Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ENDOCRINOLOGICAL ROLE OF LEPTIN IN OBESITY AND ASTHMA

Objective: Role of leptin resistance in correlation between obesity and asthma. Methods: High-caloric diet was given for 8 weeks to induce obesity. Ovalbumin followed by aluminum hydroxide was given to induce asthma. The animal was treated with leptin analog (0.4 mg/kg, i.p. for 7 days) and leptin antagonist (3 mg/kg, p.o., for 7 days). Biochemical parameters such as serum leptin, ghrelin, and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and physical parameters such as tidal volume and airflow rate were estimated to confirm the state of asthma and obesity, respectively. Results: It was found that leptin and ghrelin were elevated in obese and obese asthmatic condition, responsible for leptin resistance. Treatment with leptin analog and leptin antagonist significantly increases and decreases serum leptin levels, respectively. There was no significant change in TNF-α and ghrelin level after leptin analog treatment. The result of respiratory parameters improved with leptin analog. From our study, we found beneficial role of leptin analog in obese asthmatic condition. Conclusion: Leptin is an alternative treatment approach to treat obese asthmatic condition.
The Structure of the Lattices of Pure Strategy Nash Equilibria of Binary Games of Strategic Complements

It has long been established in the literature that the set of pure strategy Nash equilibria of any binary game of strategic complements among a set N of players can be seen as a lattice on the set of all subsets of N under the partial order defined by the set inclusion relation (⊆). If the game happens to be strict in the sense that players are never indifferent among outcomes then the resulting lattice of equilibria satisfies a straightforward sparseness condition. In this paper we show that in fact this class of games expresses all such lattices. In particular we prove that any lattice under set inclusion on 2N satisfying this sparseness condition is the set of pure strategy Nash equilibria of some binary game of strategic complements with no indifference. This fact then suggests an interesting way of studying some subclasses of games of strategic complements: By attempting to characterize the subcollections of lattices that each of these classes is able to express. In the second part of the paper we study subclasses of binary games of strategic complements with no indifference, defined by restrictions that capture particular social influence structures: 1) simple games, 2) nested games, 3) hierarchical games 4) clan-like games and 5) graphical games of thresholds.
Estimating Short Run and Long Run Coefficients of Fundamentals Factors with Growth and Momentum Factor: Evidence from Emerging Markets

This study examines the long term relationship of risk premium and fundamental factors in emerging stock markets of China, India and Pakistan keeping in view leading contribution of Fama and French (1992) and Carhart (1997) models. Contrary to the macroeconomic multifactor models, this study incorporates firm-specific risk factors related to the market premium; size (SMB), value (HML), momentum (WML) and growth (UMD) as determinants of risk premium. The firm-specific growth factor is incorporated based on evidence from Ho, Strange, and Piesse (2008) by employing (UMD) which is based on assets to market equity of the firm. Sample of 1198 companies from the three emerging markets for the period of 20012013 depicts market risk premium as the leading factor affecting risk premium in Indian and the Pakistani markets. Results reveal market momentum being high enough to overestimate coefficients in the short run. However, the relationship is stabilized and adjusted in the long run. Chinese markets, where all the risk factors seem to play their role to determine risk premium, are relatively much stable and grown-up and clearly represent maturity of the Chinese markets. Distinction between the short run and long run might be useful for the investors of the three emerging economies. According to the principle of high risk associated with high returns, small value happens to deliver higher returns with higher volatility. The growth stocks outperform value stocks in these economies. JEL Classification: G10, G30
Interactive comment on “Chemical composition and mixing-state of ice residuals sampled within mixed phase clouds” by M. Ebert et al

23866/line 3: instead of “Penner et al., 2001” we now cite “Lohmann and Feichter, 2005 U. Lohmann and J. Feichter, Global indirect aerosol effects: a review, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 5, 715–737, 2005. 23867 line 11: “is dominating” changed to “dominates” 23868 line 6: “7 to 9” was replaced by “6” 23868 line 19: We also agree that there is no evidence that soot is a good IN and we have not made such a statement in this manuscript. To make this point more clear we will delete the misleading soot references from 23868 line 19.
Association Of Telomerase Activity With The Prognosis Of Diabetes Mellitus In Saudi Population

Telomeres are important for chromosome stability and they are replenished by telomerase enzyme. Impaired telomerase activity has a strong association with ageing and diabetes. Research data have shown that telomerase activity plays a vital role in pathogenesis of type I and type II diabetes by influencing pancreatic cell regeneration. This study was aimed to assess telomerase activity in three diabetic groups (type I, type II and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM)) and compare it with a population with normal blood glucose levels to establish a correlation between reduced telomerase activity and prognosis of diabetes in the Saudi population. This study was conducted on 200 Saudi diabetic and non-diabetic participants (20-60 years). Peripheral mononuclear cells (PMNCs) were extracted from the blood samples and the activity of telomerase in the PMNCs was detected by the TRAP-ELISA assay. Results of study revealed that there was no telomerase activity in control healthy group, moderate activity in type I, some activity in GDM, and significantly high activity in type II group. This might indicate that telomerase activity has a strong correlation to the prognosis of type II diabetes. However, the molecular mechanism still needs to be investigated. KEYWORDS
Fate of Listeria monocytogenes during Ripening of Iranian Traditional Koozeh Cheese Made from Raw Ewe's Milk

Background: One of the most well-known Iranian traditional cheeses is Koozeh. The aim of present work was to evaluate the survival of L. monocytogenes during ripening of Iranian traditional Koozeh cheese made from raw ewe's milk. Methods: A 2-factor experimental design was applied to study the effect of ripening conditions, including different temperatures (4, 9, and 14 °C) and different concentrations of NaCl (0, 8, 12, and 15%) on the survival of L. monocytogenes in the Koozeh cheese. Microbial analysis was carried out over a period of 150 days with sampling in every 10 days. SPSS software (v. 16.0) was used for statistical analysis. Results: Three NaCl concentrations (8, 12, and 15%) significantly affect the inactivation L. monocytogenes (p<0.05). After inoculation, L. monocytogenes populations were reduced most rapidly during the first ten days of storage (~0.5-1.5 log Colony Forming Unit/g) at three mentioned temperatures; after that, the bacteria were continually decreased, being below the detection limit (1 log CFU/g) at the end of ripening. Numbers of L. monocytogenes were reduced more effectively at 14 °C storage temperature than 9 and 4 °C (p<0.05). Conclusion: L. monocytogenes was declined drastically during ripening days and eliminated at the end of ripening of Koozeh cheese. L. monocytogenes counts were decreased during ripening of Koozeh cheese under adverse conditions such as high salt concentrations and high temperatures. However, since Iranian Koozeh cheese is made from raw and unpasteurized milk, there are still some concerns about health risk of L. monocytogenes in this product. Also, the effects of temperature and salting parameters on the sensorial properties of Koozeh cheese should be investigated in future. © 2018, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences. This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Mobility in the Private Universities : Developing Country Context

The main aim of this study is to identify the factors influencing high rate of faculty mobility, which is a serious problem for the private universities of Bangladesh. The primary objectives of the private universities were to create opportunities for higher education and to prevent the outflow of funds by the students going abroad for higher studies. Literature review reveals that the common factors related to faculty turnover are lack of opportunity for professional development, working environment, lack of faculty autonomy, discrimination in rewards and recognition, poor compensation package, dissatisfaction with the promotion and performance appraisal process, poor research and publications facilities, and lack of administrative and technical support. In addition, lacking in the other dimensions of satisfaction are excessive pressure in advising and course work, poor quality of students, inadequate benefits and so on. A survey has been conducted among 30 faculties of different universities by using questionnaire. This study reveals that in order to meet the current challenge of ever-growing demand of educational institutions it is required to retain the faculties by solving the dilemmas in their universities. To introduce good human resource practices at the work place it is important to have positive attitudes of the management, sincere efforts, and the urgency of establishing a good working place where everyone will work like a harmonious family. JEL. Classification:I21;J26;J44;J63
A convenient protocol for establishing a human cell culture

The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) plays a key role in the pathogenesis of several blinding retinopathies. Alterations to RPE structure and function are reported in Age-related Macular Degeneration, Stargardt and Best disease as well as pattern dystrophies. However, the precise role of RPE cells in disease aetiology remains incompletely understood. Many studies into RPE pathobiology have utilised animal models, which only recapitulate limited disease features. Some studies are also difficult to carry out in animals as the ocular space remains largely inaccessible to powerful microscopes. In contrast, models provide an attractive alternative to in-vitro investigating pathogenic RPE changes associated with age and disease. In this article we describe the step-by-step approach required to establish an experimentally versatile culture model of the outer retina in-vitro incorporating the RPE monolayer and supportive Bruch’s membrane (BrM). We show that confluent monolayers of the spontaneously arisen human ARPE-19 cell-line cultured under optimal conditions reproduce key features of native RPE. These models can be used to study dynamic, intracellular and extracellular pathogenic changes using the latest developments in microscopy and imaging technology. We also discuss how RPE cells from human foetal and stem-cell derived sources can be incorporated alongside sophisticated BrM substitutes to replicate the aged/diseased outer retina in a dish. The work presented here will enable users to rapidly establish a realistic model of the outer retina that is amenable to a high degree in-vitro of experimental manipulation which will also serve as an attractive alternative to using animals. This model therefore has the benefit of in-vitro achieving the 3Rs objective of reducing and replacing the use of animals in research. As well as recapitulating salient structural and physiological features of native RPE, other advantages of this model include its simplicity, 1 1 1 2
PHOSPHORUS DIFFUSION AND GETTERING IN MULTI-CRYSTALLINE SILICON SOLAR CELL PROCESSING

Gettering of mc-Si by P diffusion has been studied in the temperature range 840-990 ° C, in order to investigate its effect on the minority carrier recombination lifetime. We find that the recombination lifetime increases with both increased diffusion temperature and time. However, by correlating the enhancement in minority carrier lifetime with the sheet resistance of the emitters, we find that phosphorus penetration alone cannot not explain the gettering. It is found that for approximately equal emitter sheet resistances, longer diffusion times at lower temperatures are more efficient for gettering purposes than shorter high temperature diffusions. For successful gettering of non-recombinative traps, however, deep P penetration is required. Finally, by applying a temperature cool down to extend the high temperature processing without altering the emitter sheet resistance, we find that the minority carrier lifetime can be significantly increased, resulting in increased average solar cell efficiency from 12.53% to 13.43%.
LOCATING RELAY NODES FOR P2P VOIP APPLICATIONS: A PLANETLAB-BASED EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

In Peer-to-Peer VolP applications, we can use relay nodes to detour default IP paths for recovering from low quality sessions (LQSs). Locating quality relay nodes (QRNs) rapidly and inexpensively however is a very challenging task. In this project, we present a PlanetLab-based experimental study on locating relay nodes. We collect the 1hop QRNs of all LQSs in a network snapshot and evaluate a series of state-of-the-art QRN selection approaches. These evaluated schemas are either ineffective or involving excessive probes. We observe that LQSs with high location similarity tend to share QRNs. Inspired by this, we propose a geographic landmark (GLM) based system that uses delays from peers to landmarks and geographic constraints to select QRNs. Evaluations demonstrate that GLM outperforms the existing schemes in terms of cost efficiency.
Advanced and Minor Lung Disease Severity Classification Using Deep Features

A key component of Computer Aided Diagnosis (CADx) systems is classification. This stage involves feature extraction. Deep features have shown to be an emerging area of research in various fields including medical imaging. Most recent deep works in the lung area focused using Convolution Neural Networks (CNN). However, these works have drawbacks such as over-classifying and are not reflective of the real world. Therefore this study's aim is to develop a lung disease severity classification (LDSC) system. Information on lung disease severity can be beneficial to clinicians to plan treatments. This study used high resolution computed tomography (HRCT) scans from Hospital Kuala Lumpur where there were 81 diseased (Interstitial Lung Disease) and 15 normal patients. Deep features were obtained using a pre-trained network (Alexnet). This studied used four classifiers Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naïve Bayes, Random Forest and K-NN. A high accuracy of 100% was achieved using SVM.
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, CONTROL TYPE, AND PERFORMANCE: THE NEW ZEALAND STORY

This study investigates the ownership structure of New Zealand non-financial companies in terms of both ownership and management control and examines the effect of ownership structure on corporate governance and firms’ performance. The Berle and Mean’s hypothesis of separation of ownership and control does not find support in New Zealand. Further analysis tests the proposition that the diffusion of corporate ownership has allowed corporate managers to pursue goals other than profit maximization. The findings do provide evidence of a non-monotonic relation between managerial shareholdings and firm performance. This result indicates the complex nature of the relationship between ownership structure and firm value.
Title Co-simulation of RFIC with bondwire antenna via retarded PEECmethod

We present an antenna modeling method based on partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) theory. The antenna is modeled as an equivalent circuit of lumped circuit elements, which enables circuit co-simulation between the antenna and circuits in both time and frequency domains. Antenna radiation is captured as an equivalent radiation resistor. For verification, a 2.4-GHz transmitter with bondwire antenna was implemented in a standard digital 0. 35μm CMOS technology. Measurement shows good agreement with the proposed model. This model can be applied to any other on-chip electromagnetic structures.
MEMORANDUM No 01 / 2011 Karine Nyborg

Firms with a reputation as socially responsible may have an important cost advantage: If workers prefer their employer to be socially responsible, equilibrium wages may be lower in such firms. We explore this hypothesis, combining Norwegian register data with data on firm reputation collected by an employer branding firm. Adjusting for a large set of background variables, we find that the firm’s social responsibility reputation is significantly associated with lower wages.
DETECTION OF BROWN DWARF LIKE OBJECTS IN THE CORE OF NGC 3603

We used near-infrared data obtained with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope to identify objects having the colors of brown dwarfs (BDs) in the field of the massive galactic cluster NGC 3603. These are identified through a combination of narrow- and medium-band filters which span the J and H bands and are particularly sensitive to the presence of the 1.3–1.5 μm H2O molecular band unique to BDs. We provide a calibration of the relationship between effective temperature and color for both field stars and BDs. This photometric method provides effective temperatures for BDs to an accuracy of ±350 K relative to spectroscopic techniques. This accuracy is shown to be not significantly affected by either stellar surface gravity or uncertainties in the interstellar extinction. We identify nine objects having effective temperatures between 1700 and 2200 K, typical of BDs, observed J-band magnitudes in the range 19.5–21.5, and that are strongly clustered toward the luminous core of NGC 3603. However, if these are located at the distance of the cluster, they are far too luminous to be normal BDs. We argue that it is unlikely that these objects are either artifacts of our data set, normal field BDs/M-type giants, or extragalactic contaminants and, therefore, might represent a new class of stars having the effective temperatures of BDs but with luminosities of more massive stars. We explore the interesting scenario in which these objects would be normal stars that have recently tidally ingested a hot Jupiter, the remnants of which are providing a short-lived extended photosphere to the central star. In this case, we would expect them to show the signature of fast rotation.
Trend analysis of the airborne fraction and sink rate of anthropogenically released CO2

Abstract. Is the fraction of anthropogenically released CO2 that remains in the atmosphere (the airborne fraction) increasing? Is the rate at which the ocean and land sinks take up CO2 from the atmosphere decreasing? We analyse these questions by means of a statistical dynamic multivariate model from which we estimate the unobserved trend processes together with the parameters that govern them. We show how the concept of a global carbon budget can be used to obtain two separate data series measuring the same physical object of interest, such as the airborne fraction. Incorporating these additional data into the dynamic multivariate model increases the number of available observations, thus improving the reliability of trend and parameter estimates. We find no statistical evidence of an increasing airborne fraction, but we do find statistical evidence of a decreasing sink rate. We infer that the efficiency of the sinks in absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere is decreasing at approximately 0.54 % yr−1.
Competitive Analysis of Tourism Sector in Brazil and Switzerland

This study analysed the relation between the competitiveness in the touristic sector of Brazil and Switzerlandand the development of both countries, comparing them using a multi-criterion analysis technique calledTOPSIS. The performance of the countries was assessed based onthe similarity with an ideal solution, accordingto the pillars of competitiveness in tourism criteria, extracted from the accredited World Index ofCompetitiveness in Tourism of 2009. Results give a general and simplified view of these two countries withregard to their competitiveness in tourism, facilitating a direct comparison and showing the superiority ofSwitzerland in relation to Brazil. This superiority was shown in terms of countries scores and in the differencesin their ranking positions, consideringdifferent applications of the TOPSIS technique. The information generatedin this study can be used by the tourism sector and by governments of both countries in order to develop actionsand researches in this field.
Mortality and avoidance of competitive overgrowth in encrusting Bryozoa

Forty-five species of sessile animals, including 32 species of cyclostome and cheilostome bryozoans, settled on experimental panels over a 1 yr period. Colonies were readily overgrown by tubes of the serpulid Pomatoceros triqueter (L.) which became the dominant species on the panel community. However, a number of bryozoan species avoided competitive exclusion by settling preferentially or by growlng epizoically onto the tubes which were, therefore, acting as spatial refuges from overgrowth by the serpulid. Since bryozoans are inferior interference spatial competitors but are known to have greater longevity than P. triqueter, vegetative growth of the surviving colonies and subsequent pre-emptive exploitative competition are probably the main processes which give rise to the replacement of the serpulid to produce the bryozoan-dominated communities on nearby boulders.
Towards a Cognitive Humanoid Dancer

We outline a cognitive architecture for a humanoid robot implementing creative dancing behaviors. The architecture, starting from a repertoire of patterns of movements, is able to generate improvised dance actions and to evaluate them. The creative process is supported by the cognitive architecture which allows to robot to take into account a motivations mechanism in order to create robot choreographies.
Study and optimization of swimming performance in swimsuit designed with seamless technology

Hydrodynamic resistance, also called water drag, is one of the most discussed issues in swimming sport and recognized as a major factor in terms of swimming performance. Different authors tried to demonstrate that body compression is responsible for a better result in swimming, based on the fact that body modelling improves energy saving and helps to maintain the performance on repetitive movements. In this paper, different weft knitted fabrics, prepared under predefined production parameters, were tested in order to establish which were the most adequate for compressive effect and which parameters contribute most for compression.