameters from transmission and reflection coefficient. Upon incorporation, bandwidth widens to around 4% and VSWR improves by approx 1.5%.