Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Productivity Dynamics: The Role of Competition in a Service Industry

Using panel data for nearly all service providers in a single industry sector, we examine productivity responses to changes in competition in the United States. The sector offers workplace employee representation through trade union branches which compete with one another for union members whose subscriptions they depend on to cover costs. As such, they have an interest in maximising productivity. Ours is the first study to measure service industry productivity using both price and quantity metrics. Consistent with manufacturing studies, we find market entrants have lower prices and higher Total Factor Productivity (TFP) than incumbents. Increased competition from new entrants leads incumbents to reduce the price of union membership; exit rates then rise among incumbents with the lowest prices who are constrained in adjusting their prices downwards. Those with higher TFP have higher survival probabilities. However, increased competition does not induce incumbents to raise their TFP. These findings are consistent with a market in which incumbents learn about market conditions but face high switching costs limiting their ability to invest in the new techniques that underpin the higher TFP of new entrants.
Amino Acid Plasma Profile in Children with Type 1 Diabetes

Background: Insulin deficiency inhibits protein synthesis and stimulates protein degradation, and therefore amino acid metabolism could be altered in diabetes mellitus. Objective: To analyze amino acid plasma profile in a group of children with type 1 diabetes, and to evaluate its potential application as a marker of metabolic control for the disease. Methods: A clinical assessment and metabolic study (amino acid plasma concentrations) was performed in a group of 49 children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, aged 8.6 to 14.3 years, and a group of 48 healthy children (control group), aged 7.4 to 14.8 years. Results: Plasma concentrations of ARG, GLN, ILE, PHE, THR, TYR, VAL and TAU were significantly higher (p<0.05) within the diabetic group with respect to the control group. Likewise, plasma concentrations of branched-chain (347.65±58.76 vs. 285.20±45.20 nmol/ml), glucogenic (1252.74±236.82 vs. 1053.69±211.19 nmol/ml) and ketogenic amino acids (441.62±57.09 vs. 354.13±53.45 nmol/ml) were significantly higher (p< 0.05) in the diabetic group with respect to the control group. There was no correlation between the single amino acid (or amino acid groups) plasma levels and the evolution of the disease (years) or HbA1c levels. Conclusion: The study of changes in amino acid plasma profile in the young diabetic, probably as a consequence of insulinopenia, could have interest as a marker of metabolic control for the disease
Combining SIMS and mechanistic modelling to reveal nutrient kinetics in an algal-bacterial mutualism

Microbial communities are of considerable significance for biogeochemical processes, for the health of both animals and plants, and for biotechnological purposes. A key feature of the interactions between microbes is the exchange of nutrients between cells. Isotope labelling followed by analysis with secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) can identify nutrient fluxes and heterogeneity of substrate utilisation on a single cell level. Here we present a novel approach that combines SIMS with a mechanistic model to reveal otherwise inaccessible nutrient kinetics. The method is applied to study the onset of a synthetic mutualistic partnership between a vitamin B12-dependent mutant of the alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and the B12-producing, heterotrophic bacterium Mesorhizobium loti, which is supported by algal photosynthesis. Results show that an initial pool of fixed carbon delays the onset of mutualistic cross-feeding, and the model allows quantification of this delay. Our method is widely applicable to other microbial systems, and will contribute to furthering a mechanistic understanding of microbial interactions.
Instar Determination of Blaptostethus pallescens (Hemiptera: Anthocoridae) Using Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract Blaptostethus pallescens Poppius is an important predator of vegetable pests in tropical regions. The correct identification of the stages of the life cycle of predatory species is crucial, since different stages may present different rates of pest consumption. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are computational tools with a structure based on the human brain. With applications in several fields, ANNs have been applied in pest management for identification of pest species, spatial distribution modeling, and insect forecasting. The objective of this study was to apply ANNs as a method for the instar determination of B. pallescens using three morphometric measures (head width, body width, and body length). Cluster analysis was performed to categorize the insects in instars according to the morphometric variables. Subsequently, the ANNs were trained for instar determination using the morphometric measures as input variables. The ANNs tested (with 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 hidden neurons) provided proper data fitting (R 2 > 98%). However, due to the parsimony principle, the network with hidden layer size 6 was selected. This study shows the successful application of ANNs in the instar determination of B. pallescens, which would not be possible using classical methods.
Fog Computing Model and Efficient Algorithms for Directional Vehicle Mobility in Vehicular Network

Vehicular fog computing (VFC) has become an appealing paradigm to provide services for vehicles and traffic systems. However, high mobility is one of the great challenges to the communication and computation service qualities in VFC. A network model for directional vehicle mobility is proposed in this paper to guarantee the service qualities of vehicles in VFC. In the model, vehicles are configured into three vehicular subnetworks according to their turning directions at the next crossing. For each subnetwork, vehicles communicate with each other via vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and with roadside units via vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. The aim is to minimize the average response time of the tasks originated from vehicles. By carefully choosing neighboring vehicles as task processing helpers, a greedy algorithm is proposed to solve the mentioned optimization problem. Besides, two bipartite matching based algorithms, named BMA1 and BMA2, are proposed by exploiting Kuhn-Munkras approach and minimum-cost maximum-flow approach, respectively. Performance of the proposed model and the offloading algorithms are evaluated on the combined simulation platform by open street map, SUMO and NS-3. Simulation results show that, the proposed model outperforms four existing models in terms of average response time, when the five models have similar number of unsuccessful tasks. Moreover, the proposed BMA1 and BMA2 are superior to the existing greedy algorithm in terms of the average response time of tasks, and the proposed greedy algorithm significantly accelerates the generation of offloading decisions in comparison to BMA1, BMA2 and the existing greedy algorithm.
Atmospheric and soil drought risks combined shape community assembly of trees in a tropical dry forest

Predicting plant community assembly is challenging in part because the influence of environmental conditions via plant functional strategies and the relevance of mechanisms of community assembly change across habitats and these changes remain poorly studied. To assess how environmental conditions drive species sorting in a tropical dry forest, we used the combined RLQ and Fourth‐Corner methods to analyse changes in tree species assemblages among sites with distinct atmospheric and soil drought risks. We asked how variation in potential radiation, soil water availability and evapotranspiration interact with functional traits to explain the cross‐site sorting of species lying along a continuum of drought coping strategies ranging from acquisitive to conservative resource‐use. Environment and traits were tightly related. Opposing common expectations on the success of strategies in resource limited environments, drought tolerant conservative species with dense tissues and tardily deciduous leaves were favoured on sites with higher resource (soil water) availability. Drought avoiding acquisitive species with water storing tissues and thin, light leaves with short retention time periods were favoured in sites with drier soils. A decoupling of stressing conditions caused by soil and atmospheric aridity combined with differences in species adaptations to each of these factors can explain the apparent discrepancies. Synthesis. Drought stress gradients entailed shifts in community functional composition. We show that atmospheric and soil drought risks can be decoupled and jointly determine species distribution in relation to their functional strategies. By considering atmospheric drought stress, a key yet often overlooked factor in studies of community assembly, we offer a novel explanation to a seemingly contrasting pattern in tropical dry forests where species with acquisitive, rather than conservative strategies, predominate in the most resource‐limited yet less water demanding environment. More generally, our results emphasize the need for detailed studies of the multiple habitat‐dependent relationships between traits and environment to advance our predictive understanding of species distributions and community assembly.
Randomized controlled trial on minimally invasive versus open esophagectomy for esophageal cancer: short and long-term outcomes

The incidence of esophageal cancer has been increasing over the past two decades (1). Despite improvement in treatment options, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, esophagectomy with regional lymph node dissection remains the mainstay of curative modality for patients with localized thoracic esophageal cancer. Morbidity is a major concern during the follow-up period because of the invasive nature of esophagectomy and the complex operative procedures involved. Long thoracic and abdominal incisions and one-lung ventilation during esophagectomy are thought to be partly responsible for the high surgical invasiveness and subsequent respiratory complications of this procedure. On the other hand, a thoracoscopic approach, which could reduce the length of skin incision, has been attracting attention as a minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE). By the late 1990s, several surgeons had performed and demonstrated the safety and feasibility of the technique (2,3). After these exploratory investigations, reports from large single-center studies began to reveal improvements in the surgical outcomes of MIE (4). Meta-analyses using individual institutional reports showed that compared with open esophagectomy (OE), MIE was associated with less operative blood loss, shorter length of intensive care unit and hospital stays, and reduced incidence of postoperative respiratory complications (5,6). On the other hand, results from several nationwide database analyses have been disappointing and demonstrated that MIE did not reduce postoperative respiratory complications and had higher reoperation or reintervention rates (7,8). However, these unexpected results of the nationwide database analyses may be attributable to the inclusion of a wide range of patients, surgeons, and hospitals. Therefore, we have recognized the necessity of a prospective study to determine the lower invasiveness and improved quality of life (QOL) associated with MIE, compared with OE.
The Relationship Between Pediatric Quality of Life and Post Concussion Symptoms

Most pediatric concussion patients recover physically within a month (Blume & Hawash, 2012; Crowe et al., 2016; Zemek et al., 2013). , but up to 50% of children and adolescents may continue to experience cognitive or emotional symptoms after the physical symptoms have resolved (Crowe et al., 2016). For a portion of injured children and adolescents, symptoms will linger beyond 30 days (Field et al., 2003; Harmon et al., 2013; Heyer et al., 2016; Makdissi et al., 2003; Novak et al., 2016; Purcell et al., 2016; Raikes & Smart, 2015). In turn, lingering symptoms affect quality of life of children and adolescents with concussion (McLeod et al., 2015; Novak et al., 2016). The tasks and activities that students are exposed to in school deplete cognitive reserves, which further has consequences for learning, emotional functioning, symptom expression, and general quality of life.
Terrestrial Relay‐Aided Cooperative High Throughput Satellite Systems

Full frequency reuse based dual satellite system (DSS) is investigated in this work. In the case of DSS, user terminals receive inter spot beam and intra spot beam interfering signals due to the simultaneous transmission of data from both satellites. Cooperative precoding algorithm is proposed to mitigate these effects. The achievable data rates with zero‐forcing (ZF) and regularized ZF precoding algorithms are characterized. If the user terminals served by both satellites are colocated, then the proposed cooperative precoding algorithm fails because of correlated channels. To this end, relay‐aided DSS (RA‐DSS) is proposed. The achievable data rates of both full‐duplex and half‐duplex RA‐DSSs are characterized. Through simulations, it is shown that the proposed full‐duplex RA‐DSS achieves better data rate than the DSS, single satellite system, and orthogonal transmission even if the users are closely placed.
Stability of Lyapunov exponents

Abstract We consider small random perturbations of matrix cocycles over Lipschitz homeomorphisms of compact metric spaces. Lyapunov exponents are shown to be stable provided that our perturbations satisfy certain regularity conditions. These results are applicable to dynamical systems, particularly to volume-preserving diffeomorphisms.
Partitioning gene-based variance of complex traits by gene score regression

The majority of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) loci are not annotated to known genes in the human genome, which renders biological interpretations difficult. Transcriptome-wide association studies (TWAS) associate complex traits with genotype-based prediction of gene expression deriving from expression quantitative loci(eQTL) studies, thus improving the interpretability of GWAS findings. However, these results can sometimes suffer from a high false positive rate, because predicted expression of different genes may be highly correlated due to linkage disequilibrium between eQTL. We propose a novel statistical method, Gene Score Regression (GSR), to detect causal gene sets for complex traits while accounting for gene-to-gene correlations. We consider non-causal genes that are highly correlated with the causal genes will also exhibit a high marginal association with the complex trait. Consequently, by regressing on the marginal associations of complex traits with the sum of the gene-to-gene correlations in each gene set, we can assess the amount of variance of the complex traits explained by the predicted expression of the genes in each gene set and identify plausible causal gene sets. GSR can operate either on GWAS summary statistics or observed gene expression. Therefore, it may be widely applied to annotate GWAS results and identify the underlying biological pathways. We demonstrate the high accuracy and computational efficiency of GSR compared to state-of-the-art methods through simulations and real data applications. GSR is openly available at https://github.com/li-lab-mcgill/GSR.
Escape the Evil Professor! Escape Room Review Activity

In this article, the author describes an exam review activity in which students answered questions and solved puzzles in order to escape the review session. In a general psychology (100-level) course and research methods in psychology (300-level) course, students solved a series of puzzles and review questions. This format is similar to popular escape room attractions. Finally, the first group to sing a song that would appease the evil professor was allowed to leave the review session. Perceptions of the escape room were positive and concepts questioned in the review game were retained better than concepts that were not included.
Síndrome de malnutrición, inflamación y aterosclerosis en la insuficiencia renal crónica terminal

Fundamento: la biocompatibilidad de la dialisis que expone al paciente a endotoxinas y otras sustancias inductoras de citoquinas proinflamatoria, ha tomado relevancia clinica en la hipotesis del sindrome malnutricion, inflamacion y aterosclerosis, que asocia la inflamacion a la disfuncion endotelial y sirve como marcador de un nuevo tipo de malnutricion vinculado a la inflamacion cronica, la proteina C reactiva, como factores predictores de enfermedades cardiovasculares. Las principales causas de fallecimientos en los pacientes que reciben hemodialisis cronica son las cardiovasculares, las que explican en conjunto cerca del 50 % de las mismas en las que influye de manera directa la malnutricion, inflamacion y aterosclerosis. Objetivo: profundizar en el conocimiento de la malnutricion, inflamacion y aterosclerosis en los pacientes con insuficiencia renal cronica terminal. Caso clinico: se realizo revision bibliografica de la insuficiencia renal cronica y sus nexos con el sindrome de malnutricion, inflamacion y aterosclerosis en investigaciones publicadas en idioma ingles y espanol. Se revisaron 66 articulos originales, de ellos 17 en SciELO, 16 en PubMed, 12 en EBSCO; nueve en revistas extranjeras de Nefrologia, tres en revistas medicas cubanas y nueve en libros de autores cubanos y extranjeros, en formato impreso los tres ultimos. Se revisaron 66 articulos y se escogieron los 29 mas relevantes. Conclusiones: el sindrome de malnutricion, inflamacion y aterosclerosis puede ser el responsable de la alta morbimortalidad que presentan los pacientes con insuficiencia renal cronica terminal. DeCS: DESNUTRICION; FALLO RENAL CRONICO; ATEROSCLEROSIS; INFLAMACION; LITERATURA DE REVISION COMO ASUNTO.
Novel insights into the effects of manipulating DNA methyltransferase levels on the imprinted and non-imprinted regions of the genome

DNA methylation or 5-methylcytosine (5mC) is an important epigenetic mark integral to appropriate genomic imprinting, X chromosome inactivation and in the silencing of developmentally important genes. There remains to be a lot unknown about how DNA methylation is programmed and reprogrammed once lost particulary in early mammalian development. In untransformed hTERTs and in mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) we were able to investigate how methylation can or cannot be recovered following the removal and reintroduction of key methyltransferases, by using a range of wet-lab and bioinformatic approaches to assay methylation at individual CpG sites. Indeed, this thesis has shown that methylation, once lost is able to be recovered in nearly all of the known and putative imprints assayed in the mESCs through rescue with DNMT3A2. Not only does the de novo methyltransferase-3a assist with the recovery of methylation but it also plays a role in maintenance methylation. A reduction of methylation through a stable loss of DNMT1 in the hTERTs however highlighted enriched groups of hypomethylated genes such as the Cancer Testis Antigen (CTA) genes and the Protocadherins (PCDH) that are sentistive to this loss, and in some instances associated with polycomb marks. Interestingly a transient loss of methylation however in the same system with pharmacological 5-aza-2dC (Aza) showed not only widespread methylation, but also some gains of methylation at selected loci such as the the GPCRs known to act as oncogenes and tumour supressors. In conclusion, through examining the effects of the loss of DNA methylation in both human and mouse model systems, this thesis has successfully identified gene classes sensitive to a transient and stable loss of DNA methylation and identified where this methylation can be recovered.
Heart Failure Demographic and Clinical Features: The Caribbean Perspective. A Single-Center 100-Case Series Discussion and Review of the Literature

The full impact of cardiovascular disease risk factors on incident disease and cardiovascular mortality in Jamaica and much of the Caribbean is still unknown [1]. Data from St James Study in Trinidad and the Barbados Registry of Stroke have highlighted the importance of hypertension and diabetes as predictors of coronary artery disease [2] and stroke [3] respectively; however we lack local information on the incidence of heart failure (HF) in the Afro-Caribbean community. The results of a study [4] of acute heart failure admissions to an UK city-Centre hospital that Abstract
Ion Homeostasis Response to Nutrient-Deficiency Stress in Plants

A crucial feature of plant performance is its strong dependence on the availability of essential mineral nutrients, affecting multiple vital functions. Indeed, mineral-nutrient deficiency is one of the major stress factors affecting plant growth and development. Thereby, nitrogen and potassium represent the most abundant mineral contributors, critical for plant survival. While studying plant responses to nutrient deficiency, one should keep in mind that mineral nutrients, along with their specific metabolic roles, are directly involved in maintaining cell ion homeostasis, which relies on a finely tuned equilibrium between cytosolic and vacuolar ion pools. Therefore, in this chapter we briefly summarize the role of the ion homeostasis system in cell responses to environmental deficiency of nitrate and potassium ions. Special attention is paid to the implementation of plant responses via NO 3 − and K + root transport and regulation of ion distribution in cell compartments. These responses are strongly dependent on plant species, as well as severity and duration of nutrient deficiency. The major transport systems, involved in plant response to K + deficiency, that is, contributing in K + uptake, accumulation and remobilization in root cell, as well as distribution between root cells, translocation from root to shoot and from source to sink leaves, control of stomata guard cells.
The pathogenesis of Parkinson Disease : the microbiota-gut-brain axis

3 Resumo: . 4 Introduction . 5 The Parkinson’s Disease . 5 The synuclein spreading hypothesis . 6 The Braak’s staging system . 8 The microbiota . 9 The microbiota-gut-brain axis: a novel concept in PD . 9 Other environmental factors . 13 Therapeutics and biomarkers/Future directions . 14 Diagnosis . 14 Therapeutics and disease management: . 14 Conclusion . 17 References: . 18 ABREVIATIONS/ACRONIMS: ANS – Autonomic Nervous System CNS – Central Nervous System DMNV – Dorsal Motor Nucleus of the Vagus Nerve ENS – Enteric Nervous System GI – Gastrointestinal LPS – Lipopolysaccharide NMS – Non Motor Symptoms PD – Parkinson’s Disease PIGD – Postural Instability and Gait Difficulty SIBO – Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth TLR Toll-Like Receptor