Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of CA2+ on K+ efflux during regulatory volume decrease in cultured astrocytes

The calcium (Ca2+) dependence of potassium (K+) efflux activated by hyposmolarity in cultured cerebellar astrocytes was investigated, measuring in parallel experiments 86Rb release and changes in cytosolic Ca2+ ([Ca2+]i). Hyposmotic (50%) medium increased [Ca2+]i from 117 to 386 nM, with contributions of extracellular Ca2+ and Ca2+ from the endoplasmic reticulum. Hyposmotic medium increased 86Rb efflux rate from 0.015 min−1 to a maximal of 0.049 min−1 and a net release of 30%. This osmosensitive efflux was inhibited by Ba2+ (0.028 min−1), quinidine (0.024 min−1), and charybdotoxin (0.040 min−1), but was unaffected by TEA, 4‐AP, or apamin. Removal of external Ca2+ from the hyposmotic medium increased 86Rb efflux to a maximal rate constant of 0.056 min−1 and a net release of 38% and caused a delay of inactivation. These changes were due to the overlaping of an efflux activated by Ca2+ removal in isosmotic medium. This isosmotic 86Rb efflux was unaffected by TEA or 4‐AP, reduced by verapamil, and abolished by Ba2+, nitrendipine, and Mg2+. With the swelling‐induced [Ca2+]i rise suppressed by ethyleneglycoltetraacetic acid‐acetoxy‐methyl ester (EGTA‐AM), hyposmotic 86Rb was 30% reduced. The Ca2+ entry blockers Cd2+, Ni2+, La3+, and Gd3+ did not affect 86Rb efflux. A 40% decrease observed with verapamil and nitrendipine was found unrelated to Ca2+, because these agents did not affect the [Ca2+]i rise and the inhibition persisted in the absence of external Ca2+. The phospholipase C blocker U‐73122 did not affect [Ca2+]i nor 86Rb efflux. Blockers of Ca2+/calmodulin W7 and KN‐93 decreased 86Rb efflux to the same extent as EGTA‐AM. Ionomycin markedly potentiated 86Rb release in hyposmotic conditions only when [Ca2+]i was raised to about 1 μM, suggesting the implication of maxi‐K+ channels at this [Ca2+]i threshold, which nonetheless, was not attained during hyposmotic swelling. It is concluded that 86Rb efflux in cerebellar astrocytes is largely (70%) Ca2+‐independent and the Ca2+‐dependent fraction is sustained essentially by Ca2+ released from the endoplasmic reticulum and mediated by a mechanism involving Ca2+/calmodulin. J. Neurosci. Res. 57:350–358, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Self-Control and Saving for Retirement

Some experts have called for easing penalties on early withdrawals from savings plans, believing people will invest more if they know they can get their money if they need it. But most Americans appear wary of such changes, fearful of the temptation to raid their own nest eggs. Sixty percent of Americans say it is better to keep, rather than loosen, legal restrictions on retirement plans so that people don't use the money for other things. Only 36 percent prefer to make it easier for people to tap such savings before their retirement. Public Agenda2
The Geneva brain collection

The University of Geneva brain collection was founded at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, it consists of 10,154 formaldehyde‐ or buffered formaldehyde–fixed brains obtained from the autopsies of the Department of Psychiatry and, since 1971, from the Department of Geriatrics. More than 100,000 paraffin‐embedded blocks and 200,000 histological slides have also been collected since 1901. From the time of its creation, this collection has served as an important resource for pathological studies and clinicopathological correlations, primarily in the field of dementing illnesses and brain aging research. These materials have permitted a number of original neuropathological observations, such as the classification of Pick's disease by Constantinidis, or the description of dyshoric angiopathy and laminar sclerosis by Morel. The large number of cases, including some very rare conditions, provides a unique resource and an opportunity for worldwide collaborations.
Retinal Layer Location of Increased Retinal Thickness in Eyes with Subclinical and Clinical Macular Edema in Diabetes Type 2

Purpose: To identify the retinal layer predominantly affected in eyes with subclinical and clinical macular edema in diabetes type 2. Methods: A cohort of 194 type 2 diabetic eyes/patients with mild nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy (ETDRS levels 20/35) were examined with Cirrus spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) at the baseline visit (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01145599). Automated segmentation of the retinal layers of the eyes with subclinical and clinical macular edema was compared with a sample of 31 eyes from diabetic patients with normal OCT and an age-matched control group of 58 healthy eyes. Results: From the 194 eyes in the study, 62 had subclinical macular edema and 12 had clinical macular edema. The highest increases in retinal thickness (RT) were found in the inner nuclear layer (INL; 33.6% in subclinical macular edema and 81.8% in clinical macular edema). Increases were also found in the neighboring layers. Thinning of the retina was registered in the retinal nerve fiber, ganglion cells and inner plexiform layers in the diabetic eyes without macular edema. Conclusions: The increase in RT occurring in diabetic eyes with macular edema is predominantly located in the INL but extends to neighboring retinal layers indicating that it may be due to extracellular fluid accumulation.
Microprocessor dynamics and interactions at endogenous imprinted C19MC microRNA genes

Nuclear primary microRNA (pri-miRNA) processing catalyzed by the DGCR8–Drosha (Microprocessor) complex is highly regulated. Little is known, however, about how microRNA biogenesis is spatially organized within the mammalian nucleus. Here, we image for the first time, in living cells and at the level of a single microRNA cluster, the intranuclear distribution of untagged, endogenously-expressed pri-miRNAs generated at the human imprinted chromosome 19 microRNA cluster (C19MC), from the environment of transcription sites to single molecules of fully released DGCR8-bound pri-miRNAs dispersed throughout the nucleoplasm. We report that a large fraction of Microprocessor concentrates onto unspliced C19MC pri-miRNA deposited in close proximity to their genes. Our live-cell imaging studies provide direct visual evidence that DGCR8 and Drosha are targeted post-transcriptionally to C19MC pri-miRNAs as a preformed complex but dissociate separately. These dynamics support the view that, upon pri-miRNA loading and most probably concomitantly with Drosha-mediated cleavages, Microprocessor undergoes conformational changes that trigger the release of Drosha while DGCR8 remains stably bound to pri-miRNA.
Improving Healthy Eating and the Bottom Line

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of a health-promoting price intervention on food sales and profit. Design: Nonrandomized evaluation study. Setting: Two hospital cafeterias. Participants: Hospital employees (2800) were the priority population. Intervention: During baseline phase, healthy versions of existing unhealthy items were introduced. The intervention phase included marketing and price incentives/disincentives for healthy and unhealthy items, with a 35% price differential. Measures: Average and proportional change in sales and impact on financial outcomes were assessed. Analysis: Two-way factorial analyses of variance and two-proportion Z-score tests were run to assess change in sales. Independent samples t tests were used to test for changes in profit. Results: Significant impact was demonstrated on all burger sales in the desired direction during intervention (P < .001). Most notably, the average weekly turkey burger sales at Penrose Hospital (PH) increased 13-fold (10.85-145.59) and became the majority of the market share (51.8%, P < .001). For salads, significant interaction between phase and food type was found at St. Francis Medical Center (SFMC) (P = .002) but not at PH (P = .304). Healthy PH salads were popular at baseline and intervention, comprising the majority of the market share throughout the entire study (68.4%-70.2%, respectively, P = .238). Cafeteria gross sales and burger profit (P < .001) increased at both cafeterias. Conclusion: Incentivizing consumers through price interventions changed hospital cafeteria food sales in the desired direction while improving the bottom line.
Examining The Underlying Parity Conditions Sufficient For Real Interest Parity For Asian Countries

This paper examines the underlying parity conditions upon which real interest parity (RIP) is predicted for some Asian countries relative to the U.S. and Japan over a period (1978–2009) containing significant changes using the multivariate cointegration procedure of Johansen et al. (2000) that allows for up to two pre-determined breaks. Each parity condition is examined to determine which is responsible for the rejection of RIP. The results suggest that the Fisher hypothesis is the least likely to violate RIP, whereas uncovered interest parity (UIP) appears to be most commonly violated. Stability tests suggest that the RIP relationship has been stable in most cases and that the impact of the Asian crisis and the Plaza Accord appears to be transitory, and that the RIP relationships have strengthened in the aftermath of the 1997–1998 Asian crisis.
Small and Low but Potent: the Complex Regulatory Role of the Small RNA SolB in Solventogenesis in Clostridium acetobutylicum

ABSTRACT The recently revived Clostridium acetobutylicum-based acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation is widely celebrated and studied for its impact on industrial biotechnology. C. acetobutylicum has been studied and engineered extensively, yet critical areas of the molecular basis for how solvent formation is regulated remain unresolved. The core solventogenic genes (adhE1/aad, ctfA, ctfB, and adc) are carried on the sol locus of the pSOL1 megaplasmid, whose loss leads to asporogenous, “degenerate” cells. The sol locus includes a noncoding small RNA (sRNA), SolB, whose role is presumed to be critical for solventogenesis but has eluded resolution. In the present study, SolB overexpression downregulated the sol-locus genes at the transcript level, resulting in attenuated protein expression and a solvent-deficient phenotype, thus suggesting that SolB affects expression of all sol-locus transcripts and seemingly validating its hypothesized role as a repressor. However, deletion of solB resulted in a total loss of acetone production and severe attenuation of butanol formation, with complex effects on sol-locus genes and proteins: it had a small impact on adc mRNA or its corresponding protein (acetoacetate decarboxylase) expression level, somewhat reduced adhE1 and ctfA-ctfB mRNA levels, and abolished the ctfA-ctfB-encoded coenzyme A transferase (CoAT) activity. Computational predictions support a model whereby SolB expressed at low levels enables the stabilization and translation of sol-locus transcripts to facilitate tuning of the production of various solvents depending on the prevailing culture conditions. A key predicted SolB target is the ribosome binding site (RBS) of the ctfA transcript, and this was verified by expressing variants of the ctfA-ctfB genes to demonstrate the importance of SolB for acetone formation. IMPORTANCE Small noncoding RNAs regulate many important metabolic and developmental programs in prokaryotes, but their role in anaerobes has been explored minimally. Regulation of solvent formation in the important industrial organism C. acetobutylicum remains incompletely understood. While the genes for solvent formation and their promoters are known, the means by which this organism tunes the ratios of key solvents, notably the butanol/acetone ratio to balance its electron resources, remains unknown. Significantly, the roles of several coding and noncoding genes in the sol locus in tuning the solvent formation ratios have not been explored. Here we show that the small RNA SolB fine-tunes the expression of solvents, with acetone formation being a key target, by regulating the translation of the acetone formation rate-limiting enzyme, the coenzyme A transferase (CoAT). It is notable that SolB expressed at very low levels enables CoAT translation, while at high, nonphysiological expression levels, it leads to degradation of the corresponding transcript.
International Diversification, Business Group Affiliation and Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from India

We investigate the impact of business group affiliation on the relationship between international diversification and firm performance for emerging economy firms. We develop the theoretical arguments based on an integration of the literature on international diversification with the institutional theory perspective. We argue for a U-shaped relationship between international diversification and firm performance, and suggest that a firm's affiliation to a business group moderates the relationship between international diversification and firm performance. Based on a sample of Indian firms, we find that firm performance is positively related to the degree of internationalization, while business group affiliation reduces the positive effect of internationalization on firm performance.
Product differentiation and the export subsidy dispute

In a Cournot duopoly market, this paper studies the role of product differentiation in the resolution of the export subsidy dispute. It is shown that the optimal export subsidy decreases with the degree of product differentiation and the export subsidy will be eliminated completely when the competitive goods are made perfectly different. Furthermore, increasing the degree of product differentiation will also increase the profits of the firms and the welfare of the exporting countries.
Corporate Law and Corporate Governance

We have seen a revival in interest in corporate law and corporate governance since the 1980s, as researchers applied the tools of the new institutional economics and modern corporate finance to analyze the new transactions emerging in the 1980s takeover wave. This article focuses on three mechanisms of corporate governance to illustrate the analytical usefulness of transaction cost economics for corporate law. They are the board of directors; relational investing, a form of block ownership in which a large shareholder is more actively involved in firm management than is ordinarily expected of non-management shareholders; and the choice of law governing shareholder-manager relations, referred to in the literature as state competition for corporate charters. Each of the three sections in the article sketches first the theory of the corporate governance mechanisms from the perspective of transaction cost economics and then addresses the question whether corporate governance matters, by discussing the empirical evidence on whether the mechanism is effective. In addition to limning Williamson's contribution, the objective is to relate theory and data, to ascertain where we are, 20 years after Williamson's fundamental contribution was the first articulated in Markets and Hierarchies, and over a decade after the corporate law applications were first explicitly worked out.
Adaptive Overlay Network for High-Bandwidth Streaming

In this paper, we investigate the limitation caused by reception bandwidth in current overlay streaming, and propose a novel overlay network architecture for high-quality, real-time streaming. The proposed architecture consists of two components: 1) join and retransmission control (JRC), and 2) redundant node selection (RNS). The JRC dynamically adjusts the number of join and data retransmission requests based on the network condition and reception packet fluctuation of the receiver. The RNS selects retransmission nodes based on the retention probability of lost packets requested by the receivers. We have designed and implemented the algorithm of the proposed architecture. According to our evaluation, our approach results in an additional 1-2Mbps reception bandwidth from existing overlay streaming applications.
Intellectual capital: Managerial perceptions of organisational knowledge resources

States that if organisations are to more effectively identify, measure and manage their intellectual capital, the responsibilities for initiating and executing these tasks will fall upon the managers of organisations. Addresses the question “To what extent does organisational type and managerial role define managers’ perception of intellectual capital? ”. Two hypotheses were tested using a cross‐sectional design. Specifically, the research was directed at five types of senior managers (general manager, finance, human resources, information technology and marketing) in three broad types of Australian organisations: business, government and non‐profit organisations. Demonstrates tentatively that the perceptions that different types of Australian managers hold of intellectual capital lack uniformity and that different types of Australian organisations have yet to develop suitable policies and strategies that would facilitate its management.
Emerald Article: An empirical investigation of the impact of strategic sourcing and flexibility on firm's supply chain agility

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate two potentially key drivers of a firm’s supply chain agility, namely strategic sourcing and firm’s strategic flexibility. Despite some theoretical and conceptual works suggesting that some elements of these two constructs may relate to agility, this has not yet been assessed together empirically. This study aims to address this gap in the literature. Design/methodology/approach – This study involves an empirical investigation of a theory-based model based on the competence-capability framework, and a dynamic capabilities theoretical perspective, where the internal competencies of strategic sourcing and firm’s strategic flexibility relate to the dynamic capability of the firm’s supply chain agility. This investigation also includes the testing of a possible mediation effect of firm’s strategic flexibility on the relationship between strategic sourcing and the firm’s supply chain agility. The model is tested utilizing data from 144 US manufacturing firms via partial least square methodology. Findings – The results of the empirical study indicated that both strategic sourcing and firm’s strategic flexibility were significantly related to the firm’s supply chain agility. In addition, while a full mediation effect was not found on the part of strategic flexibility, there was evidence for partial mediation. Research limitations/implications – Given that the data are from specific US industries, the generalizability of current findings to other industries or countries may require additional investigation. Originality/value – Given the attention paid to agility in terms of its importance to responding to business uncertainty, and more recently, as an important capability in managing supply chain disruption risks, this paper investigates how strategic sourcing and flexibility can contribute to agility.
The continuing importance of economies of scale in the automotive industry

The considerable attention given to flexible methods of production and work organization as a fundamental determinant of achieving international levels of competitiveness in the manufacturing industry (and of late, in service industries also) in the wake of Japanese dominance over the past two decades has, as a corollary, seen a tendency to neglect the importance of economies of scale (EOS). Despite the indubitable importance of flexibility, argues that EOS remain an essential determinant for cost‐efficient production, and that without sufficient EOS, high levels of flexibility cannot alone translate into world competitive production. Summarizes the reasons for the continued importance of EOS, and provides a discussion on the levels of EOS (in particular, “minimum efficient scale”) that are necessary for efficient automotive manufacturing. It is assumed that EOS are optimal only when a plant is operating at high capacity utilization levels, and that where this is not the case penalties are severe.
Legislative entrepreneurship in the U.S. House of Representatives

When members are elected to the House of Representatives they have a certain freedom to decide how they will act as members and how they will build their reputations. Just as in the market place entrepreneurs build businesses, so in the House of Representatives members have the freedom to choose to build legislative programs that will enhance their reputations in the institution. And yet entrepreneurship is also costly to members. Gregory Wawro explains why members of the House engage in legislative entrepreneurship by examining what motivates them to acquire policy knowledge, draft legislation, build coalitions, and push their legislation in the House. He considers what incentives members have to perform what many have perceived to be the difficult and unrewarding tasks of legislating.This book shows how becoming a legislative entrepreneur relates to members' goals of reelection, enacting good public policy, and obtaining influence in the House. The analysis differs from previous studies of this behavior, which for the most part have employed case study methods and have relied on anecdotal evidence to support their arguments. Wawro analyzes legislative entrepreneurship in a general and systematic fashion, developing hypotheses from rational-choice-based theories and testing these hypotheses using quantitative methods.Wawro argues that members engage in legislative entrepreneurship in order to get ahead within the House. He finds that the more legislative entrepreneurship that members engage in, the more likely it is that they will advance to prestigious positions.This book is of interest to students of Congress, legislative behavior and institutions, elections, and campaign finance.Gregory Wawro is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Columbia University.
A dynamic force microscope based nanomanipulation system

There has been great interest in exploring the effective manipulation methods to build miniaturized system, devices, structures and machines in nanoscale. In this paper, a novel nanomanipulation system based on dynamic force microscope has been developed, that can be used to position and orient multiwall carbon nanotubes on the dynamic force probe model. The physical principles of the dynamic force probe model are described. And the nanomanipulation system based on the nanoscale operation approach is introduced. Some typical nanomanipulation experiments show that multiwall carbon nanotubes can be reliably positioned and oriented, that illustrated the effectiveness of such method and the nanomanipulation system.
A Machine Learning Approach for Cryptanalysis Anonymous

The paper introduces a novel approach of using neural networks to perform cryptanalysis on a lightweight cipher like the Simon cipher. The neural network takes in plaintexts and their corresponding ciphertexts to predict the key that was used to encrypt the plaintext. The neural network is tested with various rounds of the cipher system to see how it fares, and is also tested with various configurations of the neural network to determine which configuration could give us the highest accuracy at determining the key correctly.