Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pathophysiological Similarities and Synergisms in Alcoholic and Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis

Chronic alcohol consumption is one of the main etiological factors for liver disease worldwide, however only a fraction of drinkers develop significant hepatic inflammation (alcoholic steatohepatitis), and even less progress to significant hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis. The pathophysiological significance of hepatic lipid accumulation in the absence of significant alcohol consumption is also increasingly recognized. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is regarded as the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome, and it is the most common cause of liver enzyme elevations in Western countries. Similarly to alcoholic liver disease, NAFLD encompasses mild hepatic steatosis to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis with significant necroinflammation and progressive fibrosis. Several clinical studies suggest a strong causative link between the consumption of alcohol and progressive liver disease in individuals with high fat intake and/or diabetes. However, it is incompletely understood how alcohol and obesity interact and whether the combined effects on the progression of liver injury are additive or synergistic. This review describes single as well as combined effects of alcohol and (components of) the metabolic syndrome on hepatic steatosis, inflammation and fibrosis. In addition to direct effects on the liver, the view is expanded to other organs affected by chronic alcohol consumption or the metabolic syndrome, to understand also extrahepatic pathophysiological mechanisms involved in hepatocellular injury. Undoubtedly, alcohol and the metabolic syndrome appear as a dangerous mix, and there are important synergistic effects of either condition with regard to crucial triggers of liver injury.
Misspecification Testing: Non-Invariance of Expectations Models of Inflation

Many economic models (such as the new-Keynesian Phillips curve, NKPC) include expected future values, often estimated after replacing the expected value by the actual future outcome, using Instrumental Variables (IV) or Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). Although crises, breaks, and regime shifts are relatively common, the underlying theory does not allow for their occurrence. We show the consequences for such models of breaks in data processes, and propose an impulse-indicator saturation test of such specifications, applied to USA and Euro-area NKPCs.
Who Lobbies the European Union? National Interest Groups in a Multilevel Polity

What explains variation across national interest groups in their amount of lobbying on legislative proposals in the European Union (EU)? We present an argument that leads to the expectation that resource-rich associations engage in more lobbying on EU legislation than other associations. Moreover, we expect business associations to have privileged access to the European Commission and national governments; and citizens’ groups to parliaments. Using original data from a survey of 1417 interesgroups in Germany, Ireland and Spain, we find support for these expectations. We conclude that national associations are heavily involved in EU lobbying, but that resource-endowment and type matter for access. The paper is of relevance to the literatures on interest groups in the EU, the EU’s (alleged) democratic deficit, and the role of civil society in governance beyond the nation state.
Results concerning same modal systems that contain S2

It is well known that if a postulate LLCpp or a rule of procedure ├α→├Lα (from a thesis α of a considered system to infer a thesis Lα of that system) is added to Lewis's modal system S3, we get his system S4 (see [7], p. 148). It is also known that the addition of this rule to S2 and SI has the effect of converting these systems into the Gödel-Feys-von Wright system T (M). My purpose in this paper is first to draw attention to some other ways of converting S3 and S2 into S4 and T respectively, as well as to extend a theorem of Halldén on S3, S4 and S7 to S2, T and S6. The results reached will also apply to the systems S3.5, S5 and S7.5, where S3.5 and S7.5 are obtained, respectively, from S3 and S7 by the addition of the postulate CNLpLNLp; an answer will be given to the question of irreducible modalities in S3.5. Moreover, two results will be proved that bear on the problem whether the systems S2 and T can be axiomatized by means of a finite number of axiom schemata and material detachment as the only primitive rule of inference.
Downregulated miR-31 level associates with poor prognosis of gastric cancer and its restoration suppresses tumor cell malignant phenotypes by inhibiting E2F2

The miRNA microarray analysis showed that miR-31 was reduced in gastric cancer. This study further assessed miR-31 expression and role of miR-31 in gastric cancer tissues and cell lines. The data showed that miR-31 expression was down-regulated in 40 cases of gastric cancer tissues compared to the adjacent normal tissues, and low expression of miR-31 was associated with poor tumor differentiation, lymph node metastasis, advanced T stage and worse overall survival of gastric cancer patients. Ectopic expression of miR-31 reduced tumor cell viability, enhanced apoptosis, arrested tumor cells at G1 transition, and reduced tumor cell migration and invasion in SGC-7901 and MGC-803 gastric cell lines in vitro. Enforced expression of miR-31 also inhibited growth of engrafted tumors in vivo. Luciferase reporter assays and western blot revealed that E2F2 is the direct target of miR-31. E2F2 expression was upregulated in gastric cancer tissues, and inversely associated with miR-31 levels, while knockdown of E2F2 expression mimicked miR-31 anti-tumor activity in gastric cancer cells, but the ectopic expression of E2F2 rescued the miR-31-mediated inhibition in gastric cell lines. Taken together, these results demonstrated that miR-31 acts as a crucial tumor suppressive activity by inhibiting E2F2s expression. Thus, miR-31 might be a candidate therapeutic target for gastric cancer patients.
Discriminating Scrapie and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Isolates by Infrared Spectroscopy of Pathological Prion Protein*

For the surveillance of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) in animals and humans, the discrimination of different TSE strains causing scrapie, BSE, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease constitutes a substantial challenge. We addressed this problem by Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy of pathological prion protein PrP27–30. Different isolates of hamster-adapted scrapie (263K, 22A-H, and ME7-H) and BSE (BSE-H) were passaged in Syrian hamsters. Two of these agents, 22A-H and ME7-H, caused TSEs with indistinguishable clinical symptoms, neuropathological changes, and electrophoretic mobilities and glycosylation patterns of PrP27–30. However, FT-IR spectroscopy revealed that PrP27–30 of all four isolates featured different characteristics in the secondary structure, allowing a clear distinction between the passaged TSE agents. FT-IR analysis showed that phenotypic information is mirrored in β-sheet and other secondary structure elements of PrP27–30, also in cases where immunobiochemical typing failed to detect structural differences. If the findings of this study hold true for nonexperimental TSEs in animals and humans, FT-IR characterization of PrP27–30 may provide a versatile tool for molecular strain typing without antibodies and without restrictions to specific TSEs or mammalian species.
Information processing in the stock market around anticipated accounting information: earnings release

Earnings announcements are anticipated events with significant price impacts. This fact can motivate informed traders to trade on private information and liquidity providers to reduce liquidity in order to be careful about insider trading. In this paper, we examine the effect of earnings announcements on information asymmetry. Specifically, we investigate whether liquidity suppliers value the possibility of trading with informed agents and whether market behaviour reflects this. To achieve this objective, we take into account the sign of the surprise, the quarter of the announcement, the quantity of previous information and the quality of the information released. One of the main results of the paper is the support of market efficiency. This result is important nowadays since this hypothesis is being questioned after the irruption of the financial crisis.
Factors Influencing Faculty Use of Technology in Online Instruction: A Case Study

Online education has become a staple of higher education institutions. In the latest survey conducted by the Sloan Foundation, it was found that over two-thirds of higher education institutions were offering a variety of online courses and programs. According to Allen and Seaman (2008), over 20% of all students took at least one online course in 2006 and this is projected to continue to increase over time. However, observations at a specific urban university in the mid-west, shows vast variation in terms of faculty who choose to utilize online instructional technologies and a significant lag in desired online development. With the
Firm and Interruptible Pricing Patterns: Public versus Private Gas Distribution Utilities*

This study presents a model of the determination of firm and interruptible gas pricing patterns for a sample of municipal and private natural gas distribution utilities. Firm and interruptible gas pricing is widely used by gas distributors as an alternative to peak and off-peak pricing. How enterprise form affects these pricing patterns is the focus of this study. Although state regulated municipals are included in the analysis, the focus of the investigation is on the difference between state regulated privates and locally regulated (unregulated) municipals since these are the major options from a public policy perspective. The natural gas distribution industry is chosen for study since this industry is largely ignored in the empirical literature. The few gas distribution pricing studies that exist are generally quite limited in scope, examine the economic efficiency of private gas distributors from a cost and profit perspective, or focus upon state regulatory effects on service contracts or private distributors' pricing.
Ubiquitous and tenacious methylation of the CpG site in codon 248 of the p53 gene may explain its frequent appearance as a mutational hot spot in human cancer

Cytosine methylation at CpG dinucleotides is thought to cause more than one-third of all transition mutations responsible for human genetic diseases and cancer. We investigated the methylation status of the CpG dinucleotide at codon 248 in exon 7 of the p53 gene because this codon is a hot spot for inactivating mutations in the germ line and in most human somatic tissues examined. Codon 248 is contained within an HpaII site (CCGG), and the methylation status of this and flanking CpG sites was analyzed by using the methylation-sensitive enzymes CfoI (GCGC) and HpaII. Codon 248 and the CfoI and HpaII sites in the flanking introns were methylated in every tissue and cell line examined, indicating extensive methylation of this region in the p53 gene. Exhaustive treatment of an osteogenic sarcoma cell line, TE85, with the hypomethylating drug 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine did not demethylate codon 248 or the CfoI sites in intron 6, although considerable global demethylation of the p53 gene was induced. Constructs containing either exon 7 alone or exon 7 and the flanking introns were transfected into TE85 cells to determine whether de novo methylation would occur. The presence of exon 7 alone caused some de novo methylation to occur at codon 248. More extensive de novo methylation of the CfoI sites in intron 6, which contains an Alu sequence, occurred in cells transfected with a vector containing exon 7 and flanking introns. With longer time in culture, there was increased methylation at the CfoI sites, and de novo methylation of codon 248 and its flanking HpaII sites was observed. These de novo-methylated sites were also resistant to 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine-induced demethylation. The frequent methylation of codon 248 and adjacent Alu sequence may explain the enhanced mutability of this site as a result of the deamination of the 5-methylcytosine.
Research review: maternal prenatal distress and poor nutrition - mutually influencing risk factors affecting infant neurocognitive development.

BACKGROUND Accumulating data from animal and human studies indicate that the prenatal environment plays a significant role in shaping children's neurocognitive development. Clinical, epidemiologic, and basic science research suggests that two experiences relatively common in pregnancy - an unhealthy maternal diet and psychosocial distress - significantly affect children's future neurodevelopment. These prenatal experiences exert their influence in the context of one another and yet, almost uniformly, are studied independently. SCOPE AND METHOD OF REVIEW In this review, we suggest that studying neurocognitive development in children in relation to both prenatal exposures is ecologically most relevant, and methodologically most sound. To support this approach, we selectively review two research topics that demonstrate the need for dual exposure studies, including exemplar findings on (a) the associations between pregnant women's inadequate maternal intake of key nutrients - protein, fat, iron, zinc, and choline - as well as distress in relation to overlapping effects on children's neurocognitive development; and (b) cross-talk between the biology of stress and nutrition that can amplify each experience for the mother and fetus,. We also consider obstacles to this kind of study design, such as questions of statistical methods for 'disentangling' the exposure effects, and aim to provide some answers. CONCLUSION Studies that specifically include both exposures in their design can begin to determine the relative and/or synergistic impact of these prenatal experiences on developmental trajectories - and thereby contribute most fully to the understanding of the early origins of health and disease.
Government Popularity and the Falklands War: A Reassessment

Mrs Thatcher's decisive and determined stand during the Falklands crisis in 1982 has been widely credited with restoring the electoral fortunes of the Conservative party in the run-up to the 1983 general election. This article argues that the Falklands war produced a boost to Conservative popularity of at most three percentage points for a period of only three months. Government popularity was already accelerating as a result of macroeconomic factors before the outbreak of the Falklands crisis, in particular ‘personal economic expectations’ proved to be of critical theoretical and empirical significance, and can be modelled satisfactorily on the basis purely of objective macroeconomic indices. Thus macroeconomic factors were at the root of the revival of Mrs Thatcher's political fortunes, and most of the boost to government popularity which occurred in the spring of 1982 derived from intelligent (or cynical) macroeconomic management. The Falklands crisis merely coincided with a jump in government popularity which would have occurred anyway in the wake of Geoffrey Howe's 1982 Budget.
CBF-dependent signaling pathway: A key responder to low temperature stress in plants

Plants under low temperature (LT) stress exhibit a C-repeat binding factor (CBF)-dependent responsive pathway. The transcription factors in the CBF family, existing in multiple plant species, are the key regulators of the cold-responsive (COR) genes. CBF1 and CBF3 are regulated in a different way from CBF2, and CBF4 is the only known CBF gene definitely involved in abscisic acid (ABA)-dependent signaling pathways. RAP2.1 and RAP2.6 are the downstream regulators under CBFs. The upstream regulators of the CBF named inducer of CBF expression (ICE) acts as a positive regulator of CBFs. Meanwhile, these CBF signaling pathway components could associate with many other transcription activators and repressors in regulating gene expression when plants are under LT stress. HOS1 negatively regulates ICE1, which down regulates MYB15, an upstream repressor of CBFs. ZAT12 participates in the repression of CBFs, while ZAT10 and FRY2 negatively regulate the CBF-target genes. ADF5 was recently also found to repress CBFs. LOS2 works against ZAT10, and LOS4 positively regulates CBFs. SFR6 is involved in the modification of CBFs to activate the COR genes, and SIZ1-dependent sumoylation plays a positive role in the regulation of ICE1. The utilization of CBF-dependent signaling components has a broad perspective in the field of plant breeding for enhancing crop LT tolerance.
Propuesta de creación de una microempresa de diseño y comercialización de bolsos de tela en la ciudad de Guayaquil

At the present the demand of cloth purses within the female population has been increasing more and more; and in the market exist a great variety of these at different prices depending on the processing materials, the design and the brand. In our country, the presence of foreign products has marked a remarkable difference at sales with the national product. In fact the national production is almost null for this type of product. That is why we considered as objective to constitute a micro-enterprise that offers a quality product, designed and processed by a team of Ecuadorian professionals highly qualified. In this paper “Propuesta de creacion de una microempresa de diseno y comercializacion de bolsos de tela en la ciudad de Guayaquil” we make a feasibility study to develop this micro-enterprise.
Monozygotic twins discordant for epilepsy differ in the levels of potentially pathogenic autoantibodies and cytokines

Can autoantibodies (Ab's) and cytokines play a role in epilepsy? Monozygotic twins discordant for epilepsy (most probably Rasmussen's encephalitis (RE)), compared to 49 neurologically intact controls, were both found to contain in their serum (at the time of epilepsy diagnosis) significantly elevated levels of specific Ab's against peptide B (amino acids 372–395) of the ionotropic glutamate receptor of AMPA subtype 3 (i.e. GluR3B peptide). Interestingly, both twins also had clinically elevated levels of Ab's to double-stranded (ds) DNA, glutamic acid decarboxylase, nuclear antigens, β2-glycoprotein I and cardiolipin, as in “classical” autoimmune diseases. Both twins also had significantly elevated levels of IFNγ, TNFα, IL-4 and IL-10 in the serum, compared to the controls. Comparing the twins revealed that the epileptic twin had significantly higher levels of five of the above anti-self Ab's, but significantly lower levels of all four cytokines compared to her healthy sister. Importantly, the epileptic twin, alike three other RE patients tested herein, contained elevated levels of Ab's to GluR3B and dsDNA also in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) (unavailable of the healthy twin). Our results suggest that the various autoimmune Ab's studied herein, all of which are known already to have a potential to be pathogenic in the nervous system and/or peripheral organs, may play a role in some types of epilepsy. The titer of such Ab's and of key cytokines may be crucial for either facilitating or arresting the development of epilepsy. Our findings also show that anti-GluR3B Ab's in serum are not necessarily detrimental (their presence in the CSF may be more dangerous), and that they are not a mere side effect of already existing epilepsy, as they were found herein in serum of a healthy individual. These findings and suggestions may be of clinical importance and call for further studies.
A novel approach for effective web page classification

With the exponential increase in volume of the WWW every day, web page classification has become tedious. Since with no quality data there is no quality mining results, it is worth to emphasise on fine tuning the data for classification, rather than improving the classifiers themselves. This paper investigates the methods for improving web page classification by feature extraction, selection and data tuning. This paper also proposes a new classification model for web page classification called a probabilistic web page classifier (PWPC). It is based on a probabilistic framework and attribute-value similarity measure (AVS). The proposed method is tested on a benchmarking dataset, WebKB and the performance of PWPC on the fine tuned web pages has exhibited significant accuracy over the traditional machine learning classifiers.
Economic Recession and Recovery in the UK: What's Gender Got to Do with It?

This study argues that a feminist economics perspective is essential in order to fully understand the gender consequences of the recent recession and the ongoing economic crisis in the United Kingdom. Unemployment and redundancy rates have been used to highlight the fact that male workers suffered the greatest impact in terms of job losses in the initial phases of the recession. However, this situation appears to have reversed with an associated program of spending cuts in public sector employment and welfare that will likely be borne by women. While accurate data are crucial in the analytical process, the exclusive use of statistics relating to paid work only gives a partial analysis. A more inclusive understanding of the range of impacts on both men and women is more useful in the formulation of gender-aware, as opposed to gender-blind, policy responses to recession and recovery.
Opening skies: The political economy of the air cargo industry in the Philippines and Taiwan.

This thesis examines the political economy of the air cargo industry in the Philippines and Taiwan in the 1990s. The air cargo industry is an important facilitator of economic globalization and now transports 34% of world merchandise trade by value. The Philippines and Taiwan were selected because of their central location in East Asia, a region highly dependent on air cargo-facilitated trade. The growing economic role of air cargo service clashes with the propensity of national governments to protect domestic air cargo interests from air cargo transnational corporations (TNCs). The primary question addressed in this research is to determine what factors influenced air cargo policy decisions by the Philippines and Taiwan during the 1990 - 1999 timeframe. A levels-of-analysis empirical approach is utilized that includes causal factors emanating from domestic and international sources, including interests, institutions, and ideas. The potential contribution of crises to policy outcomes is also considered. The themes that emerge from this research are the interplay between interests and domestic political institutions on policy outcomes; the role of TNCs as political actors; the influence of state-state bargaining on commercial policy outcomes; and the constraints imposed by international institutions on national decision-makers. The empirical argument presented is that economic globalization and the rise of TNCs are challenging the ability of national governments to pursue independent commercial policies for some, but not all, air cargo issue-areas. It is also argued that the structure of domestic political institutions plays an important role in policy outcomes by attenuating the influence of air cargo interests.
Competion and the dynamics of axon arbor growth in the cricket

The growth of an identifiled axonal arborization in the cricket cercal sensory sytem was studied under conditions that vary the number of neighboring axonal arborizations. The cell stuided is one of a samll number of neurons that arborize bilaterally and is called the X‐neuron. Normally the axonal arborization of X is distributed roughly symmertrically about the midlen. Seven days after the birth of this neuron, as soon after its birth as it can be stained, the axonal arbor is more than half the normal size and it exhibits the normal degree of bilaterality. During the remaining 50 days of postermbryonic development, the arbor grows to its adult size, maintaning the bilateral distribution.