Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DNA and RNA oligomer thermodynamics: The effect of mismatched bases on double‐helix stability

The thermodynamic parameters for the double‐strand formation of the molecules rCAmG + rCUnG, m,n = 5–7, and dCAmG + dCTnG, m,n = 5,6, were measured from optical melting curves. Normal helices are formed when m = n. The deoxyoligomers are more stable than the ribo‐oligomers, due to a more favorable enthalpy. Double helices with mismatched bases can be formed by mixing oligomers with m ≠ n. Such helices may form several possible structures. A structure with a dangling base is favored over a structure with a bulged base. The destabilization of the double strands by the formation of a bulged base was determined to be greater than 1.6 kcal/mol at 10°C. The extent of aggregation in the oligomer double strand rCA7G·rCU7G was determined using ultracentrifugation equilibrium. The possible effects of aggregation on the determination of the thermodynamic parameters for double‐strand formation are discussed.
Social Determinants of Health in Deaf Communities

The social determinants of health among deaf people are similar to those of hearing people in the United States. The built environment, neighborhood cohesiveness, access to health care, education, and affordable housing all shape the health of individual deaf people as they do hearing people. However, in addition to these similarities, deaf people face a unique combination of social and communication barriers which appear to have resulted in health disparities between hearing and deaf people. These barriers often are more pervasive for deaf people than hearing people and have important public health implications for deaf communities. The ultimate goal of this chapter is twofold: 1) to discuss social factors unique to deaf people which might contribute to health disparities between hearing and deaf people; and 2) to suggest programmatic and systematic approaches to help close these health gaps.
Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of 3, 8‐dimethyl‐5‐isopropylazulene Derivatives as Anti‐gastric Ulcer Agent

Recent studies showed that Guaiazulene (GA) and Sodium guaiazulene sulfonate (GAS‐Na) have good anti‐gastric ulcer effect. Here, two series of GA derivatives were synthesized and evaluated for their anti‐gastric ulcer activity. The data obtained from in vivo testing of these compounds in a rodent ethanol‐induced stomach injury model are discussed. Among the tested compounds, A1, A4, and A9 (ulcer index: 1.125 ± 1.246**, 1.714 ± 0.756*, 1.875 ± 1.126*) exhibited better anti‐gastric ulcer activity than the positive control Omeprazole (2.005 ± 1.011*). The information got from these studies and the results of 3D‐SAR investigation may be useful in the design of novel anti‐gastric ulcer agents.
The Value of Radionuclide Bone Imaging in Defining Fresh Fractures Among Osteoporotic Vertebral Compression Fractures

Abstract Vertebral fractures are the most common osteoporotic fractures. To perform percutaneous vertebral body cement augmentation, it is essential to accurately identify the affected vertebrae. The study evaluated the role of radionuclide bone imaging in identifying fresh osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures. A prospective study of 39 patients with acute osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures was carried out. All patients underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and radionuclide bone imaging to determine if the fractures were fresh, followed by percutaneous kyphoplasty for the fresh fractures. The positive rate on radionuclide bone imaging was 92.1% (82/89), and the positive rate on MRI was 93.3% (83/89), with no statistically significant difference (P > 0.05). Eighty-one vertebrae had the same positive identification by both radionuclide bone imaging and MRI, and 5 of the same vertebrae were diagnosed negative by both techniques. One patient with positive radionuclide bone imaging was negative according to MRI, and 2 patients were entirely positive by MRI but negative by radionuclide bone imaging. A kappa test showed good consistency between the 2 methods for detecting the affected vertebrae (Kappa = 0.751, P < 0.01). Radionuclide bone imaging is as sensitive as MRI in the diagnosis of fresh osteoporotic vertebral compression fracture, making it an effective method for detecting affected vertebrae for percutaneous vertebroplasty.
Motor Cortex Activity Organizes the Developing Rubrospinal System

The corticospinal and rubrospinal systems function in skilled movement control. A key question is how do these systems develop the capacity to coordinate their motor functions and, in turn, if the red nucleus/rubrospinal tract (RN/RST) compensates for developmental corticospinal injury? We used the cat to investigate whether the developing rubrospinal system is shaped by activity-dependent interactions with the developing corticospinal system. We unilaterally inactivated M1 by muscimol microinfusion between postnatal weeks 5 and 7 to examine activity-dependent interactions and whether the RN/RST compensates for corticospinal tract (CST) developmental motor impairments and CST misprojections after M1 inactivation. We examined the RN motor map and RST cervical projections at 7 weeks of age, while the corticospinal system was inactivated, and at 14 weeks, after activity returned. During M1 inactivation, the RN on the same side showed normal RST projections and reduced motor thresholds, suggestive of precocious development. By contrast, the RN on the untreated/active M1 side showed sparse RST projections and an immature motor map. After M1 activity returned later in adolescent cat development, RN on the active M1/CST side continued to show a substantial loss of spinal terminations and an impaired motor map. RN/RST on the inactivated side regressed to a smaller map and fewer axons. Our findings suggest that the developing rubrospinal system is under activity-dependent regulation by the corticospinal system for establishing mature RST connections and RN motor map. The lack of RS compensation on the non-inactivated side can be explained by development of ipsilateral misprojections from the active M1 that outcompete the RST. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Skilled movements reflect the activity of multiple descending motor systems and their interactions with spinal motor circuits. Currently, there is little insight into whether motor systems interact during development to coordinate their emerging functions and, if so, the mechanisms underlying this process. This study examined activity-dependent interactions between the developing corticospinal and rubrospinal systems, two key systems for skilled limb movements. We show that the developing rubrospinal system competes with the corticospinal system in establishing the red nucleus motor map and rubrospinal tract connections. This is the first demonstration of one motor system steering development, and ultimately function, of another. Knowledge of activity-dependent competition between these two systems helps predict the response of the rubrospinal system following corticospinal system developmental injury.
The Use of Stereotypical Gender Information in Constructing a Mental Model: Evidence from English and Spanish

Four experiments were carried out to investigate how general knowledge about the stereotypical gender of participants in a text influences comprehension. A self-paced reading task was used to present short texts comprising one, two, or three sentences. The first sentence of each text introduced a stereotypically masculine or feminine participant (e.g. doctor, nurse), or a neutral one. The last sentence introduced a pronoun (he/she) that could match or mismatch the gender of the referent. The first experiment, which was carried out in English, showed that reading times for the last sentence were longer when there was a mismatch than when there was a match between the gender of the pronoun in the last sentence and the stereotypical gender of the referent in the first sentence. In contrast to English, the gender of the participant can be disambiguated by a preceding article (el/la) in Spanish. The results of the second, third, and fourth experiments, which were carried out in Spanish, showed that reading times for the first sentences were longer when there was a mismatch than when there was a match between the gender of the article and the stereotypical gender of the participant. However, reading times for the last sentences did not differ. Overall, the results suggest that information about the stereotypical gender of the participants in a text is incorporated into the representation as soon as it becomes available, and that it affects the ease with which the text is understood.
Circadian genes Period 1 and Period 2 in the nucleus accumbens regulate anxiety‐related behavior

It has been suggested for some time that circadian rhythm abnormalities underlie the development of multiple psychiatric disorders. However, it is unclear how disruptions in individual circadian genes might regulate mood and anxiety. Here we found that mice lacking functional mPeriod 1 (mPer1) or mPeriod 2 (mPer2) individually did not have consistent behavioral abnormalities in measures of anxiety‐related behavior. However, mice deficient in both mPer1 and mPer2 had an increase in levels of anxiety‐like behavior in multiple measures. Moreover, we found that mPer1 and mPer2 expression was reduced in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) after exposure to chronic social defeat stress, a paradigm that led to increased anxiety‐related behavior. Following social defeat, chronic treatment with fluoxetine normalized Per gene expression towards wild‐type levels. Knockdown of both mPer1 and mPer2 expression via RNA interference specifically in the NAc led to a similar increase in anxiety‐like behavior as seen in the mutant animals. Taken together, these results implicate the Per genes in the NAc in response to stress and the development of anxiety.
D-ForenRIA: Distributed Reconstruction of User-Interactions for Rich Internet Applications

We present D-ForenRIA, a distributed forensic tool to automatically reconstruct user-sessions in Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), using solely the full HTTP traces of the sessions as input. D-ForenRIA recovers automatically each browser state, reconstructs the DOMs and re-creates screenshots of what was displayed to the user. The tool also recovers every action taken by the user on each state, including the user-input data. Our application domain is security forensics, where sometimes months-old sessions must be quickly reconstructed for immediate inspection. We will demonstrate our tool on a series of RIAs, including a vulnerable banking application created by IBM Security for testing purposes. In that case study, the attacker visits the vulnerable web site, and exploits several vulnerabilities (SQL-injections, XSS.) to gain access to private information and to perform unauthorized transactions. D-ForenRIA can reconstruct the session, including screenshots of all pages seen by the hacker, DOM of each page and the steps taken for unauthorized login and the inputs hacker exploited for the SQL-injection attack. D-ForenRIA is made efficient by applying advanced reconstruction techniques and by using several browsers concurrently to speed up the reconstruction process. Although we developed D-ForenRIA in the context of security forensics, the tool can also be useful in other contexts such as aided RIAs debugging and automated RIAs scanning.
Methodics of production layout design and its importance to logistics management

Contemporary global business market environment is characterized by high level of various requirements which are imposed on industrial companies in every branch. Those needs are related to e.g. manufacturing type, product quality and quantity, customer service, logistics indicators, etc. In final consequence the companies make an effort to develop logistics management systems to effectively manage their bulky material flows and simultaneously to minimize their costs. The enterprise logistics management systems are consisting of several subsystems, one of them is production logistics subsystem to effectively plan, to manage and to control all flows of manufacturing processes. For development of such subsystem it’s necessary to have drawing documentation of production layouts. Production layouts are therefore crucial to effectively manage all manufacturing operations within the frame of given production logistics subsystem. Under current market conditions the companies should have drawing documentation of their production layouts in desired detail – industrial zone layout, production hall layout, production line layout, production workshop or cell layout and production workplace layout. Paper type: Research Paper Published online: 30 July 2013 Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 225-238 ISSN 2083-4942 (Print) ISSN 2083-4950 (Online) © 2013 Poznan University of Technology. All rights reserved.
Chief Executive Officer Values And Corporate Social Responsibility: 75 Years Of Lessons Learned

We review the lessons of the 20th century scholars for direction in understanding top management's impact on corporate social responsibility. The notions of how business decisions had an impact on society and that of corporate social responsibility proposed by Peter Drucker more than fifty years ago were inspired by earlier scholars and expanded upon by subsequent researchers. We draw on a selection of these authors to explore how the chief executive officer's values and ethics were translated into what we now term corporate social responsibility in a stakeholder view of the firm.
Bovine Leukemia Virus-Induced Persistent Lymphocytosis in Cattle Does Not Correlate with Increased Ex Vivo Survival of B Lymphocytes

ABSTRACT Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is an oncogenic retrovirus associated with B-cell lymphocytosis, leukemia, and lymphosarcoma in the ovine and bovine species. We have recently reported that in sheep, BLV protects the total population of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from ex vivo spontaneous apoptosis. This global decrease in the apoptosis rates resulted from both direct and indirect mechanisms which allow extension of cell survival. Although sheep are not natural hosts for BLV, these animals are prone to develop virus-induced leukemia at very high frequencies. Most infected cattle, however, remain clinically healthy. This difference in the susceptibilities to development of leukemia in these two species might be related to alterations of the apoptotic processes. Therefore, we designed this study to unravel the mechanisms of programmed cell death in cattle. We have observed that PBMCs from persistently lymphocytotic BLV-infected cows were more susceptible to spontaneous ex vivo apoptosis than cells from uninfected or aleukemic animals. These higher apoptosis rates were the consequence of an increased proportion of B cells exhibiting lower survival abilities. About one-third of the BLV-expressing cells did not survive the ex vivo culture conditions, demonstrating that viral expression is not strictly associated with cell survival in cattle. Surprisingly, culture supernatants from persistently lymphocytotic cows exhibited efficient antiapoptotic properties on both uninfected bovine and uninfected ovine cells. It thus appears that indirect inhibition of cell death can occur even in the presence of high apoptosis rates. Together, these results demonstrate that the protection against spontaneous apoptosis associated with BLV is different in cattle and in sheep. The higher levels of ex vivo apoptosis occurring in cattle might indicate a decreased susceptibility to development of leukemia in vivo.
The innovation platform : enabling balance between growth and renewal

VINNOVA´s mission is to promote sustainable growth by funding needs-driven research and developing effective innovation systems. Through its activities in this field, VINNOVA aims to make a significant contribution to Sweden´s development into a leading centre of economic growth. Internationally strong research and innovation milieus (R&I milieus) are one of the most important competitive factors in the face of global competition. This is why all of VINNOVA's activities are guided by the ambition to develop and further develop strong research and innovation environments. For small and internationally dependent countries like Sweden, the need to focus its efforts on a number of strong, internationally distinguished R&I milieus is a critical factor in the effort to promote growth. It is a question of creating a number of globally-recognised spearheads so that Sweden can become an attractive partner for both companies and R&D investments. In strong R&I milieus, cutting-edge research, development and innovation operations are conducted and there is an effective interplay between these operations. VINNOVA runs a number of programmes, several in cooperation with other players, that aim to promote the development of strong R&I milieus in different ways. The VINNOVA Report series includes external publications and other reports from programmes and projects that have received funding from VINNOVA. NormannPartners Foreword VINNOVA's tasks are to fund needs-driven research required by a competitive business and industrial sector and a flourishing society, and to strengthen the networks that are such a necessary part of this work. Understanding the dynamics of such networks is the key to effective development of innovation systems that can generate sustainable new growth platforms. And we are living in a time when our societies are facing considerable challenges in fields such as sustainable development, social cohesion and healthcare, challenges which at the same time contest the ability of industry and innovation system governors to achieve long term successful systemic renewal. Growth and renewal processes are well established mechanisms for promoting development of lasting value creating innovation systems. Building on the work by the late Richard Normann, Niklas Arvidsson and Ulf Mannervik have developed a comprehensive analytical framework that helps us to better understand the interplay between growth and renewal processes. It is work that has been conducted in interaction with VINNOVA and which has enabled us to reflect on our approaches to stimulate both growth around existing growth platforms as well as search for tomorrow's growth platforms, and-in particular-how to …
Enterprise Restructuring and the Role of Managers in Russia: Case Studies of Firms in Transition

Part I: Legacy and Survival 1. Russian Industry's Soviet Legacy 2. Russia's Transition Economy Part II: Case Studies of Enterprise Restructuring 3. Machinery 4. Light Industry 5. Consumer Durables: Watches and Tires 6. Food: Bread and Meat 7. Collapse and Recovery: Enterprise Restructuring Post-1998 Part III: Conclusions and Methods 8. Explaining the Propensity to Restructure
The Changing Investment Behavior of U.S. Seniors

Over the next quarter century there will be a dramatic shift in the percentage of the U.S. population that is retired. This will strain entitlement programs such as social security and will potentially impact capital markets. In this paper I present evidence of changes in the asset holdings of investors over the age of 65 during the last two decades. The percentage of seniors with stock investments and loans collateralized by their primary residence increased, and among participants the stock share of financial assets and loan balances increased. I find evidence that these trends are the result of decreasing risk aversion, both over time and for successive birth-year cohorts.
Association Between Bullying and Psychosomatic Problems: A Meta-analysis

CONTEXT. In the last few years, there has been an increasing amount of research showing the concurrent and long-term consequences of bullying and being bullied by peers. OBJECTIVE. We performed a meta-analysis to quantify the association between involvement in bullying and psychosomatic complaints in the school-aged population. METHODS. We searched online databases (Embase, Medline, PsychInfo, Scopus) up to March 2008, bibliographies of existing studies, and qualitative reviews for studies that examined the association between involvement in bullying and psychosomatic complaints in children and adolescents. The original search identified 19 studies, of which 11 satisfied prestated inclusion criteria. RESULTS. Three random-effects meta-analyses were performed for the following 3 groups of children aged between 7 and 16 years: victims, bullies, and bully-victims. Bully-victims, victims, and bullies had a significantly higher risk for psychosomatic problems compared with uninvolved peers. CONCLUSIONS. The association between involvement in bullying and psychosomatic problems was demonstrated. Given that school bullying is a widespread phenomenon in many countries around the world, the present results suggest that bullying be considered a significant international public health issue.
Corporate governance, earnings manipulation, and information quality in capital markets

This thesis was inspired by the accounting scandals around the world at the beginning of the 21st century and the reforms in corporate governance law that followed. We use both theoretical and empirical analysis to focus on several aspects of corporate governance mechanisms. The first study focuses on the board of directors. We develop a dynamic agency model with renegotiation to analyze the interaction between the board's monitoring and the manager's earnings manipulation in a firm. The second study broadens the perspective to consider the information in the capital markets with a focus on the role of financial disclosure regulation. It examines how financial disclosure regulation affects the information quality in capital markets, using a strategic investor model in an insider trading setting. The third study investigates these ideas empirically. We construct measures of public, private, and total information quality, and study how they change following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) in the United States. The key findings of the thesis are as follows. The first study shows that the dynamic incentive contract motivates the manager to work hard on the one hand and to manipulate earnings on the other hand. Even though the board anticipates the earnings manipulation, the board does not unambiguously choose to monitor the manager. The second study demonstrates that the equilibrium market price reflects both the public and a fraction of the private information. While tightened disclosure regulation might improve the quality of public information, the changes in the quality of private information and of total information are ambiguous due to the subtle interplay between public reporting and private information acquisition. The third study provides empirical evidence showing a temporary improvement in the quality of public information following the SOX. The quality of private information decreases and there is no significant change in total information quality. The thesis contributes to the literatures of earnings management and of corporate governance, adding to the growing debate on the costs and benefits of governance reforms. By identifying important indirect effects, we stress the need to consider "substance over form".