Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Venture Capital Policy Review: United States

The United States has the oldest and most developed venture capital industry in the OECD. Several successful high-technology companies in computers and communications, as well as in healthrelated sectors and services, were venture-backed. Young high-growth firms also benefit from a continuum of complementary finance from business angels, institutional investors and second-tier stock markets. The government played an active role in the early phases of the venture capital industry through the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program and various technology development schemes. A reduction in capital gains tax rates and liberalisation of rules for pension fund investments in risky assets in the late 1970s also unlocked new capital sources. Venture capital activity, however, has been quite cyclical. Periods of high fund-raising and investment in the 1980s and 1990s were followed by market downturns with negative effects on small firm survival and growth. Fundamental structural . Politiques de capital-risque aux Etats-Unis Le secteur du capital-risque aux Etats-Unis est le plus ancien et le mieux developpe des pays de l’OCDE. Plusieurs societes de haute technologie, qui ont fait leurs preuves dans l’informatique et les communications, mais aussi dans les secteurs et services lies a la sante, ont ete financees par du capital-risque. Les jeunes entreprises a forte croissance beneficient egalement d’apports reguliers de financements complementaires de la part des investisseurs providentiels (business angels), des investisseurs institutionnels, et des seconds marches. Les pouvoirs publics ont joue un role determinant pendant les premieres phases du developpement du secteur du capital-risque aux Etats-Unis par le biais du program Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) et de divers dispositifs de promotion de la technologie. La reduction des taux d’imposition des plus-values et l’assouplissement des regles applicables aux fonds de pension permettant a ces derniers de faire des investissement a risque a .
Maximizing Stakeholders' Interests: An Empirical Analysis of the Stakeholder Approach to Corporate Governance

The purpose of this paper is to build on the emerging stakeholder model of corporate governance by analyzing the CSR function at board level, board diversity, and stakeholder engagement, and how it relates to financial performance. Based on an empirical study of an international sample of large companies, we find board responsibility for CSR to be a key factor in promoting engagement with primary and secondary stakeholders of the firm. Depending on the legal tradition of the country in which the company is based, we find evidence that board diversity and stakeholder engagement are positively correlated with firm financial performance.
Fiscal Fatigue and Debt Sustainability: Empirical Evidence from the Eurozone 1980-2013

Fiscal fatigue may lead a country to stop adjusting when debt continues rising in spite of a prolonged fiscal adjustment. Once fiscal fatigue sets in, the country may stop adjusting, thus compromising debt sustainability. However, the absence of sufficient adjustment may be the consequence of governments implementing delayed adjustment as a result of the domestic policy-making process. This paper investigates the factors that will lead to delayed adjustment instead of fiscal fatigue in the face of rising debt. Strong institutions and underlying macroeconomic conditions can be useful in averting the fiscal fatigue, and lead to an improvement in the fiscal balance once the debt limit has been reached.
Homocysteine Induces Expression and Secretion of Monocyte Chemoattractant Protein-1 and Interleukin-8 in Human Aortic Endothelial Cells: Implications for Vascular Disease

Background—Proinflammatory cytokines play key roles in atherogenesis and disease progression. Because hyperhomocysteinemia is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease, we hypothesized that homocysteine could be atherogenic by altering the expression of specific cytokines in vascular endothelial cells. Methods and Results—Northern blot and RNase protection assays showed that dl-homocysteine induced mRNA expression of the proinflammatory cytokines monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) and interleukin-8 (IL-8) in cultured human aortic endothelial cells (HAECs). Homocysteine had no effect on expression of other cytokines, namely tumor necrosis factor-&agr;, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor, interleukin-1&bgr;, and transforming growth factor-&bgr;. MCP-1 mRNA expression increased 1 hour after homocysteine treatment, reached a maximum within 2 to 4 hours, and declined to basal levels over the next 24 hours. Induction of mRNA expression for both chemokines was observed with as little as 10 &mgr;mol/L dl-homocysteine, and maximal expression was achieved with 50 &mgr;mol/L dl-homocysteine. Homocysteine also triggered the release of MCP-1 and IL-8 protein from HAECs into the culture medium. The induction was specific for homocysteine, because equimolar concentrations of l-homocystine, l-cysteine, and l-methionine had no effect on mRNA levels and protein release. Furthermore, l-homocysteine induced chemokine expression, but d-homocysteine did not, thus demonstrating enantiomeric specificity. The culture medium from homocysteine-treated HAECs promoted chemotaxis in human peripheral blood monocytes and U937 cells. Anti-human recombinant MCP-1 antibody blocked the migration. Conclusions—Pathophysiological levels of l-homocysteine alter endothelial cell function by upregulating MCP-1 and IL-8 expression and secretion. This suggests that l-homocysteine may contribute to the initiation and progression of vascular disease by promoting leukocyte recruitment.
Obtaining Evidence Abroad in Criminal Cases 2010

In today's "flatter" world, the most serious criminal activity affecting the United States is increasingly transnational, thereby requiring the active assistance of other countries to combat it. The United States only relatively recently has dealt with this problem by entering into a growing number of bilateral and multilateral treaties, agreements, and formal and informal law enforcement arrangements. This treatise, designed for prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and academics, is written by the former Department of Justice official responsible for supervising the implementation and design of United States treaties and statutes as it began to cope with this explosion of transnational criminal activity. It describes and analyzes in detail the legal aspects of, and operation under, these treaties, statutes, and other measures. Additional titles by Michael Abbell include: * International Prisoner Transfer 2010 * Extradition to and from the United States 2010
High Frequency Quartz Micro Balances: A Promising Path to Enhanced Sensitivity of Gravimetric Sensors

An array of 50 MHz quartz microbalances (QMBs) coated with a dendronized polymer was used to detect small amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the gas phase. The results were compared to those obtained with the commonly used 10 MHz QMBs. The 50 MHz QMBs proved to be a powerful tool for the detection of VOCs in the gas phase; therefore, they represent a promising alternative to the much more delicate surface acoustic wave devices (SAWs).
Histone Methylation Regulates Memory Formation

It has been established that regulation of chromatin structure through post-translational modification of histone proteins, primarily histone H3 phosphorylation and acetylation, is an important early step in the induction of synaptic plasticity and formation of long-term memory. In this study, we investigated the contribution of another histone modification, histone methylation, to memory formation in the adult hippocampus. We found that trimethylation of histone H3 at lysine 4 (H3K4), an active mark for transcription, is upregulated in hippocampus 1 h following contextual fear conditioning. In addition, we found that dimethylation of histone H3 at lysine 9 (H3K9), a molecular mark associated with transcriptional silencing, is increased 1 h after fear conditioning and decreased 24 h after context exposure alone and contextual fear conditioning. Trimethylated H3K4 levels returned to baseline levels at 24 h. We also found that mice deficient in the H3K4-specific histone methyltransferase, Mll, displayed deficits in contextual fear conditioning relative to wild-type animals. This suggests that histone methylation is required for proper long-term consolidation of contextual fear memories. Interestingly, inhibition of histone deacetylases (HDACs) with sodium butyrate (NaB) resulted in increased H3K4 trimethylation and decreased H3K9 dimethylation in hippocampus following contextual fear conditioning. Correspondingly, we found that fear learning triggered increases in H3K4 trimethylation at specific gene promoter regions (Zif268 and bdnf) with altered DNA methylation and MeCP2 DNA binding. Zif268 DNA methylation levels returned to baseline at 24 h. Together, these data demonstrate that histone methylation is actively regulated in the hippocampus and facilitates long-term memory formation.
Multiplicity computing: a vision of software engineering for next-generation computing platform applications

New technologies have recently emerged to challenge the very nature of computing: multicore processors, virtualized operating systems and networks, and data-center clouds. One can view these technologies as forming levels within a new, global computing platform. We aim to open a new area of research, called multiplicity computing, that takes a radically different approach to the engineering of applications for this platform. Unlike other efforts, which are largely focused on innovations within specific levels, multiplicity computing embraces the platform as a virtually unlimited space of essentially redundant resources. This space is formed as a whole from the cross product of resources available at each level in the platform, offering a "multiplicity" of end-to-end resources. We seek to discover fundamentally new ways of exploiting the combinatorial multiplicity of computational, communication, and storage resources to obtain scalable applications exhibiting improved quality, dependability, and security that are both predictable and measurable.
Free-Form Surface Matching using Mean Field Theory

A new method for free-form surface matching is presented. The method provides an initial guess of the transformation, which may subsequently be reened by the Iterated Closest Point method. The algorithm is based on Mean Field Theory (MFT). MFT has recently been shown to be a powerful optimization technique. It has a very similar architecture to a Hoppeld neural network, but is considerably more eeective. We also show how the computational complexity can be substantially improved by a hashing scheme. This combination of geometric hashing with MFT is likely to be applicable to many other recognition and labelling problems.
Osteochondral tissue engineering: scaffolds, stem cells and applications

Osteochondral tissue engineering has shown an increasing development to provide suitable strategies for the regeneration of damaged cartilage and underlying subchondral bone tissue. For reasons of the limitation in the capacity of articular cartilage to self‐repair, it is essential to develop approaches based on suitable scaffolds made of appropriate engineered biomaterials. The combination of biodegradable polymers and bioactive ceramics in a variety of composite structures is promising in this area, whereby the fabrication methods, associated cells and signalling factors determine the success of the strategies. The objective of this review is to present and discuss approaches being proposed in osteochondral tissue engineering, which are focused on the application of various materials forming bilayered composite scaffolds, including polymers and ceramics, discussing the variety of scaffold designs and fabrication methods being developed. Additionally, cell sources and biological protein incorporation methods are discussed, addressing their interaction with scaffolds and highlighting the potential for creating a new generation of bilayered composite scaffolds that can mimic the native interfacial tissue properties, and are able to adapt to the biological environment.
THE EFFECT OF SALINITY ON SOME PHYSIOLOGICAL PARAMETERS IN TWO MAIZE CULTIVARS

Summary. In this study, effect of salinity with different osmotic potential on shoot length, total fresh and dry weight, amounts of organic (proline) and inorganic (K + and Na + ) substance of leaf tissue, the Na + /K + ratio, and leaf area, relative water content (RWC) and leaf osmolality in two maize (Zea mays L., var. intendata, C.6127 and DK.623) cultivars which are grown as a second yield in the Southeastern Anatolia Region (SAR) of Turkey, were investigated. Plants were grown for 30 days in the controlled growth room. Salinized culture solutions at different osmotic potential (0, -0.1, -0.3 and -0.5 MPa) prepared by adding varying amounts of NaCl and CaCl 2 to the main culture solution were applied to plants from the beginning of the germination. As a result the shoot length, total fresh and dry weight and the leaf area decreased, amounts of proline Na + , Na + /K + ratio and the leaf osmolality increased, but amounts of K + did not change significantly with increasing stress, and salt stress caused a similar decrease in leaf relative water content in both maize cultivars.
Non-TrkA-expressing small DRG neurons are lost in TrkA deficient mice

Experiments over the past decade in which NGF/TrkA signaling has been abolished by antibodies or targeted gene mutations have shown that 70- 85% of dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons require NGF for survival during development. There is consensus that many of the NGF-dependent neurons are small-diameter, peptidergic neurons subserving nociception. These neurons express the signaling receptor for NGF, TrkA. There is a major discrepancy, however, between the percentage of DRG neurons which require NGF for survival (70–85%) and percentage of DRG neurons expressing TrkA receptors (40–50%). The identity of these non-TrkA expressing, NGF-dependent neurons has not been established. A candidate group is a population of small DRG neurons with unmyelinated axons which bind BSI isolectins from the plant, Bandeiraea simplicifolia. We show here that most of these BSI-binding DRG neurons do not express TrkA in adult mice. However, in mutant mice in which NGF/TrkA signaling has been abolished by inactivation of the trkA gene, BSI-staining in the DRG and dorsal horn is completely eliminated. BSI-binding DRG cells are thus the first identified neuronal population in which cells do not express TrkA in maturity, but require NGF/TrkA signaling for survival during embryonic development. These neurons must either depend on NGF via a novel, indirect mechanism or alternatively, downregulate TrkA expression during development.
Maternal mortality in 2000: estimates developed by WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA.

Reduction of maternal mortality has been endorsed as a key development goal by countries and is included in consensus documents emanating from international conferences such as the World Summit for Children in 1990 the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 and the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 and their respective five-year follow-up evaluations of progress in 1999 and 2000 the Millennium Declaration in 2000 and the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children in 2002. In order to monitor progress efforts have to be made to address the lack of reliable data particularly in settings where maternal mortality is thought to be most serious. The inclusion of maternal mortality reduction in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) stimulates increased attention to the issue and creates additional demands for information.1The first set of global and national estimates for 1990 was developed in order to strengthen the information base2. WHO UNICEF and UNFPA undertook a second effort to produce global and national estimates for the year 1995.3 Given that a substantial amount of new data has become available since then it was decided to repeat the exercise. This document presents estimates of maternal mortality by country and region for the year 2000. It describes the background rationale and history of estimates of maternal mortality and the methodology used in 2000 compared with the approaches used in previous exercises in 1990 and 1995. The document opens by summarising the complexity involved in measuring maternal mortality and the reasons why such measurement is subject to uncertainty particularly when it comes to monitoring progress. Subsequently the rationale for the development of estimates of maternal mortality is presented along with a description of the process through which this was accomplished for the year 2000. This is followed by an analysis and interpretation of the results pointing out some of the pitfalls that may be encountered in attempting to use the estimates to draw conclusions about trends.23 The final part of the document presents a summary of the kind of information needed to build a fuller understanding of both the levels and trends in maternal mortality and the interventions needed to achieve sustained reductions in the coming few years. (excerpt)
Does the Marginal Tax Rate Affect Activity in the Informal Sector?

This paper measures the effect of changing the marginal tax rate on earned income on the supply of labor to the informal sector with the purpose of evading taxation. Unlike any previous study, we do this by directly measuring the effect of a Danish 2010 tax reform that changed the marginal rate of taxation of earned income from 63 percent to 56 percent. The analysis is based on longitudinal survey data collected over the period 2009–2012. In each survey round we asked people about their activity in the informal sector. The effect of the tax reform on informal sector activity is measured by comparing the evolution of informal sector activity from 2009 to 2012 for people who in 2009 paid the middle and top rate of tax with people who did not. We find that there is no connection between the marginal tax rate and the supply of labor to the informal sector. As part of the survey we asked people about their perceived marginal net-of-tax income, and we show that the survey participants did not change their perception of their marginal net-of-tax income from before to after the reform. This suggests that the respondents in our survey were not aware of the implications of the reform. We also investigate the effect of the introduction of a tax deduction for the purchase of selected services on the supply of labor to the informal sector. Here again we are unable to detect any effect. Overall, our results indicate the changing the after-tax price of services is not an effective way of reducing undeclared work.
Wukong: Toward a Cloud-Oriented File Service for Mobile Devices

Along with the rapid growth of heterogeneous cloud services and network technologies, more mobile devices use cloud storage services to enlarge the capacity and share data in our daily lives. We commonly use cloud storage service clients in a straight forward fashion, since we may easily obtain most client-side software from many services providers. However, when more devices and users participate in heterogeneous services, the difficulty increases to manage these services efficiently and conveniently. In this paper we design and implement a novel cloud-oriented file service, Wukong, which provides a user-friendly and highly-available facilitative data access method for mobile devices in cloud settings. By using the innovative storage abstraction layer and a set of optimization strategies, Wukong supports heterogeneous services with a relatively high performance. By evaluating a prototype in a systematic way on the aspects of the supporting interface, system performance, and the system resource cost, we find that this easily operable file service has a high usability and extensibility. It costs about 50 to 150 lines of code to implement a new backend service supporting plugin. Wukong achieves an acceptable throughput of 179.11 KB/s in an ADSL environment and 80.68 KB/s under a country EVDO 3G network with negligible overhead.
Sodium dependence of acetate formation by the acetogenic bacterium Acetobacterium woodii

Growth of Acetobacterium woodii on fructose was stimulated by Na+; this stimulation was paralleled by a shift of the acetate-fructose ratio from 2.1 to 2.7. Growth on H2-CO2 or on methanol plus CO2 was strictly dependent on the presence of sodium ions in the medium. Acetate formation from formaldehyde plus H2-CO by resting cells required Na+, but from methanol plus H2-CO did not. This is analogous to H2-CO2 reduction to methane by Methanosarcina barkeri, which involves a sodium pump (V. Müller, C. Winner, and G. Gottschalk, Eur. J. Biochem. 178:519-525, 1988). This suggests that the reduction of methylenetetrahydrofolate to methyltetrahydrofolate is the Na+-requiring reaction. A sodium gradient (Na+ out/Na+ in = 32, delta pNa = -91 mV) was built up when resting cells of A. woodii were incubated under H2-CO2. Acetogenesis was inhibited when the delta pNa was dissipated by monensin.
Fabrication and modeling of organic thin-film transistor on glass substrate

Organic thin film transistors have been fabricated using pentacene as an active material. Aluminium gate electrodes, pentacene active layers and gold source-drain contacts were fabricated on glass substrate using thermal evaporation though metallic mask. Gate dielectric layers were processed by solution-process spin-coating. The fabricated transistor exhibited the maximum carrier mobility of 0.01 cm2/V-s and the on/off current current ratio over 400.
W 4 S: a Real-time System for Detecting and Tracking People in 2 1 2 D

W 4S is a real time visual surveillance system for detecting and tracking people and monitoring their activities in an outdoor environment by integrating realtime stereo computation into an intensitybased detection and tracking system. Unlike many systems for tracking people, W S makes no use of color cues. Instead, W S employs a combination of stereo, shape analysis and tracking to locate people and their parts (head, hands, feet, torso) and create models of people's appearance so that they can be tracked through interactions such as occlusions. W 4S is capable of simultaneously tracking multiple people even with occlusion. It runs at 5-20 Hz for 320x120 resolution images on a dual-pentium 200 PC.
Predictor@Home: A "Protein Structure Prediction Supercomputer' Based on Global Computing

Predicting the structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence is a complex process, the understanding of which could be used to gain new insight into the nature of protein functions or provide targets for structure-based design of drugs to treat new and existing diseases. While protein structures can be accurately modeled using computational methods based on all-atom physics-based force fields including implicit solvation, these methods require extensive sampling of native-like protein conformations for successful prediction and, consequently, they are often limited by inadequate computing power. To address this problem, we developed Predictor@ Home, a "structure prediction supercomputer powered by the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) framework and based on the global computing paradigm (i.e., volunteered computing resources interconnected to the Internet and owned by the public). In this paper, we describe the protocol we employed for protein structure prediction and its integration into a global computing architecture based on public resources. We show how Predictor@Home significantly improved our ability to predict protein structures by increasing our sampling capacity by one to two orders of magnitude