Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phenotyping male infertility in the mouse: how to get the most out of a ‘non-performer’

BACKGROUND Functional male gametes are produced through complex processes that take place within the testis, epididymis and female reproductive tract. A breakdown at any of these phases can result in male infertility. The production of mutant mouse models often yields an unexpected male infertility phenotype. It is with this in mind that the current review has been written. The review aims to act as a guide to the ‘non-reproductive biologist’ to facilitate a systematic analysis of sterile or subfertile mice and to assist in extracting the maximum amount of information from each model. METHODS This is a review of the original literature on defects in the processes that take a mouse spermatogonial stem cell through to a fully functional spermatozoon, which result in male infertility. Based on literature searches and personal experience, we have outlined a step-by-step strategy for the analysis of an infertile male mouse line. RESULTS A wide range of methods can be used to define the phenotype of an infertile male mouse. These methods range from histological methods such as electron microscopy and immunohistochemistry, to hormone analyses and methods to assess sperm maturation status and functional competence. CONCLUSION With the increased rate of genetically modified mouse production, the generation of mouse models with unexpected male infertility is increasing. This manuscript will help to ensure that the maximum amount of information is obtained from each mouse model and, by extension, will facilitate the knowledge of both normal fertility processes and the causes of human infertility.
The Impact of Conventional and Unconventional Monetary Policy on Expectations and Sentiment

This paper offers evidence on the effect of ECB's conventional and unconventional monetary policy on economic expectations in Euro-area countries during the US and EU crisis. We employ a range of research methodologies in a sample of nine Eurozone countries and combine expectations/sentiment indicators with a set of macroeconomic and financial variables. We find that ECB's conventional monetary policy (and Fed's monetary policy stance) has a positive and significant effect on economic expectations for Core Eurozone countries and a weak effect on Peripheral Eurozone countries. ECB's unconventional policy measures, however, have a negative short term effect on Core countries’ economic expectations. This result is robust to different methodologies (PVAR, QVAR, FAVAR) and different datasets. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of monetary policy in the determination of economic expectations.
Institutional quality and inflation dynamics : A case study of Iran

This paper examines the contribution of institutions to the inflation of Iran with emphasis on the financial market development, Central bank independence and political institutions. Results from Generalized Method of Movements (GMM) suggest that political institutions, budget deficit and oil income affect inflation via direct and indirect mechanisms. The results indicate that budget deficit even neutralize the positive impact of financial market development and central bank independence on inflation. Our findings emphasis that institutions are important to analyze price stabilization policies and inflationary pressure of deficit and oil income in Iran, as the absence of institutional quality particularly stronger, where financial markets are not fully developed and central banks are not free to follow their goals and objectives. Jel Classification: E31, E44, E50, H60, G20
Contrasted TCR b Diversity of CD 8 + and CD 8 2 T Cells in Rainbow Trout

Teleost fish express highly diverse naive TCRb (TRB) repertoires and mount strong public and private clonal responses upon infection with pathogens. Fish T cells express typical markers such as CD8, CD4-1 and CD4-2, CD3, CD28 and CTLA4. Fish CD8 T cells have been shown to be responsible for antigen-specific cell-mediated cytotoxicity in in vitro systems using histo-compatible effector and target cells. We compare here the complexity of TRB repertoires between FACS sorted CD8 and CD8 T cells from spleen and pronephros of rainbow trout. In contrast to human, while the TRB repertoire is highly diverse and polyclonal in CD8 T cells of naı̈ve fish, it appeared very different in CD8 lymphocytes with irregular CDR3 length distributions suggesting a dominance of activated clones already in naı̈ve fish or the presence of non conventional T cells. After infection with a systemic virus, CD8 T cells mount a typical response with significant skewing of CDR3 length profiles. The infection also induces significant modifications of the TRB repertoire expressed by the CD8 fraction, but for a different set of V/J combinations. In this fraction, the antiviral response results in an increase of the peak diversity of spectratypes. This unusual observation reflects the presence of a number of T cell expansions that rise the relative importance of minor peaks of the highly skewed distributions observed in unchallenged animals. These results suggest that the diversity of TRB expressed by CD8 and CD8 ab T cells may be subjected to different regulatory patterns in fish and in mammals. Citation: Castro R, Takizawa F, Chaara W, Lunazzi A, Dang TH, et al. (2013) Contrasted TCRb Diversity of CD8 and CD8 T Cells in Rainbow Trout. PLoS ONE 8(4): e60175. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0060175 Editor: R. Lee Mosley, University of Nebraska Medical Center, United States of America Received September 24, 2012; Accepted February 23, 2013; Published April 2, 2013 Copyright: 2013 Castro et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, European Community’s Sixth and Seventh Framework Programs (IMAQUANIM, Grant Agreement CT-2005-007103; LIFECYCLE, Grant Agreement 222719; and Targetfish, Grant Agreement 311993), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany and German Research Council (ACIRO, FI 604/6-1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: Uwe.Fischer@fli.bund. de (UF); pierre.boudinot@jouy.inra. fr (PB) ¤ Current address: Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal (CISA-INIA), Valdeolmos, Madrid, Spain.
Analysis of Transfer Pricing, Thin Capitalization,Andtax Haven Utilizationagainst Tax Avoidance Moderated by Corporate Social Responsibility (Empirical Study on Listed Manufacturing Companies in Indonesia Stock Exchange

This study aimsto analyze the influence of transfer pricing, thin capitalization, and tax haven utilization against tax avoidance.In this sudy, Corporate Social Responsibilityis used as a moderating variable following the use of secondary data from manufacturing companiesas listed in the stock exchange over2015-2017. Samples taken by using purposive sampling method and obtain 189 sampel consist of 63 companies during three years period. Themethod of testing the data used in this study is panel data regression analysis and descriptive statistics by using Eviews 9. The outcomeof this study showed that the transfer pricing has significant effect on tax avoidance, while thin capitalization and tax haven utilization have no significant effect on tax avoidance. Corporate social responsibility as moderating variable has significant influence on transfer pricing and tax avoidance, but Corporate social responsibility despite to be moderating vatiable has no significant influence on thin capitalization and tax haven utilization and on tax avoidance.
Selling Out?: The Politics of Navigating Conflicts between Racial Group Interest and Self-interest

Departing from accounts of minority group politics that focus on the role of group identity in advancing group members’ common interests, we investigate political decisions involving tradeoffs between group interests and simple self-interest. Using the case of black Americans, we investigate crystallized group norms about politics, internalized beliefs about group solidarity, and mechanisms for enforcing both through social pressure. Through a series of novel behavioral experiments that offer black subjects individual incentives to defect from the position most favored by black Americans as a group, we test the effects of social pressure to conform. We find that racialized social pressure and internalized beliefs in group solidarity are constraining and depress self-interested behavior. Our results speak to a common conflict—choosing between maximizing group interests and self-interest—and yet also offer specific insight into how blacks remain so homogeneous in partisan politics despite their growing ideological and economic variation.
A study to develop a consensual map of security expert knowledge structure

Security education at the tertiary level is still in its infancy, with limited consensual agreement on content requirement. The security industry is diverse and multi-disciplined, with practitioners originating from many disciplines. But security experts have a rich knowledge structure, although there has had limited research to map this knowledge structure. This limited mapping reduces the ability of tertiary educators to provide industry focused teaching and learning. The study investigated and critiqued international tertiary undergraduate security courses (N=104). Supported by both industrial and academic security experts, further analysis reduced the number of courses for content analysis (N=7). Course content was analysed and security concepts extracted. Concept extraction utilised linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC) text and content analysis. Linguistic analysis categorised the more utilised security concepts, supported by subordinate concepts. The study presented a number of significant findings. According to the study, a large majority of the critiqued security courses did not effectively represent organisational or corporate security. A table of security categories (N=14) was presented and included security technology. The study appeared to indicate that security education should include all fourteen knowledge categories. A list of subordinate security concepts (N=2001) was also produced, with security technology (N=226) presenting primary technologies
Monitoring Antimicrobial Use and Resistance: Comparison with a National Benchmark on Reducing Vancomycin Use and Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci

To determine if local monitoring data on vancomycin use directed quality improvement and decreased vancomycin use or vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), we analyzed data from 50 intensive-care units (ICUs) at 20 U.S. hospitals reporting data on antimicrobial-resistant organisms and antimicrobial agent use. We compared local data with national benchmark data (aggregated from all study hospitals). After data were adjusted for changes in prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, changes in specific prescriber practice at ICUs were associated with significant decreases in vancomycin use (mean decrease -48 defined daily doses per 1,000 patient days, p<0.001). These ICUs also reported significant decreases in VRE prevalence compared with those not using unit-specific changes in practice (mean decrease of 7.5% compared with mean increase of 5.7%, p<0.001). In this study, practice changes focused towards specific ICUs were associated with decreases in ICU vancomycin use and VRE prevalence.
Three-dimensional widgets

The 3D components of today’s user interfaces are still underdeveloped. Direct interaction with 3D objects has been limited thus far to gestural picking, manipulation with linear transformations, and simple camera motion. Further, there are no toolkits for building 3D user interfaces. We present a system which allows experimentation with 3D widgets, encapsulated 3D geometry and behavior. Our widgets are first-class objects in the same 3D environment used to develop the application. This integration of widgets and application objects provides a higher bandwidth between interface and application than exists in more traditional UI toolkit-based interfaces. We hope to allow user-interface designers to build highly interactive 3D environments more easily than is possible with today’s tools.
Measuring matching efficiency using the Public Employment Service Agency in Japan

This paper decomposes the probability of a match being formed between a job seeker and a firm into two components. In the first matching process, a job seeker applies for a job and manages to obtain an interview with a firm advertising a job vacancy at the employment service office, and in the second process, upon contact, the job seeker and the firm agree to form a match. This allows us to explore in which process matching efficiency has improved over the sample period.
Possible Protective Effect Of Melatonin On Testis In The Case Of Mobile Phone Radiation

Objective: Investigation the possible protective effect of melatonin on testis in the case of mobile phone radiation by using light microscopic examinations. Methods: 24 male Wistar albino rats were divided into 4 equal groups. Throughout in 90-day experiment, there was no application performed to control group. The second group was exposed to 2100 MHz radiation for 30 minutes. Subcutaneous melatonin was enjected to the third group. Subcutaneous melatonin enjection was applied 40 minutes before radiation and then radiation was exposed for 30 minutes to the fourth group. At the end of the experiment, testis tissues were taken from subjects which was sacrificed under high-dose anesthesia and also measured. Light microscobic monitoring methods were applied. In order to examine structural changes, slides were stained with Hematoxylin-Eosin and to evaluate the basal membrane, PAS staining were performed. Measurements of seminiferous tubules, germinal epithelium and basement membrane thickness were analyzed statistically. Results: Regular structure of seminiferous epithelium disrupted, edema was seen between seminiferous epithelium cells. In the radiation and melatonin group it was seen that, the structure of seminiferous tubule was highly protected. Testicular weight showed no differences between experimental groups statistically, but in radiation group the thickness of basement membrane and the diameter of the seminiferous tubule increased however, the thickness of germinal epithelium decreased according to statistical analyses. Conclusion: As a result, high frequency mobile phone radiation leads to some structural changes on testis especially in spermatogenesis and spermiogenesis levels. Also it was concluded that melatonin showed protective property against these changes.
Studies on the Mechanism of the Epileptiform Activity Induced by U18666A. II. Concentration, Half‐Life and Distribution of Radiolabeled U18666A in the Brain

Summary: The concentration, half‐life, and distribution in brain of U18666A, a drug that can drastically alter cerebral lipids and induce a chronic epileptiform state, was determined following both acute and chronic drug administration. U18666A specifically labeled with tritium was prepared by custom synthesis. Brain levels of 1 times 10‐6 M and higher were reached soon after giving an acute 10‐mg/kg dose (i.p. or s.c.) of U18666A containing 7‐3H‐U18666A of known specific activity. A steady state concentration of 1 to 2 times 10‐6 M was reached with chronic injection of 10 mg/kg every 4th day, a treatment schedule that results in altered brain lipids and induction of epilepsy if begun soon after birth. The disappearance of U18666A from both brain and serum was described by two similar biexponential processes, a brief rapid clearance (t1/2= 10 h) and a sustained and much slower one (t1/2= 65 h). Brain levels of the drug were about 10 times higher than serum at all times examined. Few differences were seen in the regional distribution of radiolabeled drug in brain as determined by both direct analysis and by autoradiographic examination; but the drug did concentrate in lipid‐rich subcellular fractions. For example, the synaptosome and myelin fractions each contained about 25–35% of both the total 3H‐labeled drug and total lipid in whole brain. The lipid composition of these fractions was drastically altered in treated animals. In conclusion, the chronic epileptiform state induced by U18666A does not appear to involve localization of the drug in a specific brain region or particular cell type. Rather, the condition could involve localization of the drug in lipid‐rich membranes and marked changes in the composition of these membranes.
Powerful knowledge, transformations and the need for empirical studies across school subjects

In this article, we explore the concept of 'powerful knowledge' which, from a curriculum studies perspective, refers to the aspects of content knowledge towards which teaching should be oriented. We then consider how the concept of 'powerful knowledge' can be developed and operationalized as a research framework within studies in subject-specific didactics across the curriculum by relating it to the analytical concept of 'transformation'. Transformation is perceived in this case as an integrative process in which content knowledge is transformed into knowledge that is taught and learned through various transformation processes both outside and within the educational system. We argue that powerful knowledge cannot be identified based on the discipline alone, but needs to consider transformation processes and be empirically explored. A variety of theories and frameworks developed within the European research tradition of didactics are described as ways to study transformation processes related to powerful knowledge at different institutional levels as well as between different subjects and disciplines. A comparative research framework related to subject-specific education is proposed around three research questions.
Compressive Sensing Using Symmetric Alpha-Stable Distributions – Part I : Robust Nonlinear Sampling

In the feld of compressive sensing (CS), signal and noise models of fnite variance are well established due to their analytical tractability and practical appeal. Typically, sampling and reconstruction methods are designed by assuming light-tailed models for the underlying signal and/or noise statistics. However, when we operate in highly impulsive environments, non-Gaussian infnite variance generating processes appear naturally for the signal and/or noise components. Because of this, conventional linear sampling operators, coupled with traditional reconstruction methods, are ineffcient to accurately recover the original signal. To address these limitations, recent approaches adopted the use of algebraic-tailed statistical models, such as the Lévy and Cauchy distributions, to construct nonlinear sampling operators and robust reconstruction methods. However, the performance of these methods is degraded when the signal and/or noise statistics deviate signifcantly from the assumed model. To address this problem, this paper and the companion paper (Part II) propose an innovative CS framework exploiting the power of symmetric alpha-stable distributions in modeling highly impulsive signals. This paper introduces an effcient compressive sampling method that suppresses the effects of impulsive observation noise by designing a robust nonlinear sampling operator based on a generalized alpha-stable matched flter. In the companion paper (Part II), a novel greedy algorithm is introduced for reconstructing sparse signals, which achieves increased robustness to impulsive sampling noise. The theoretical justifcation along with the experimental evaluation demonstrate the improved performance of the proposed framework when compared against state-of-theart CS techniques for a broad range of impulsive environments.
Chloride Channelopathies of ClC-2

Chloride channels (ClCs) have gained worldwide interest because of their molecular diversity, widespread distribution in mammalian tissues and organs, and their link to various human diseases. Nine different ClCs have been molecularly identified and functionally characterized in mammals. ClC-2 is one of nine mammalian members of the ClC family. It possesses unique biophysical characteristics, pharmacological properties, and molecular features that distinguish it from other ClC family members. ClC-2 has wide organ/tissue distribution and is ubiquitously expressed. Published studies consistently point to a high degree of conservation of ClC-2 function and regulation across various species from nematodes to humans over vast evolutionary time spans. ClC-2 has been intensively and extensively studied over the past two decades, leading to the accumulation of a plethora of information to advance our understanding of its pathophysiological functions; however, many controversies still exist. It is necessary to analyze the research findings, and integrate different views to have a better understanding of ClC-2. This review focuses on ClC-2 only, providing an analytical overview of the available literature. Nearly every aspect of ClC-2 is discussed in the review: molecular features, biophysical characteristics, pharmacological properties, cellular function, regulation of expression and function, and channelopathies.
Intra-national Trade Costs : Canadian Border Puzzles ∗ †

We develop and apply a novel procedure to flexibly identify bilateral border barriers aside from those associated with bilateral distance and contiguity. The bilateral border barriers very significantly depress inter-provincial trade volume for some pairs, though the overall effect is rather small in the case of Canada. Discriminatory provincial policies and informal behavior are one explanation along with other unknown variables acting on internal borders. Bilateral distance imposes much larger estimated interand intra-regional trade costs overall. Contiguity between provinces accounts for little. Consistent trade cost aggregation procedures are developed and applied for groups of regions and/or sectors. JEL Classification Codes: F13, F14, F16
Association between leptin and asthma in adults

Background: Leptin, a pro-inflammatory cytokine produced by adipose tissue, has previously been shown to be associated with asthma in children. We hypothesised that high serum leptin concentrations would also be associated with asthma in adults. Methods: The Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey is a cross sectional study that included fasting serum leptin concentrations and self-report of doctor diagnosed asthma. Data were analysed using multivariable logistic regression analysis. Results: Of 5876 participants, those with current asthma had a higher mean unadjusted leptin concentration than those who had never had asthma (geometric mean (SE) 9.2 (0.6) μg/l v 7.6 (0.2) μg/l; p = 0.02). After adjustment for triceps skinfold thickness and other covariates, the association between leptin and asthma appeared stronger in women than in men, and in premenopausal women than in postmenopausal women. Body mass index (BMI) was also associated with current asthma in women, but this association was not significantly affected by adjustment for leptin concentrations. Conclusions: The results of this large population based study support the hypothesis that leptin is associated with asthma in women. In addition, while BMI also is related to asthma in women, this study does not support the suggestion that leptin contributes significantly to this association.