Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Econometric Model of Location and Pricing in the Gasoline Market

The authors propose an econometric model of both the geographic locations of gasoline retailers in Singapore and price competition among retailers conditional on their geographic locations. Although market demand for gasoline is not observed, the authors are able to infer the effects of such demand from stations’ locations and pricing decisions using available data on local market-level demographics. Using the proposed location model, which is based on the assumption of social welfare maximization by a policy planner, the authors find that local potential gasoline demand depends positively on the local demographic characteristics of the neighborhood. Using the proposed pricing model, which is based on the assumption of Bertrand competition between retail chains, the authors find that retail margins for gasoline are approximately 21%. The authors also find that consumers are willing to travel up to a mile for a savings of $. 03 per liter. Using the estimates of the proposed econometric model, the authors answer policy questions pertaining to a recent merger between two firms in the industry. Answering these questions has important policy implications for both gasoline firms and policy makers in Singapore.
Psychiatric effects of cannabis

Background Cannabis is commonly regarded as an innocuous drug and the prevalence of lifetime and regular use has increased in most developed countries. However, accumulative evidence highlights the risks of dependence and other adverse effects, particularly among people with pre-existing psychiatric disorders. Aims To re-evaluate the adverse effects of cannabis in the general population and among vulnerable individuals, including those with serious psychiatric disorders. Method A wide-ranging review of the topics related to these issues. Results and conclusions An appreciable proportion of cannabis users report short-lived adverse effects, including psychotic states following heavy consumption, and regular users are at risk of dependence. People with major mental illnesses such as schizophrenia are especially vulnerable in that cannabis generally provokes relapse and aggravates existing symptoms. Health workers need to recognise, and respond to, the adverse effects of cannabis on mental health.
The ring.

The identification on the cover is laser engraved preventing the print from smearing, peeling, or washing off. Rings can be worn in dry or wet working conditions and cold sterilized without compromising the integrity of the dosimeter. Information on the cover includes the account, participant, and serial numbers, the worker’s name, the wear date and exchange frequency, the size, and on what hand the ring is to be worn.
2.4-GHz band low-voltage class-C PMOS VCO IC with amplitude feedback loop

A novel 2.4 GHz-band 0.5-V Class-C PMOS VCO IC with an amplitude feedback loop is proposed. The amplitude feedback loop circuit consists of a detector, an invertor and a bias control circuit. The feedback loop automatically changes the bias of LC-VCO and shifts the oscillation mode from initial Class-AB to Class-C in steady-state. The Class-C VCO IC is designed, fabricated and fully evaluated in 180-nm CMOS technology. The fabricated VCO IC has exhibited a measured phase noise of -117.4 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from the 2.25 GHz carrier frequency with a supply voltage of only 0.5-V.
Resorption of the terminal phalanges in scleroderma.

A case of Raynaud's phenomenon and scleroderma in a 54-year-old woman is reported. One of the patient's fingers had been reattached surgically after being partially amputated in a childhood accident. When sensitivity to cold and scleroderma began in later life, this finger was not affected. The circulation in all fingers was impaired, and all but the “amputated” finger showed roentgenographic evidence of severe resorption of terminal phalangeal bone.
Genetic determinants of HIV‐1 infection and progression to AIDS: susceptibility to HIV infection

Abstract Interindividual variability in susceptibility to HIV‐1 infection, its transmission, disease progression, and response to antiviral therapy has been attributed to host determinants and variability in multiple genes. Although most people exposed to the virus go on to develop full‐blown disease at variable intervals, a proportion of them, labeled as long‐term nonprogressors or exposed uninfected, possess ‘natural resistance’ to infection. A better understanding of genetic and immunologic basis of such a natural resistance to infection would bear important implications in designing therapeutic vaccine designs. The genetic variants that could influence susceptibility to HIV‐1 and limit AIDS vary in different populations and among individuals. Meta‐analyses of large cohort studies have identified numerous ‘AIDS restriction genes’ that regulate HIV cell entry (particularly chemokine coreceptors and their ligands), acquired and innate immunity (major histocompatibility complex, killer cell immunoglobulin‐like receptor, and cytokines), and others [tripartite interaction motif 5 α (TRIM5α) and apolipoprotein B mRNA‐editing enzyme, catalytic polypeptide‐like 3G] that influence outcome of HIV infection. Studies carried out in the Indian population with regard to genetic polymorphisms in chemokine receptors have shown that (i) the protective CCR5 Δ32 variant is rare, (ii) CCR5HHE carrying *59402A is associated with increased likelihood of infection and development of AIDS, and (iii) the Indian population generally has low CCL3L1 copy numbers (∼2.3). These data have implications in developing screening tests that could identify people at higher or lower risk of infection and rate of disease progression, predict vaccine responsiveness in clinical trials and understand the pathogenic mechanisms.
Implementing international standards for Information Security Management in China and Europe: a comparative multi-case study

The leading international standards for information security management, ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27002 originate from the UK, but are applied worldwide. This paper explores whether the processes of selection, implementation and use of these interrelated standards differ between China and Europe by studying cases of Chinese and European companies. Chinese companies face some additional problems with the standards but manage to get them successfully implemented in a short period of time. Main differences relate to governance and management of standard adoption. This study is innovative in the method used for standardisation research (comparative multi-case study), and the topic: implementation and impact of information security management standards.
Characteristics of the Interaction of a Synthetic Human Tristetraprolin Tandem Zinc Finger Peptide with AU-rich Element-containing RNA Substrates*

Tristetraprolin (TTP) and its two known mammalian family members are tandem CCCH zinc finger proteins that can bind to AU-rich elements (AREs) in cellular mRNAs and destabilize those transcripts, apparently by initiating their deadenylation. Previous studies have shown that the ∼70-amino acid tandem zinc finger domain of TTP is required and sufficient for RNA binding, and that the integrity of both zinc fingers is also required. However, little is known about the kinetics or structure of the peptide-RNA interaction, in part because of difficulties in obtaining soluble recombinant protein or peptides. We characterized the binding of a synthetic 73-amino acid peptide from human TTP to the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) ARE by gel mobility shift analyses and fluorescence anisotropy experiments. Both types of studies yielded a peptide-RNA dissociation constant of ∼10 nM. Surprisingly, we found that the “footprint” from the TNF ARE required for peptide binding was only ∼9 bases and that two molecules of peptide could bind to probes containing as little as 19 bases. An identical recombinant peptide exhibited gel shift characteristics similar to those of the synthetic peptide. NMR analysis of the 15N-labeled recombinant peptide suggested that its first zinc finger was structured in solution but that the second was not. The titration of oligonucleotides representing 17, 13, and even 9 bases of the TNF ARE caused an essentially identical, dramatic shift of existing resonances, and the appearance of new resonances in the peptide spectra, so that all amino acids could be assigned. These data suggest that this TTP peptide-RNA complex is structured in solution and might be amenable to NMR structure determination.
Review article: Barrett's oesophagus and carcinoma in Japan

In Asia, oesophageal diseases, such as Barrett's oesophagus and oesophageal carcinoma, have traditionally been less common than in America and Europe. In recent years, however, the number of reported cases of these conditions in Japan has increased. Two large prospective studies, the Sendai Barrett's Esophagus Study (S‐BEST) and the Far East Study (FEST), on the geographic prevalence of Barrett's oesophagus, have recently investigated the epidemiology of Barrett's oesophagus in Japan. Results from both studies showed that overall prevalence of the condition is lower than in the West: 0.9–1.2% in Japan compared with 1–4% in Europe and 5–12% in USA. Similar to the situation in the West, the condition was shown to be most prevalent in elderly male patients and least prevalent in patients with Helicobacter pylori. Adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus is still rare in this region, although there has been an increase in the annual death rate from 3.7 (1960) to 6.9 (1995) per 100,000 population. Risk factors for oesophageal carcinoma include a strong association with the prevalence of gastro‐oesophageal reflux disease (GERD). With the increasing prevalence of GERD in the Japanese population, continued surveillance of changes in the epidemiology of columnar‐lined oesophagus (a precursor of Barrett's oesophagus), Barrett's oesophagus and adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus is strongly recommended.
Debugging Agent Programs with Why?: Questions

Debugging is hard, and debugging cognitive agent programs is particularly hard, since they involve concurrency, a dynamic environment, and a complex execution model that includes failure handling. Previous work by Ko & Myers has demonstrated that providing Alice and Java programmers with software that can answer "why? " and "why not? " questions can make a dramatic difference to debugging performance. This paper considers how to adapt this approach to cognitive agent programs, specifically AgentSpeak. It develops and formalises definitions for "why? " and "why not? " questions and associated answers, and illustrates their application using a scenario.
Comb-based decimator for SDR applications

This paper presents a novel comb-based decimator for the SDR (Software Defined Radio) applications. The expanded cosine filters and the expanded multiplierless compensators are cascaded with the comb filter. The comb filter is realized in a nonrecursive form. We consider the case where the decimation factor M is the power of two, i.e M=2k. In that way we have k+1-stage structure, where the first k stages are the cosine filters followed by the downsampling by two, and the last stage is the cascade of simple compensators. The proposed structure has much better magnitude characteristic than the corresponding comb filter.
Longer peptide can be accommodated in the MHC class I binding site by a protrusion mechanism

According to current consensus, CD8+ T cell responses are focused upon short peptide sequences (8–11 amino acids) presented by MHC class I molecules. This size restriction is thought to operate mostly at the level of peptide‐MHC class I interaction. Crystal structures have shown that the free N and C termini of a bound peptide interact through hydrogen bonding networks to conserved residues at either end of the class I binding site. Accordingly, it is thought that the termini are fixed and that only minor variations in peptide size are possible through a central bulging mechanism. We find that this consensus view is not always correct as some peptide‐MHC class I interaction will accept significant extensions. Furthermore, our results indicate that in some cases protrusion, rather than bulging, may be the mechanism of extension. Depending upon the particular peptide‐MHC combination in question, such extensions can occur at either the N or C terminus (but never both at the same time). Finally, we show that MHC and T cell in some cases can detect the identity of the extension, i.e. that extensions may be part of the specificity of the T cell immune response. We suggest that such extensions may play a physiological role.
Condom use in steady and casual sexual relationships: Planning, preparation and willingness to take risks among adolescents

Condom use within steady and casual sexual relationships was examined among 14–16 year old Dutch adolescents from secondary school (N = 140). It was hypothesised that among adolescents sex and subsequently condom use with casual sex partners is less likely to be considered in advance, more context-dependent and less habitual; whereas the opposite is true for steady relationships. Therefore, preparatory behaviours (buying and carrying condoms and communicating about condom use) were expected to mediate the intention–behaviour relation in the context of steady relationships, but not in the context of casual sex. Results confirmed that condom use with steady sex partners was explained by preparatory behaviours, habits, and to some extent, behavioural willingness, and that preparatory behaviours mediated the intention–behaviour relationship. Condom use with casual sex partners was predicted by risk willingness and intentions, without any mediation by preparatory behaviours. The results indicate that it is essential to increase awareness among adolescents that unexpected sexual situations may occur and to train them to take preparatory actions.
Web Document Summarization by Context

This paper adresses the issue of Web document summarization. We consider the context of a Web document by the set of pieces of information extracted from the content of all the documents linked to it. We put forward two new summarization by context algorithms. The first one uses both the content and the context and the second one relies only on the elements of the context. It is shown that summaries based on the context are usually much more relevant than those only made from the content of the target. Optimal conditions on the size of the content and the context of the document to yield the best summaries are studied.
Frente a la Ciencia Contemporánea: La Función del Analista hacia el Real

The aim of this article is to differentiate between the positions of the analyst in the clinic, in relation with the reality surrounding the patient, starting from the symptom. It tries to bring forward the growing importance of affirming the irreducibility of the reality as an opportunity for the subject to decide towards the dimension of desire, as opposed to the eagerness to fulfil the demands that seems to engage contemporary science.
Mechanisms of myocardial ischemia induced by epinephrine: comparison with exercise‐induced ischemia.

&NA; The role of epinephrine in eliciting myocardial ischemia was examined in patients with coronary artery disease. Objective signs of ischemia and factors increasing myocardial oxygen consumption were compared during epinephrine infusion and supine bicycle exercise. Both epinephrine and exercise produced myocardial ischemia as evidenced by ST segment depression and angina. However, the mechanisms of myocardial ischemia induced by epinephrine were significantly different from those of exercise. Exercise‐induced myocardial ischemia was marked predominantly by increased heart rate and rate‐pressure product with a minor contribution of end‐diastolic volume, while epinephrine‐induced ischemia was characterized by a marked increase in contractility and a less pronounced increase in heart rate and rate‐pressure product. These findings indicate that ischemia produced by epinephrine, as may occur during states of emotional distress, has a mechanism distinct from that due to physical exertion.
Antiviral protection by vesicular stomatitis virus-specific antibodies in alpha/beta interferon receptor-deficient mice

The role of innate, alpha/beta interferon (IFN-alpha/beta)-dependent protection versus specific antibody-mediated protection against vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) was evaluated in IFN-alpha/beta receptor-deficient mice (IFN-alpha/beta R0/0 mice). VSV is a close relative to rabies virus that causes neurological disease in mice. In contrast to normal mice, IFN-alpha/beta R0/0 mice were highly susceptible to infection with VSV because of ubiquitous high viral replication. Adoptive transfer experiments showed that neutralizing antibodies against the glycoprotein of VSV (VSV-G) protected these mice efficiently against systemic infection and against peripheral subcutaneous infection but protected only to a limited degree against intranasal infection with VSV. In contrast, VSV-specific T cells or antibodies specific for the nucleoprotein of VSV (VSV-N) were unable to protect IFN-alpha/beta R0/0 mice against VSV. These results demonstrate that mice are extremely sensitive to VSV if IFN-alpha/beta is not functional and that under these conditions, neutralizing antibody responses mediate efficient protection, but apparently only against extraneuronal infection.
A Parallel Molecular Docking Approach Based on Graphic Processing Unit

Molecular docking technology is an important tool in molecular recognition and structure prediction for the protein-protein complex. In this work, based on the analysis of the widely used FFT-based method, we proposed a GPU parallel molecular docking program. The new docking program was applied to dock 5 protein-protein complexes of enzyme/inhibitor type. Docking results indicate that the parallel codes can make a good prediction of the given complex structures. Moreover, the GPU docking method can achieve a speedup of more than 3 times. Finally, we analyzed the influence of parameters for the docking results and parallel speedup. The obtained high quality parallel speedup and efficiency show the promising improvement of our method for future applications on structure prediction of protein-protein complex.
Learning from failure, ambiguity and trust in social enterprise

Purpose – The paper aims to present case studies to uncover the reflections of key participants in a social enterprise network in West Yorkshire. It considers how they learn from failure and how they make sense of the variety of messages about, and approaches to, social enterprise.Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken is based upon sense making in organisations. The paper builds upon the concept of ambiguity as well as Sydow's framework of inter‐organisational trust. Participant drawings of these ideas were used to enhance data generated from face to face interviews.Findings – The paper reviews actors' experiences of failure in projects to explore the relationships of those active in social enterprises and support agencies. From this perspective, uncertainty, ambiguity and unexpected insights into mistrust between organisations were identified as underlying themes.Research limitations/implications – The concepts of uncertainty, ambiguity, trust and mistrust offer rich ways of perceiving the pro.
Chronic kidney disease--assessing the impact.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is important. In a study of over a million people, CKD was associated with both increased mortality and age-standardized risk of cardiovascular disease, even when known risk factors were controlled for.1 Impaired kidney function has implications for prescribing and for the use of over the counter preparations, especially non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. In addition, a proportion of people with moderately reduced kidney function will experience a progressive loss of kidney function. This will affect their health and may require renal replacement therapy with dialysis or kidney transplantation. Unfortunately, we do not have a perfect method for the routine quantification of kidney function. Serum creatinine levels rise significantly only with severe renal dysfunction, and creatinine production is influenced by age, sex, muscle mass and ethnicity. Formulae which take into account some or all of these factors can be used to produce an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) from serum creatinine. Many countries, including the UK, have adopted the MDRD (Modification of Diet in Renal Disease) formula for routine reporting of eGFRs.2 However, the interpretation of these eGFRs is not always straightforward. They are inaccurate when there is good renal function and most laboratories only report eGFRs <60 ml/min/1.73 m2. The confidence intervals are wide, …
Impact of multicellular resistance on the survival of solid tumors, including micrometastases.

One of the reasons for the development of cancers and their relentless malignant progression--even in the face of highly toxic anticancer therapies--is an enhanced ability to bypass mechanisms responsible for precipitating cell death. The latter include active cell death mechanisms often referred to as programmed cell death or apoptosis. Active cell death is a genetically controlled, intrinsic suicide process, and evidence is rapidly accumulating that cancers are more resistant to undergoing apoptosis than normal cells. This may be a major factor explaining the ability of small numbers of tumor cells, e.g. tumor emboli, to survive transit in the bloodstream and form distant metastases in ectopic organ sites. In addition, because many therapeutic agents ultimately kill tumor cells by inducing apoptosis, acquisition of an apoptosis-resistant phenotype could be a generic mechanism of drug or radiation resistance in cancer patients. It follows that uncovering the basis of the enhanced survival capacity of tumor cells is fundamental to gaining a better understanding of tumor progression, metastasis formation, and response to therapy. In this respect many of the principles thought to regulate apoptosis in cancers have been established using conventional, two-dimensional monolayer cell cultures of 'liquid' tumors, i.e. unicellular model systems. Suppression of apoptosis in solid tumors, however, may be governed by different cellular and genetic mechanisms. Evidence is presented in support of this hypothesis, and that multicellular architecture may render individual tumor cells within solid tumors less susceptible to apoptosis. This multicellular resistance--which may represent a form of group protection--can also be induced or acquired during cytotoxic drug chemotherapy or cytokine-mediated growth inhibition of solid tumors. It follows that disruption of solid tumor multicellularity may provide a means of enhancing the therapeutic destruction of small solid tumors such as occult micrometastases. Such disruptions may be brought about by a variety of so-called antiadhesive agents.