Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Offshoring, Multinationals and Labour Market: A Review of the Empirical Literature

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the effects of offshoring and foreign activities of multinational enterprises on developed countries' labour markets. Results suggest that material offshoring worsens wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers; it also seems to make employment more volatile, by raising the elasticity of labour demand and the risk of job losses. Service offshoring exerts at most small negative effects on total employment, and changes the composition of the workforce in favour of high-skilled white-collar employees. Multinationals tend to substitute domestic and foreign labour in response to changes in relative wages across countries; substitutability is weak, however, and mainly driven by horizontal, market-seeking foreign direct investments. Copyright © 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Studies on the motility of smooth muscles of the teats in lactating cows

Summary Rhythmic motility of teats in lactating cows in vivo was studied by an improved plethysmographic technique. Oxytocin was infused intravenously and drugs were injected into the artery of the filled udder. The β-adrenergic agent, isoprenaline, induced relaxation of the teats whereas the α-adrenergic agents phenylephrine and noradrenaline, elicited contraction. In one animal however, noradrenaline always exerted a biphasic effect. Pre-treatment with propranolol, a β-adrenergic blocking agent, changed the biphasic effect into a purely activating response. Adrenaline, which exhibits both a and β effects, induced relaxation, but after propranolol treatment relaxation was abolished and even converted into contraction of the teat. It seems clear that both α and β adrenoceptors are present in longitudinal smooth muscles of the teats. Milk losses as intermittent spurts were observed in several cows. Spurts occurred synchronously with rhythmical teat motility in the filled udder during oxytocin infusion. The intensity of milk leakage was increased by isoprenaline and inhibited by noradrenaline, indicating the presence of α and β receptors in teat sphincter muscles. Starting and stopping of milk spurts in correlation with rhythmical teat contractions were studied by audiovisual synchronization of video recording tape. The most common type of spurt began near the middle of the teat's relaxation phase and ended either just before or exactly at the beginning of the contraction phase. Interruption of the spurt is primarily due to closure of the streak canal.
Identification of SYWKQCAFNAVSCFamide: a broadly conserved crustacean C-type allatostatin-like peptide with both neuromodulatory and cardioactive properties

SUMMARY The allatostatins comprise three structurally distinct peptide families that regulate juvenile hormone production by the insect corpora allata. A-type family members contain the C-terminal motif –YXFGLamide and have been found in species from numerous arthropod taxa. Members of the B-type family exhibit a –WX6Wamide C-terminus and, like the A-type peptides, appear to be broadly conserved within the Arthropoda. By contrast, members of the C-type family, typified by the unblocked C-terminus– PISCF, a pyroglutamine blocked N-terminus, and a disulfide bridge between two internal Cys residues, have only been found in holometabolous insects, i.e. lepidopterans and dipterans. Here, using transcriptomics, we have identified SYWKQCAFNAVSCFamide (disulfide bridging predicted between the two Cys residues), a known honeybee and water flea C-type-like peptide, from the American lobster Homarus americanus (infraorder Astacidea). Using matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization Fourier transform mass spectrometry (MALDI-FTMS), a mass corresponding to that of SYWKQCAFNAVSCFamide was detected in the H. americanus brain, supporting the existence of this peptide and its theorized structure. Furthermore, SYWKQCAFNAVSCFamide was detected by MALDI-FTMS in neural tissues from five additional astacideans as well as 19 members of four other decapod infraorders (i.e. Achelata, Anomura, Brachyura and Thalassinidea), suggesting that it is a broadly conserved decapod peptide. In H. americanus, SYWKQCAFNAVSCFamide is capable of modulating the output of both the pyloric circuit of the stomatogastric nervous system and the heart. This is the first demonstration of bioactivity for this peptide in any species.
Investigation on immune function and chest drainage in patients with thoracic malignancies using the streptococcal agent Sapylin.

PURPOSE To investigate the influence of Sapylin used during the operation on immune function and chest drainage in patients with thoracic malignancies in early postoperative period. PATIENTS AND METHODS Seventy-one patients with thoracic malignancies including lung cancer and esophageal carcinoma who underwent tumor resection were divided into two groups, 36 cases of observation group and 35 cases of control group. In observation group, Sapylin were locally laid in operation field during the operation. The control group was not given Sapylin. Drainage volume of chest cavity after operation, and the levels of CD4, CD8, CD4/CD8 and natural killer (NK) cell were recorded. RESULTS The level of CD4+, CD4+/CD8+ and NK cell in observation group were higher than that in control group (P<0.05) wholly in early postoperative period. Drainage volume of chest cavity in observation group was less than that in control group postoperatively, 1160.2±437.2 ml vs. 1363.3±472.9 ml, but the change in two groups had no significance statistically (P=0.064). CONCLUSIONS The local application of Sapylin during operation can improve immunity of patients with thoracic malignancies significantly and decrease the drainage volume of chest cavity probably in early postoperative period. So it is worthy of popularizing in clinical practice.
Altered early infant gut microbiota in children developing allergy up to 5 years of age

Background Early colonization with bifidobacteria and lactobacilli is postulated to protect children from allergy, while Clostridium (C.) difficile colonization might be associated with allergic disease. Previous studies of infant gut microbiota in relation to subsequent allergy development have mostly employed culture‐dependent techniques, studied genera of bacteria and the follow‐up period was limited to 2 years.
Sex and immunity in the yellow dung fly Scathophaga stercoraria

The immune system is of increasing interest to evolutionary biologists. Immunity may trade‐off against other fitness components, with recent work suggesting reproduction in particular impinges on immune defence. There may also be sex differences in the immune system. Additionally, while life history traits typically have low heritability, little is known about additive genetic variance of immunity. An insect's major defence against multicellular pathogens is to encapsulate the invader. Phenoloxidase (PO) is a key enzyme in the cascade resulting in the melanized capsule, and is often used to estimate resistance to an immune insult. We examined the effects of copulation, egg laying, sex and age on PO in Scathophaga stercoraria. We also measured the heritability of PO activity. The sexes differed in haemolymph PO activity and PO was significantly affected by age, but not by copulation or egg laying. There was significant heritable variation for haemolymph PO.
Sex differences in substance use disorders: focus on side effects

Although sex differences in several aspects of substance use disorders (SUDs) have been identified, less is known about the importance of possible sex differences in side effects induced by substances of abuse or by medications used to treat SUDs. In the SUD field, the perception of certain subjective effects are actively sought, while all other manifestations might operationally be considered side effects. This article was aimed at reviewing sex differences in side effects induced by alcohol, nicotine, heroin, marijuana and cocaine and by medications approved for alcohol, nicotine and heroin use disorders. A large body of evidence suggests that women are at higher risk of alcohol‐induced injury, liver disease, cardiomyopathy, myopathy, brain damages and mortality. The risk of tobacco‐induced coronary heart disease, lung disease and health problems is higher for women than for men. Women also experience greater exposure to side effects induced by heroin, marijuana and cocaine. In addition, women appear to be more vulnerable to the side effects induced by medications used to treat SUDs. Patients with SUDs should be advised that the risk of developing health problems may be higher for women than for men after consumption of the same amount of substances of abuse. Doses of medications for SUD women should be adjusted at least according to body weight. The sex differences observed also indicate an urgent need to recruit adequate numbers of female subjects in pre‐clinical and clinical studies to improve our knowledge about SUDs in women.
Effects of Rivastigmine on Cognitive Function in Dementia with Lewy Bodies: A Randomised Placebo-Controlled International Study Using the Cognitive Drug Research Computerised Assessment System

This study was designed to assess the effects of rivastigmine (Exelon®) on the cognitive functioning of patients suffering from dementia with Lewy bodies. This was a prospective, multi-centre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled exploratory study conducted at sites in the UK, Spain and Italy. The treatment period was 20 weeks with a 3-week posttreatment follow-up. The primary outcome measures were the Cognitive Drug Research (CDR) computerised assessment system and the Neuropsychiatric Inventory. Testing was conducted prior to dosing and then again at weeks 12, 20 and 23. Analysis of the data from the 92 patients who completed the study identified a significant pattern of benefits of rivastigmine over placebo on the CDR system. These benefits were seen on tests of attention, working memory and episodic secondary memory. Taking attention for example, patients given placebo showed a significant deterioration from predosing scores at 12 and 20 weeks, whereas patients on rivastigmine performed significantly above their predosing levels. These effects were also large in magnitude, the decline under placebo at week 12 being 19%, while the improvement under rivastigmine was 23%. The clinical relevance of this 23% improvement was that it took the patients 33% towards being normal for their age on this assessment of attention. These benefits to cognitive function were accompanied by a significant improvement of the other primary outcome measure, the Neuropsychiatric Inventory. Three weeks after discontinuation of rivastigmine, most parameters of cognitive performance returned to predrug levels.
Formulation, detection and application of occlusion states (Oc-7) in the context of multiple object tracking

Occlusion is often thought of as a challenge for visual algorithms, specially tracking. Existing literature, however, has identified a number of occlusion categories in the context of tracking in ad hoc manner. We propose a systematic approach to formulate a set of occlusion cases by considering the spatial relations among object support(s) (projections on the image plane) with the detected foreground blob(s), to show that only 7 occlusion states are possible. We designate the resulting qualitative formalism as Oc-7, and show how these occlusion states can be detected and used effectively for the task of multi-object tracking under occlusion of various types. The object support is decomposed into overlapping patches which are tracked independently on the occurrence of occlusions. As a demonstration of the application of these occlusion states, we propose a reasoning scheme for selective tracker execution and object feature updates to track multiple objects in complex environments.
Mass Spectrometric Analysis of the Ubiquinol-binding Site in Cytochrome bd from Escherichia coli*

Cytochrome bd is a heterodimeric terminal ubiquinol oxidase in the aerobic respiratory chain of Escherichia coli. For understanding the unique catalytic mechanism of the quinol oxidation, mass spectrometry was used to identify amino acid residue(s) that can be labeled with a reduced form of 2-azido-3-methoxy-5-methyl-6-geranyl-1,4-benzoquinone or 2-methoxy-3-azido-5-methyl-6-geranyl-1,4-benzoquinone. Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry demonstrated that the photo inactivation of ubiquinol-1 oxidase activity was accompanied by the labeling of subunit I with both azidoquinols. The cross-linked domain was identified by reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography of subunit I peptides produced by in-gel double digestion with lysyl endopeptidase and endoproteinase Asp-N. Electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry determined the amino acid sequence of the peptide (m/z 1047.5) to be Glu278–Lys283, where a photoproduct of azido-Q2 was linked to the carboxylic side chain of I-Glu280. This study demonstrated directly that the N-terminal region of periplasmic loop VI/VII (Q-loop) is a part of the quinol oxidation site and indicates that the 2- and 3-methoxy groups of the quinone ring are in the close vicinity of I-Glu280.
Talented in Dance: The Bloom Stage Model revisited in the personal histories of dance students

Bloom (1985) reported on the careers of a sample of 120 talented individuals from three domains: science, athletics and the arts. His findings are used as a starting point for the research on professional dance students presented in this article. Three issues were studied: the relevance of significant others in a dance career; the issue of detecting dance talent and, also, using Bloom's proposed three career stages in a talent domain, how teachers are described by students, and what the characteristics of a typical dance class are. A questionnaire was constructed and administered to 129 students in the Dance Department at the Amsterdam School of the Arts, the Netherlands. The results indicate that, in addition to the dance teacher and parents (as highlighted in Bloom's study), peers should also be considered. Furthermore, the majority of students have been labelled "talented" at some point in their career, notably by teachers and other dance experts, while in fact parents played no role here. A new measurement format was introduced in an attempt to reveal the peculiarities of teacher and dance class during the three career stages. The results obtained correspond to Bloom's findings. Therefore, the present study not only supports Bloom's findings in a dance sample, but also offers a generalisation from Bloom's male-dominated sample to a female-dominated one.
Combining Fortran and scripting languages

Introduction Combining Fortran and C in one program may seem like a daunting task sometimes, but if you stick to a few simple rules and use either the proper tools (such as “cfortran.h”, cf. Burow, 2001) or know the details of your compilers, it is relatively easy. Still, you should do it only if you have good reasons for it. Such reasons might be: You have a graphical user-interface written in C and need access to an existing Fortran library for, say, numerical tasks. You have a Fortran program to do all kinds of wonderful things, but one part involves handling regular expressions. The easiest then is to interface to a C library that handles such expressions.
Un estimador de seudo-máxima verosimilitud, su consistencia fuerte y distribución asintótica

l. Introduccion Uno de los metodos mas conocidos para estimar parametros es el de Maxima Verosimilitud, con el y bajo condiciones de "regularidad" se obtienen estimadores fuertemente consistentes y asintoticamente eficientes. Sin embargo, no siempre es posible obtener una formula explicita para tales estimadores, teniendose que recurrir a metodos computacionales para obtener estimativas a partir de observaciones provenientes de una muestra aleatoria; aun asi, puede presentarse el problema de una convergencia demasiado lenta. De ahi, tratando de superar estas dificultades, . han aparecido modificaciones de este metodo, una de ellas es debida a Gong y Samaniego ( 1981) quienes definen un estimador de seudo-maxima verosimilitud y dan condiciones de regularidad bajo las cuales este estimador es debilmente consistente y asintoticamente normal.
First Case of HIV‐1 Group O Infection in Spain

A 34‐year‐old woman born in Bilbao, a northern city in Spain, was first seen at our institution in April 1995. She had maintained a monogamous sexual relation in the preceding 6 years with a 35‐year‐old male, and previously has sex only sporadically with two other persons. She as well as her three partners were Spanish‐born, and had neither a history of transfusions, nor of injecting drugs, nor were they homosexual.
Weight gain decreases elevated plasma ghrelin concentrations of patients with anorexia nervosa.

OBJECTIVE Ghrelin is a new gastric hormone that has been identified as an endogenous ligand for the growth hormone (GH) secretagogue receptor subtype 1a (GHS-R1a). Ghrelin administration however not only stimulates GH secretion but also induces adiposity in rodents by increasing food intake and decreasing fat utilization. We hypothesized that impaired ghrelin secretion in anorexia nervosa may be involved in the pathogenesis of this eating disorder. To examine this hypothesis and to further investigate the role for ghrelin in regulating energy homeostasis, we analyzed circulating ghrelin levels in patients with anorexia nervosa and examined possible correlations with clinical parameters before and after weight gain. METHODS Plasma ghrelin levels were measured in overnight fasting plasma samples from 36 female patients with anorexia nervosa (age: 25.0+/-1.2 years, BMI: 15.2+/-0.2 kg/m(2)) before and after weight gain following psychotherapeutic treatment intervention in a psychosomatic institution. Plasma ghrelin levels were also measured in fasting plasma samples from 24 age-matched female controls (31+/-1.4 years, BMI: 22.9+/-0.45 kg/m(2)). For quantification of ghrelin levels a commercially available radioimmunoassay (Phoenix Pharmaceuticals, USA) was used. RESULTS Fasting plasma ghrelin levels in anorectic patients were significantly higher (1057+/-95 pg/ml) than in normal age-matched female controls (514+/-63 pg/ml n=24, P=0.02). Therapeutic intervention in a psychosomatic institution caused an BMI increase of 14% (P<0.001) leading to a significant decrease in circulating ghrelin levels of 25%, (P=0.001). A significant negative correlation between Deltaghrelin and DeltaBMI was observed (correlation coefficient: -0.47, P=0.005, n=36). CONCLUSION We show for the first time that fasting plasma levels of the novel appetite-modulating hormone ghrelin are elevated in anorexia nervosa and return to normal levels after partial weight recovery. These observations suggest the possible existence of ghrelin resistance in cachectic states such as caused by eating disorders. Future studies are necessary to investigate putative mechanisms of ghrelin resistance such as a possible impairment of intracellular ghrelin receptor signaling in pathophysiological states presenting with cachexia.
THE SOUND OF PROTO-AUSTRONESIAN: AN OUTSIDER'S VIEW OF THE FORMOSAN EVIDENCE

This paper is a report of my efforts to find out what Proto-Austronesian (PAn) might have sounded like, both in terms of its phoneme system and its stress patterns. This may seem a somewhat fanciful venture, but I believe that the phonology of a protolanguage must be reconstructed as the phonology of a real language if we are to properly tackle the task of subgrouping its descendants. This is especially true of a protolanguage which, like PAn, sits at the apex of a genetic tree. I have called this "an outsider's view" because I have worked with speakers of none of the languages which are central to this paper, yet my interest in Oceanic languages and Proto-Oceanic has ensured an interest in high-order protolanguages, and especially the language atop the tree.1
Visual saliency based on natural scene statistics

Visual saliency is the perceptual quality that makes some items in visual scenes stand out from their immediate contexts. According to the center-surround hypothesis of saliency, it is commonly assumed that bottom-up saliency is determined by how distinct the stimulus (features) at each location of the visual field is from the stimuli (features) in its surround. Using the center-surround configuration from different scales, we define the saliency measure based on the conditional probability of the center given the surround, which is obtained from natural scene statistics (collected from a large set of images of natural scenes). It is demonstrated that the proposed model of visual saliency predicts well human gaze in free viewing static natural scenes.
Transmembrane TNF‐α is sufficient for articular inflammation and hypernociception in a mouse model of gout

Gout manifests as recurrent episodes of acute joint inflammation and pain due to the deposition of monosodium urate (MSU) crystals within the affected tissue in a process dependent on NLRP3 inflammasome activation. The synthesis, activation, and release of IL‐1β are crucial for MSU‐induced inflammation. The current study evaluated the mechanism by which TNF‐α contributed to MSU‐induced inflammation. Male C57BL/6J or transgenic mice were used in this study and inflammation was induced by the injection of MSU crystals into the joint. TNF‐α was markedly increased in the joint after the injection of MSU. There was inhibition in the infiltration of neutrophils, production of CXCL1 and IL‐1β, and decreased hypernociception in mice deficient for TNF‐α or its receptors. Pharmacological blockade of TNF‐α with Etanercept or pentoxyfylline produced similar results. Mechanistically, TNF‐α blockade resulted in lower amounts of IL‐1β protein and pro‐IL‐1β mRNA transcripts in joints. Gene‐modified mice that express only transmembrane TNF‐α had an inflammatory response similar to that of WT mice and blockade of soluble TNF‐α (XPro™1595) did not decrease MSU‐induced inflammation. In conclusion, TNF‐α drives expression of pro‐IL‐1β mRNA and IL‐1β protein in experimental gout and that its transmembrane form is sufficient to trigger MSU‐induced inflammation in mice.
Definite Clause Translation Grammars

In this paper we introduce Definite Clause Translation Grammars, a new class of logic grammars which generalizes Definite Clause Grammars and which may be thought of as a logical implementation of Attribute Grammars. Definite Clause Translation Grammars permit the specification of the syntax and semantics of a language: the syntax is specified as in Definite Clause Grammars; but the semantics is specified by one or more semantic rules in the form of Horn clauses attached to each node of the parse tree (automatically created during syntactic analysis), and which control traversal(s) of the parse tree and computation of attributes of each node. The semantic rules attached to a node constitute therefore, a local data base for that node. The separation of syntactic and semantic rules is intended to promote modularity, simplicity and clarity of definition, and ease of modification as compared to Definite Clause Grammars, Metamorphosis Grammars, and Restriction Grammars.