Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Credit Cycles and Macroprudential Policy Framework in Emerging Countries

Due to large and unprecedented quantitative easing policies and the prevailing policy uncertainty in advanced economies, many emerging countries have faced large and excessively volatile short-term capital flows during the recent era. If not managed properly and timely, such flows can give rise to an amplified cycle of steady appreciation of the currency, a strong rise in asset prices, looser credit market conditions, and build-up of balance sheet risks. This fragility may eventually trigger a sudden reversal of such flows (often called “sudden stop”), leading to a sharp currency depreciation and a large contraction in credit and output. In turn, to reduce the build-up of financial stability risks and contain ‘excessive’ cycles in credit market conditions, emerging countries have increasingly utilised macroprudential policy tools.In this paper, we assess how macroprudential policy tools perform in major emerging countries in containing ‘excessive’ credit cycles. In particular, we first compile an index of policy stance for widely used macroprudential tools, using existing databases on macroprudential policy actions and national sources. We then study whether changes in the policy stance contain ‘excessive’ cycles in domestic credit, and particularly from the perspective of emerging countries, whether they help contain excessive credit cycles due to fluctuations in capital inflows.Full publication: Macroprudential Policy
1H–MRS processing parameters affect metabolite quantification: The urgent need for uniform and transparent standardization

Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H–MRS) can be used to quantify in vivo metabolite levels, such as lactate, γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate (Glu). However, there are considerable analysis choices which can alter the accuracy or precision of 1H–MRS metabolite quantification. It is currently unknown to what extent variations in the analysis pipeline used to quantify 1H–MRS data affect outcomes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the quantification of identical 1H–MRS scans across independent and experienced research groups would yield comparable results. We investigated the influence of model parameters and spectral quantification software on fitted metabolite concentration values. Sixty spectra in 30 individuals (repeated measures) were acquired using a 7‐T MRI scanner. Data were processed by four independent research groups with the freedom to choose their own individualized and optimal parameter settings using LCModel software. Data were processed a second time in one group using an independent software package (NMRWizard) for an additional comparison with a different post‐processing platform. Correlations across research groups of the ratio between the highest and, arguably, the most relevant resonances for neurotransmission [N‐acetyl aspartate (NAA), N‐acetyl aspartyl glutamate (NAAG) and Glu] over the total creatine [creatine (Cr) + phosphocreatine (PCr)] concentration, using Pearson's product–moment correlation coefficient (r), were calculated. Mean inter‐group correlations using LCModel software were 0.87, 0.88 and 0.77 for NAA/Cr + PCr, NAA + NAAG/Cr + PCr and Glu/Cr + PCr, respectively. The mean correlations when comparing NMRWizard results with LCModel fitting results at University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) were 0.87, 0.89 and 0.71 for NAA/Cr + PCr, NAA + NAAG/Cr + PCr and Glu/Cr + PCr, respectively. Metabolite quantification using identical 1H–MRS data was influenced by processing parameters, basis sets and software choice. Locally preferred processing choices affected metabolite quantification, even when using identical software. Our results reinforce the notion that standard practices should be established to regularize outcomes of 1H–MRS studies, and that basis sets used for processing should be made available to the scientific community.
Lawyer-Advised Disclosure

This paper examines how the advice that lawyers provide to their clients aects the disclosure of evidence and the outcome of adjudica- tion, and how the adjudicator should allocate the burden of proof in light of these eects. Despite lawyers' expertise in assessing the evidence, their advice is found to have no eect on adjudication, if the lawyers follow disclo- sure strategies that are undominated in a certain sense. A lawyer's advice can inuence the outcome to his client's favor, either if (s)he can credibly advise his client to suppress some favorable evidence or if there is a cost associated with legal advice. The eect is socially undesirable in the former case, but it is desirable in the latter case although the benet rests on its purely dissipative role rather than on his expertise. These results provide a general perspective for understanding the role of advising in disclosure.
Allogeneic hematopoietic transplantation and natural killer cell recognition of missing self

Summary: Although the optimal donor for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a human leukocyte antigen‐matched sibling, 75% of patients do not have a match, and alternatives are matched unrelated volunteers, unrelated umbilical cord blood units, and full‐haplotype‐mismatched family members. To cure leukemia, allogeneic HSCT relies on donor T cells in the allograft, which promote engraftment, eradicate malignant cells, and reconstitute immunity. Here, we focus on the open issues of rejection, graft‐versus‐host disease (GVHD), and infections and the benefits of natural killer (NK) cell alloreactivity and its underlying mechanisms. Donor‐versus‐recipient NK cell alloreactivity derives from a mismatch between inhibitory receptors for self‐major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules on donor NK clones and the MHC class I ligands on recipient cells. These NK clones sense the missing expression of the self‐MHC class I allele on the allogeneic targets and mediate alloreactions. HSCT from ‘NK alloreactive’ donors controls acute myeloid relapse without causing GVHD. We review the translation of NK cell recognition of missing self into the clinical practice of allogeneic hematopoietic transplantation and discuss how it has opened innovative perspectives in the cure of leukemia.
Current Oral Antiplatelets: Focus Update on Prasugrel

Platelet activation and aggregation plays an integral role in the pathogenesis of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The mainstay of ACS treatment revolves around platelet inhibition. It is known that greater platelet inhibition results in better ischemic outcomes; hence, focus in drug development has been to create more potent inhibitors of platelet aggregation. Prasugrel, a potent, third-generation thienopyridine, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in July 2009 for its use in ACS and percutaneous coronary intervention. The addition of prasugrel to aspirin for dual antiplatelet therapy has been shown to reduce the ischemic outcomes compared with clopidogrel and aspirin in combination. However, being a more potent antiplatelet agent, prasugrel increases the risk of bleeding, especially in those patients who are at a higher risk of bleeding complications. Elderly patients ≥75 years, patients who weigh ≥60 kg, and patients with a history of stroke or transient ischemic attack are at a higher risk of bleeding complications when prasugrel is used in combination with aspirin. Newer antiplatelets currently are being clinically evaluated to assess their efficacy in reducing ischemic events without increasing the bleeding risk.
Formation of the approximately 350-kDa Apg12-Apg5.Apg16 multimeric complex, mediated by Apg16 oligomerization, is essential for autophagy in yeast.

Autophagy, responsible for the delivery of cytoplasmic components to the lysosome/vacuole for degradation, is the major degradative pathway in eukaryotic cells. This process requires a ubiquitin-like protein conjugation system, in which Apg12 is covalently bound to Apg5. In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the Apg12-Apg5 conjugate further interacts with a small coiled-coil protein, Apg16. The Apg12-Apg5 and Apg16 are localized in the cytosol and pre-autophagosomal structures and play an essential role in autophagosome formation. Here we show that the Apg12-Apg5 conjugate and Apg16 form a approximately 350-kDa complex in the cytosol. Because Apg16 was suggested to form a homo-oligomer, we generated an in vivo system that allowed us to control the oligomerization state of Apg16. With this system, we demonstrated that formation of the approximately 350-kDa complex and autophagic activity depended on the oligomerization state of Apg16. These results suggest that the Apg12-Apg5 conjugate and Apg16 form a multimeric complex mediated by the Apg16 homo-oligomer, and formation of the approximately 350-kDa complex is required for autophagy in yeast.
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Communication in times of crisis: The stakeholder relationship under pressure

This paper studies how stakeholder relationships change when an organization undergoes a crisis as compared to routine circumstances. During crises, the stakeholder relationships are under pressure, and therewith the organization’s reputation and the crisis intensity. This paper’s purpose is to investigate how, during a crisis, pressure from both internal stakeholders (i.e., management and employees) and external stakeholders (i.e., news media and interested citizens) inﬂuences public-relations professionals’ communicative relationships with these stakeholders. 444 PR European professionals, who experienced crises, were surveyed about crisis and routine times. Special focus was on the mediation role of time pressure and uncertainty. Structural-equation models revealed that, in crisis, the increased pressure from news media, citizens, and employees negatively affects the communicative relationship with these stakeholders, whereas management pressure was found to have a positive effect. This observation might point to organizational isolation on a managerial level in the initial crisis phase, partly as a result of stakeholder pressure. © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. et al. (2013), e.g., “Our organization’s activities are closely monitored by the media. ” Exploratory principal-component analysis with orthogonal rotation (varimax) and Cronbach’s alpha reliability test shows that in both normal ( EV = 1.79, R 2 = 59.67, Cronbach’s (cid:2) = 0.65, M = 3.99, SD = 1.29) and crisis times ( EV = 1.84, R 2 = 61.22, Cronbach’s (cid:2) = 0.68, M = 5.18, SD = 1.26) the three one reliable concept for the measurement of perceived media pressure.
Fabrication of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) - based multielectrode array for neural interface

Flexible multielectrode arrays (MEAs) are being developed with various materials, and polyimide has been widely used due to the conveniece of process. Polyimide is developed in the form of photoresist. And this enable precise and reproducible fabrication. PDMS is another good candidate for MEA base material, but it has poor surface energy and etching property. In this paper, we proposed a better fabrication process that could modify PDMS surface for a long time and open the site of electrode and pad efficiently without PDMS etching.
Slug is a downstream mediator of transforming growth factor‐β1‐induced matrix metalloproteinase‐9 expression and invasion of oral cancer cells

Members of Snail family of transcription factors play an important role in oral cancer progression by inducing epithelial–mesenchymal transition, by promoting invasion and by increasing matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) expression. Although Snail (Snai1) is the best characterized and the most extensively studied member of this family, the role and regulation of Slug (Snai2) in oral cancer progression is less well understood. In this report, we show that transforming growth factor‐β1 (TGF‐β1) increases Slug levels in tert‐immortalized oral keratinocytes and in malignant oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) cells. Inhibiting ERK1/2 signaling, but not PI3‐kinase signaling, blocked TGF‐β1‐induced Slug expression in the malignant UMSCC1 cells. To further examine the role of Slug in OSCC progression, we generated UMSCC1 cells with inducible expression of Slug protein. Induction of Slug in UMSCC1 cells did not repress E‐cadherin levels or regulate individual movement of UMSCC1 cells. Instead, Slug enhanced cohort migration and Matrigel invasion by UMSCC1 cells. Slug increased MMP‐9 levels and MMP‐9‐specific siRNA blocked Slug‐induced Matrigel invasion. Interestingly, Slug‐specific siRNA attenuated TGF‐β1‐induced MMP‐9 expression and Matrigel invasion. These data demonstrate that TGF‐β1 increases Slug via ERK1/2 signaling, and thereby contributes to OSCC progression. J. Cell. Biochem. 108: 726–736, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Variable selection in semiparametric cure models based on penalized likelihood, with application to breast cancer clinical trials

Survival data with a sizable cure fraction are commonly encountered in cancer research. The semiparametric proportional hazards cure model has been recently used to analyze such data. As seen in the analysis of data from a breast cancer study, a variable selection approach is needed to identify important factors in predicting the cure status and risk of breast cancer recurrence. However, no specific variable selection method for the cure model is available. In this paper, we present a variable selection approach with penalized likelihood for the cure model. The estimation can be implemented easily by combining the computational methods for penalized logistic regression and the penalized Cox proportional hazards models with the expectation–maximization algorithm. We illustrate the proposed approach on data from a breast cancer study. We conducted Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. We used and compared different penalty functions in the simulation studies. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The response of gastrointestinal microbiota to avilamycin, butyrate, and plant extracts in early-weaned pigs.

An experiment was designed to evaluate the effects of 3 different additives on the gastrointestinal microbiota of early-weaned pigs. Early-weaned (18 to 22 d; n = 32) pigs (6.0 +/- 0.10 kg of BW) from 8 litters were randomly distributed into 8 pens. Each pen was assigned 1 of 4 dietary treatments: a prestarter or control diet, the control diet with 0.04% avilamycin (AB), with 0.3% sodium butyrate, or with 0.03% plant extract mixture (XT; standardized mixture with 5% (wt/wt) carvacrol extracted from Origanum spp. , 3% cinnamaldehyde extracted from Cinnamonum spp. , and 2% capsicum oleoresin from Capsicum annum). At the end of the experimental period, 8 pigs per treatment were killed, and samples of their intestinal content were taken. The total bacterial load along the gastrointestinal tract (GIT; stomach, jejunum, cecum, and distal colon) and the lactobacilli and enterobacteria in the jejunum and cecum were measured by quantitative PCR. The total microbial counts along the GIT did not differ among the diets, but there was an increase in the lactobacilli:enterobacteria ratio in the cecum of the piglets on the XT diet (P = 0.003). Restriction fragment length polymorphism of the PCR-amplified V3, V4, and V5 regions of the 16S rDNA gene showed changes in the structure of the microbial community in the jejunum. Dendrograms grouped animals by diets; control with 0.3% sodium butyrate was the treatment that promoted the biggest changes in the microbial ecosystem, followed by AB and then XT. Biodiversity increased when using additives compared with the control diet (P = 0.002). Microbial metabolic activity along the hindgut was studied using the concentration of purine bases and carbohydrase activities. Different patterns for purine bases were observed between diets (diet x intestinal section, P = 0.01). The control diet reached a maximum purine base concentration at the end of the colon, whereas that of the AB diet was reached at the cecum. We could not detect any cellulase or xylanase activities in animals of this age. Appreciable amylase and amylopectinase activities were found, but they did not differ between diets. The results suggest that the effects of avilamycin, butyrate, or the plant extract would not be related to a reduction in the number of total bacteria inhabiting different sections of the GIT but rather to changes in the ecological structure and metabolic activity of the microbial community.
A study on the use of device tree structures for embedded software development

Embedded systems with microprocessors require many hardware information such as clock speed, port name, and device address to be entered into the operating system cores. In the classic compilation process for operating system kernel, all features, that the embedded system supports, need to be included in the source code. The kernel of the operating system must be recompiled for each software development process which considers related information about these features. In systems that have hundreds of different features, this process is time consuming and causes high cost as expected. Use of Device Tree data structure for the specification of physical components in embedded systems may facilitate this software development process since the kernel of the operating system is compiled just once in case of applying a development process based on this data structure. In this study, a methodology for the development of embedded software with using the Device Tree structure is introduced. New methodology is compared with existing software development approach and a preliminary evaluation is performed with taking into account pros and cons of applying this new methodology.
Variation in withholding of information in three monkey species

Studies on tactical deception have reported that informed subordinates can withhold information from naive dominants, but they have not directly compared species' performance. Here, we compared the performance in two withholding-of-information tasks of three monkey species differing in the strictness of their dominance hierarchy and degree of fission–fusion dynamics: spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys and long-tailed macaques. Food was hidden from the dominants' view either inside an opaque box or in a transparent box that could only be opened by knowledgeable subordinates. All species were capable of withholding information, with subjects refraining from interacting with the box when the dominant was nearby. Spider monkeys were the most efficient at retrieving food, by timing it when the dominant was far from the box. Capuchin monkeys were also quite efficient when alone at the box, but they lost much of the food when manipulating the box with the dominant nearby. The results supported our predictions based on interspecific differences in the strictness of the dominance hierarchy and the degree of fission–fusion dynamics, with the former constraining the subjects' tendency to approach the box and the latter affecting the subjects’ tendency to wait for the appropriate situation to retrieve the food.
CCR5 expression on macrophages/microglia is associated with early remyelination in multiple sclerosis lesions

Remyelination in multiple sclerosis (MS) occurs spontaneously and extensively. The underlying mechanisms, however, are only partly understood. Findings in experimental animal settings suggest that inflammation promotes remyelination and repair. Here, we characterized the chemokine receptor expression profiles of macrophages/microglia in early remyelinating and completely remyelinated lesions compared with active demyelinating and inactive demyelinated MS lesions obtained in the early disease course. Biopsy material consisting of 16 MS cases was available for this study. We found that macrophages/microglia within early remyelinating lesions expressed predominantly CCR5. Our findings implicate a possible role of CCR5+ cells in initiating remyelination.
The Cellular Trafficking and Zinc Dependence of Secretory and Lysosomal Sphingomyelinase, Two Products of the Acid Sphingomyelinase Gene*

The acid sphingomyelinase (ASM) gene, which has been implicated in ceramide-mediated cell signaling and atherogenesis, gives rise to both lysosomal SMase (L-SMase), which is reportedly cation-independent, and secretory SMase (S-SMase), which is fully or partially dependent on Zn2+ for enzymatic activity. Herein we present evidence for a model to explain how a single mRNA gives rise to two forms of SMase with different cellular trafficking and apparent differences in Zn2+ dependence. First, we show that both S-SMase and L-SMase, which contain several highly conserved zinc-binding motifs, are directly activated by zinc. In addition, SMase assayed from a lysosome-rich fraction of Chinese hamster ovary cells was found to be partially zinc-dependent, suggesting that intact lysosomes from these cells contain subsaturating levels of Zn2+. Analysis of Asn-linked oligosaccharides and of N-terminal amino acid sequence indicated that S-SMase arises by trafficking through the Golgi secretory pathway, not by cellular release of L-SMase during trafficking to lysosomes or after delivery to lysosomes. Most importantly, when Zn2+-dependent S-SMase was incubated with SMase-negative cells, the enzyme was internalized, trafficked to lysosomes, and became zinc-independent. We conclude that L-SMase is exposed to cellular Zn2+ during trafficking to lysosomes, in lysosomes, and/or during cell homogenization. In contrast, the pathway targeting S-SMase to secretion appears to be relatively sequestered from cellular pools of Zn2+; thus S-SMase requires exogeneous Zn2+ for full activity. This model provides important information for understanding the enzymology and regulation of L- and S-SMase and for exploring possible roles of ASM gene products in cell signaling and atherogenesis.
Design of a transformer-less single switch-mode photovoltaic grid-connected boost inverter with immittance conversion topology

This article introduces the design of a transformer-less single-switch mode (SSM) photovoltaic grid-tie boost inverter (GTBI) with immittance conversion topology for residential applications. The proposed GTBI employs only an SSM boost inverter circuit along with a T-LCL immittance converter. As the proposed design is entirely transformer-less with SSM boost inverter, it significantly reduces the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) to less than 0.2%, minimizes the size of the inverter and increases the inverter efficiency to more than 99%. The design and analysis of the inverter's SSM gate control circuit and grid synchronization techniques are portrayed in details. The proposed design is mathematically modeled and simulated via PSIM software. Finally the results are presented and discussed to confirm the effectiveness of this grid-connected SSM boost inverter.
Pharmacotherapy for Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a disorder of the brain-gut axis; the pathophysiological mechanisms include altered colonic motility, bile acid metabolism, neurohormonal regulation, immune dysfunction, alterations in the epithelial barrier and secretory properties of the gut. This article reviews the mechanisms, efficacy, and safety of current pharmacotherapy, and medications that are in phase III trials for the treatment of IBS. There remains a significant unmet need for effective treatments—particularly for the pain component of IBS—although the introduction of drugs directed at secretion, motility and a non-absorbable antibiotic provide options for the bowel dysfunction in IBS.