Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impacts of R&D Expenditures on High Technology Product Exports in BRICST Countries

One of the best solutions for countries with foreign trade deficit and cannot increase total exports is to improve the added value of exported products. High technology products have the highest added value. The method to increase production and exports in high technology products is to increase RD World Bank, 2012). Â On the other hand, India has significantly accelerated its economic growth through computer software, natural healthy life support products and remote call center services it offers to developed countries thanks to the individuals it sent for education abroad in the 1960s (Hindistan, 2012). Members of BRICST countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and Turkey drew global attention due to their economic growth performance in recent years. Economic performance of these countries affects the foreign trade volume and economic growth for the rest of the world. In the present study, impacts of R&D expenditures and the size of the qualified R&D labor force on high technology exports were investigated for BRICTS countries using panel data analysis for 1996-2014 period. We expected that the study findings would reveal a positive impact of R&D expenditures and qualified labor force in the R&D sector on exports in high technology products. The present study would contribute to the literature as it would draw the attention of developing countries to the significance of R&D expenditures and qualified labor force in the R&D sector.
Wish you were here? The prevalence of farmers markets in food deserts: an examination of the United States

ABSTRACT Food deserts have received considerable attention in recent years. Research has shown that individuals living in these areas have less nutritional diets and experience worse health outcomes compared with those not living in food deserts. Though the ramifications of living in food deserts are well known, less is known about efforts to alleviate these effects. One proposal for increasing food access while improving nutrition is the farmers market. While the farmers market has been championed as a potential solution and celebrated when it succeeds, little work has explored how often farmers markets are in food deserts nationally. This article explores this by using data from the United States Department of Agriculture and the American Community Survey. Results suggest that though much praise is given toward the promise of farmers markets in food deserts they are infrequently found there. This research contributes to illuminating the present state of US food deserts and proposes several questions about the efficacy of farmers markets as a tool to alleviate the impacts within food deserts.
Local Government Spending on Public Housing: Factors of Influence in Metropolitan Areas

Rent or mortgage payments make up the largest portion of an American family’s budget. As there is a limited housing stock in metropolitan areas, low-income families struggle to find housing that is both adequate and affordable. Federal housing programs make funding available, but the provision of housing is left to local governments. Through the implementation of bold strategies and initiatives, local governments can help their low-income constituents find permanent housing for themselves and their families. Public housing in the U.S. is associated with dilapidation, overcrowding, and social disorganization. In the past, housing projects have been shortsighted measures aimed at addressing the most critical problems. Instead of providing permanent housing to low-income residents, the focus was to house as many people as possible in one project with high-rise buildings and small units. A strategy of the late 20th century was tearing down high-rise housing projects, which displaced the residents living therein. Now, 21stcentury strategies are to proliferate mixed-income apartment buildings, ensuring that the buildings are architecturally sound, are well maintained, are permanent or semipermanent residences, and have access to occupational and social services.
TP53 tumor‐suppressor gene and human carcinogenesis

Abstract The wild‐type tumor‐suppressor TP53 gene encodes for a nuclear protein which has been shown to act as a transcriptional modulator. The cellular role of the p53 protein is the control of cell proliferation, particularly important in stressed cells. The TP53 gene is frequently mutated in sporadic and familial human cancers. Most transforming mutations localize in highly conserved domains of the gene and define hot‐spot regions that have a certain degree of tissue specificity. Moreover, most mutations are point mutations and the type and localization of the nucleotide substitution may sometimes help in recognizing the carcinogenic agent. This is the case for C to T transitions at dipyrimidine sites induced by UV radiation in cutaneous epitheliomas. Inactivation of p53 protein can also occur through mechanisms other than genetic alteration, such as binding to viral or cellular proteins. Loss of wild‐type TP53 function seems therefore to play a crucial role in cell transformation in human cancers, either during carcinogenesis or later in tumor progression.
Wild populations are smaller than we think: a commentary on 'Effective population size/adult population size ratios in wildlife: a review' by Richard Frankham.

where H0 is the heterozygosity of the population before the bottleneck, Ht is the heterozygosity after t generations of maintenance with 2N individuals and F is the inbreeding coefficient (Falconer & Mackay, 1996). Clearly heterozygosity decreases, and inbreeding increases, as N decreases ; and these effects accumulate over time. However, no real population fits the ideal model on which this theory is based, which includes self-fertilization in random amounts. The concept of effective population size enables us to utilize this expression by replacing the N in the equation with Ne, where Ne, the effective population size, is the number of individuals that would give rise to the same variance in gene frequency or rate of inbreeding as an ideal population of that size (Falconer & Mackay, 1996). Major departures from the ideal population model that affect Ne are unequal numbers of males and females, unequal numbers of individuals in different generations, non-random distribution of family size, and overlapping generations. Analytical expressions relating the census size of the population (N) to the effective population size have been derived for each of these cases (Frankham, 1995; Falconer & Mackay, 1996) ; under most scenarios Ne<N. Knowledge of the ratio ofNe toN is critical in wildlife populations and particularly endangered species, if we are to predict the rate of inbreeding and loss of heterozygosity. In this meta-analysis, Frankham (1995) synthesizes data from 192 estimates of Ne/N from 102 species. The estimates of Ne/N from insects, molluscs, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and plants ranged from 10x6 in Pacific oysters to 0.99 in humans, and averaged 0.34 overall. However, these studies differed in whether they included fluctuating population size, variable family size and/or different numbers of males and females – less than one-third of the studies included all three of these factors. In addition, different measures of census size were used as the denominator. Some studies utilized the total census size (NT, the total number of adults and juveniles), some the number of adults (NA, the number of breeding plus senescent adults), while others counted only the number of breeding individuals (NB). Finally, both genetic and demographic methods were used. Frankham (1995) capitalized on this variability to perform stepwise regression analyses in order to determine the major variables affecting Ne/N. The significant variables, in decreasing order of importance, were fluctuating population size, variable family size, method of determining census number, taxonomic group, and the sex ratio. The most striking conclusion was that the comprehensive estimates of Ne/N in wild species, including all variables, were of the order of 10%. This is much smaller than had been thought previously and a cause for concern in terms of long-term population viability. This influential review stimulated many studies estimating Ne/N in a wide variety of wild species.
Internet of Things: State-of-the-art, Challenges, Applications, and Open Issues

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become one of the unprecedented research trends for both academic and commercial organizations. Every day, the publicity of the IoT is increased. This is because the unlimited benefits that the IoT can bring to our environment. The IoT has the ability to connect almost all objects of real-world to communicate and cooperate with each other over the Internet to facilitate generating new applications and services that can improve our quality of life. This paper provides an overview of the IoT system with highlighting its applications, challenges, and open issues. It starts with discussing the state-of-the-art of the IoT system and its layered architecture. This is followed by discussing different characteristics of the IoT with presenting a comparison between common IoT communication technologies. Different IoT applications and challenges are also discussed. At the end, open research directions related to the IoT are also presented.
Changes in the prevalence of psychiatric disorder in a community are related to changes in the mean level of psychiatric symptoms

Synopsis The paper of Anderson et al. (1993), based on cross-sectional data, showed that minor psychiatric disorder in a population is linearly related to the mean number of psychiatric symptoms in the population. The present investigation asks whether the same relationship holds longitudinally as well as cross-sectionally. Data from a 7-year follow-up of a general population sample demonstrate, for the first time, that a relationship exists between changes in prevalence of psychiatric disorder and changes in the mean number of psychiatric symptoms in a given population. Moreover, the relationship is linear; a one-point decrease in mean scores on the GHQ-30 is associated with a 6% decrease in prevalence of disorder.
Public Finance of R&D and the Obstacles to Innovation: The Case of Spain

This paper examines the importance of public financing in R&D for Spanish companies and the correlation that exists between this kind of finance and the obstacles they encounter when innovating. For this, we have used a series of data obtained from the Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC) database for the year 2014. The number of observations used in this study is 7.071 and the models that are being developed are the Logit and Tobit models. From the analysis of these models, we conclude that the main obstacles that are relevant for the firms are related to the cost and knowledge factors, such as the lack of funding from outside sources or the excessive cost of innovation. However, market factors are not considered important for the companies, which always find a reason to innovate. Last but not least, we suggest which firms have the best chance of receiving public finance and make some reflections about the Spanish economy.
Filter gate closure inhibits ion but not water transport through potassium channels

The selectivity filter of K+ channels is conserved throughout all kingdoms of life. Carbonyl groups of highly conserved amino acids point toward the lumen to act as surrogates for the water molecules of K+ hydration. Ion conductivity is abrogated if some of these carbonyl groups flip out of the lumen, which happens (i) in the process of C-type inactivation or (ii) during filter collapse in the absence of K+. Here, we show that K+ channels remain permeable to water, even after entering such an electrically silent conformation. We reconstituted fluorescently labeled and constitutively open mutants of the bacterial K+ channel KcsA into lipid vesicles that were either C-type inactivating or noninactivating. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy allowed us to count both the number of proteoliposomes and the number of protein-containing micelles after solubilization, providing the number of reconstituted channels per proteoliposome. Quantification of the per-channel increment in proteoliposome water permeability with the aid of stopped-flow experiments yielded a unitary water permeability pf of (6.9 ± 0.6) × 10−13 cm3⋅s−1 for both mutants. “Collapse” of the selectivity filter upon K+ removal did not alter pf and was fully reversible, as demonstrated by current measurements through planar bilayers in a K+-containing medium to which K+-free proteoliposomes were fused. Water flow through KcsA is halved by 200 mM K+ in the aqueous solution, which indicates an effective K+ dissociation constant in that range for a singly occupied channel. This questions the widely accepted hypothesis that multiple K+ ions in the selectivity filter act to mutually destabilize binding.
Circulating and tissue endothelin immunoreactivity in advanced atherosclerosis.

BACKGROUND Atherosclerosis is characterized by endothelial injury and the proliferation of arterial smooth-muscle cells. The latter may be a result of the release of growth factors from the vessel wall; such growth factors may include an endothelium-derived vasoconstrictor for peptide with mitogenic properties. We tested the hypothesis that plasma endothelin concentrations are elevated in persons with symptomatic atherosclerosis, independently of age. METHODS We measured plasma endothelin levels in 100 normal subjects and in 40 patients with atherosclerosis predominantly of the following types: aortic and peripheral vascular disease (14 patients), renovascular disease (9 patients) coronary artery disease (9 patients), and carotid disease (8 patients). We also performed immunohistochemical staining for endothelin in the walls of atherosclerotic vessels. RESULTS In the normal subjects, the mean (+/- SD) plasma endothelin concentration was 1.4 +/- 0.2 pmol per liter, with no correlation between age and plasma endothelin concentration (r = 0.13, P = 0.2). In the patients with symptomatic atherosclerosis, the mean plasma endothelin concentration was 3.2 +/- 1.2 pmol per liter (P less than 0.001), and there was a significant correlation between plasma endothelin and the number of sites of disease involvement (r = 0.89, P less than 0.001). In the immunohistochemical studies, endothelin-1-like immunoreactivity was observed in vascular smooth muscle as well as in endothelial cells. CONCLUSIONS Endothelin may be a marker for arterial vascular disease. Whether it participates in the atherogenic process or is merely released from damaged endothelial cells is unclear.
Optimization of spatiotemporal gene inactivation in mouse heart by oral application of tamoxifen citrate

Inducible and tissue‐specific gene inactivation in mice has become a powerful tool to bypass embryonic and postnatal lethality of knockout mice. The most frequently used inducible system is based on Cre recombinase fused to either one or two mutated estrogen receptor ligand binding domains, thus rendering Cre function tamoxifen‐dependent. To achieve Cre‐mediated inactivation of a given gene, 4‐OH tamoxifen (4‐OHT) dissolved either in alcohol and/or oil is usually administered by repeated intraperitoneal (i.p.) injections. Since this procedure imposes considerable stress on mice, we compared the effect of tamoxifen citrate, mixed into a standard mouse diet at different concentrations, with that of i.p. administration of 4‐OHT on Cre‐mediated, heart‐specific inactivation of thioredoxin reductase 2. Here we show that tamoxifen citrate in the chow was equally effective as 4‐OHT given i.p. Oral tamoxifen administration is thus a convenient and cost‐saving way for gene induction, and, most importantly, it reduces stress and avoids adverse effects in mice. genesis 45:11–16, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The impact of insecticide-resistance on control of vectors and vector-borne diseases.

A questionnaire inquiring into the nature of schemes for the insecticidal control of disease vectors, the development of resistance in these vectors, and the effect of any such resistance on their control and on the extent of disease was sent to more than 100 health authorities throughout the world. The replies to the questionnaire are summarized in this paper.Until recently, the use of insecticides in public health has been largely based on three organochlorine compounds-DDT, HCH and dieldrin. However, in some countries resistance to these has now severely affected control both of many insect species and of the diseases they transmit (e.g., malaria, yellow fever, filariasis, typhus, plague). Certain other public health problems (onchocerciasis, Chagas' disease, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis) have not so far been greatly affected by resistance, but it is difficult to be sure of the continued reliability of the organochlorines.Research in the past 5 years, much of it sponsored by WHO, has shown the value of various organophosphorus and carbamate insecticides as replacements for the organochlorines, although resistance to them, too, can occur. Attention must therefore be focused on all facets of the use of these newer compounds and particular scrutiny made of possible instances of resistance to them.
Risk Reporting of the Banking Sector of Bangladesh: A Time Horizon Analysis

The study focused on the practical scenarios of bank risk disclosures where it is assumed that adequate risk disclosures expand the path of transparency in the marketplace. The reason is that the financial disclosures, including risk items, represent their image of the current and potential investors, and can impact their mentality about investment. The research analyzed the credit risk, market risk and operational risk reporting intensities in their reports. It is noted that the maximum Risk Weighted Assets (RWA) are held for credit risk of the banking system whereas the remaining part of the system utilized by the market risk and operational risk. It is found that the risk for the top five (5) or the top ten (10) banks is extremely high. The concentration symptom of risk is not good as the fewer borrowers occupied the most of the credit.
Sodium‐calcium exchange in cultured bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells.

1. Intracellular free calcium ([Ca2+]i) was measured in cultured bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cell monolayers loaded with the fluorescent calcium indicator Fura‐2. 2. Resting [Ca2+]i was 112 +/‐ 10 nM. Application of ouabain (20 microM) was without effect on [Ca2+]i for periods of up to 1 h. Monensin (10 microM) resting [Ca2+]i to 145 +/‐ 32 nM over approximately 2 min. In the presence of ouabain (20 microM), 10 microM‐monensin increased [Ca2+]i to 146 +/‐ 15 nM. 3. Removal of extracellular sodium was without effect in resting cells or cells exposed to ouabain alone. However, in the presence of monensin, replacement of extracellular Na+ with Li+ resulted in a prompt increase in [Ca2+]i to a peak of 280 +/‐ 37 nM, which then returned towards resting levels. When Na+ was removed in the presence of both ouabain and monensin, [Ca2+]i reached a peak of 585 +/‐ 53 nM. 4. When extracellular Na+ was replaced with K+, to achieve simultaneous Na+ removal and depolarization, [Ca2+]i reached a peak of 568 +/‐ 63 nM, compared with a peak of 462 +/‐ 38 nM when Li+ was used as a Na+ substitute in paired experiments. The transient increase in [Ca2+]i evoked by sodium removal peaked earlier when K+ was used as the sodium substitute, showing that depolarization increased the rate of calcium influx into the cell when sodium was removed from the bathing medium. 5. Removal of extracellular K+ had no effect on the low‐Na(+)‐evoked increase in [Ca2+]i. 6. Returning extracellular Na+ during the increase in [Ca2+]i resulting from Na+ removal increased the rate of return of [Ca2+]i towards basal levels. In the absence of Na+, [Ca2+]i took 41 +/‐ 5 s to decline from 400 to 200 nM, and this was reduced to 26 +/‐ 6 s (n = 4, S.E.M.) when Na+ was returned to the bathing solution. 7. These results indicate endothelial cells possess a voltage‐dependent Na(+) ‐Ca2+ exchange mechanism in the surface membrane. However, this mechanism does not appear to be of primary importance in the maintenance of resting [Ca2+]i since cells were able to restore a low [Ca2+]i in the absence of extracellular Na+. The evidence for the existence of a Na(+) ‐Ca2+ exchanger in the surface membrane of endothelial cells and the possibility that this mechanism may contribute to calcium entry and/or extrusion during agonist‐evoked responses is discussed.
The Criteria of Websites Quality on Consumers' Buying Behavior

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the effects of website quality criteria that affect the customer purchasing intentions. Website quality criteria are categorized as security, privacy, usability and web design, convenience, trust and confidence, product value, and product customization. In this study, the criteria are chosen in accordance with the two main criteria of the technology acceptance model. In this chapter, Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) is used to evaluate the effects of criteria on each other from a causal perspective. According to the research findings, security, trust and trustworthiness, product value, and product customization criteria are more effective than privacy, usability, and web design convenience criteria.
Evaluation of power loss and efficiency for 50 kW SiC high power density converter

The power converter for more electric engine in aircraft requires high power density, which makes SiC extremely attractive for this application. In this work, a 50 kW SiC high power density converter with the topology of three-phase two-level voltage source inverter is developed. Meanwhile, an accurate mathematical model for the power loss and efficiency calculation is proposed, which is based on the experimental results of switching characterization. The prototype presented in this work shows an efficiency up to 97.77% at 50 kW input power and 60 kHz switching frequency. And it matches well with the result predicted by model.
Midlife vulnerability and food insecurity: Findings from low-income adults in the US National Health Interview Survey

Background Food insecurity, limited access to adequate food, in adulthood is associated with poor health outcomes that suggest a pattern of accelerated aging. However, little is known about factors that impact food insecurity in midlife which in turn could help to identify potential pathways of accelerated aging. Methods Low-income adults (n = 17,866; 2014 National Health Interview Survey), ages 18 to 84, completed a 10-item food security module and answered questions regarding health challenges (chronic conditions and functional limitations) and financial worry. We used multinomial logistic regression for complex samples to assess the association of health challenges and financial worry with food insecurity status and determine whether these associations differed by age group, while adjusting for poverty, sex, race/ethnicity, education, family structure, social security, and food assistance. Results Food insecurity rates were highest in late- (37.5%) and early- (36.0%) midlife, relative to younger (33.7%) and older (20.2%) age groups and, furthermore, age moderated the relationship between food insecurity and both risk factors (interaction p-values < .05, for both). The effects of poor health were stronger in midlife relative to younger and older ages. Unlike younger and older adults, however, adults in midlife showed high levels of food insecurity regardless of financial worry. Conclusions Findings suggest that food insecurity in midlife may be more severe than previously thought. Greater efforts are needed to identify those at greatest risk and intervene early to slow premature aging.