Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship of Serum Apolipoprotein A-V Levels, Oxidative Stress and Inflammatory Biomarkers with Hypertriglyceridemia in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Background Serum levels of triglycerides (TGs) are often found to be raised in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). TG levels ≥ 2.2 mM, systemic inflammation and oxidative stress (OS) are known to increase the risk of incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) substantially. In recent years, apolipoprotein A-V (Apo A-V protein) has attracted considerably as a modulator of circulating TG levels. Objectives The study was conducted in order to evaluate the levels of Apo A - V proteins and markers of inflammation and OS in patients of T2DM with and without hypertriglyceridemia (HTG) and also to assess correlation between them. Methods T2DM patients were categorized into two groups of 40 participants, according to criteria for risk of CVD: group 1/ controls (TG ≤ 1.65 mM, n = 40) and group 2/ cases (TG ≥ 2.2 mM, n = 40). Despite the routine investigations, serum levels of Apo A-V, interleukin-6 (IL-6) and Insulin were estimated using ELISA, free fatty acids (FFA) with fluorometric assay and malondialdehyde (MDA) was measured using a spectrophotometer. Comparison of levels and correlation between variables was carried out with appropriate statistical tools. Results Serum Apo A-V protein levels were found significantly lower (P = 0.04) and MDA was significantly higher (P = 0.049) in cases. MDA correlated with TG levels positively (P = 0.000) and negatively with high density lipoproteins (HDL) (P = 0.000). However Apo A-V protein levels did not correlate with TG levels (P = 0.819, r = -0.027), IL-6 (r = 0.135, P = 0.269), FFA (r = 0.128, P = 0.277) and MDA (r = -0.217, P = 0.073). IL-6 levels significantly and positively correlated with HOMA-IR (r = 0.327, P = 0.004) in the all patients. Conclusions In patients of T2DM, low levels of Apo A-V are associated with HTG, indicating that Apo A-V is linked with TG metabolism. Burden of oxidative stress is greater in HTG of T2DM as is evident from MDA levels and its correlation with TG levels. Since oxidative stress is an important patho-physiological basis which increases the risk of CVD in patients of T2DM with HTG. Further studies are required in order to explore the possible role of Apo A-V in TG metabolism in diabetes.
A Dynamic Property Rights Theory of the Firm

We present a dynamic property rights model of the firm with two types of non-pecuniary spending: one that is financed through capital markets which impacts future firm wealth, and one that does not. Consumption of the latter good is consistent with what has been found in previous models. Our theoretical model indicates that excess non-pecuniary spending may diverge or converge over time, depending on specific management goals and constraints, and regulatory factors. Using a panel of Washington State hospitals, we find evidence that non-pecuniary spending does fluctuate over time and that government policy variables, such as the level of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement have a statistically significant impact on a firm's excess non-pecuniary spending.
Ethics and Compliance Officer Profile: Survey, Comparison, and Recommendations

© 2005 Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK. Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. Oxford, UK ASR usiness and Society Review 0045-3609 © 2005 Ce ter f r Busin ss Ethics at Bentley College ? 2005 12 rigi al Article U INESS and SOCIETY REVIEW WEBER an FORTUN Ethics and Compliance Officer Profile: Survey, Comparison, and Recommendations
Leadership Practices in Effective Schools in Disadvantaged Areas of Canada

Purpose. The purpose of this paper was to examine leadership practices in effective schools located in economically disadvantaged areas of three Canadian provinces: Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. Research Design. Our study was conducted in five successful schools selected on the basis of student outcomes on province-wide standardized exams, as well as on some risk factors such as rural area, low socioeconomic level, and proportion of Francophones (Ontario and New Brunswick). To increase the study’s validity, we used triangulation and various data sources: (1) individual interviews; (2) observation of school principals; (3) field documentation; (4) student essays; (5) internal school documents such as mission statement, rules, and directives. Participants. Participants included Department of Education heads and school board administrators, school principals and vice principals, teachers, school counsellors, educational psychologists, parent school board members, and students. Findings. Results show that leadership practices in effective schools can be grouped together around five dimensions: establishing goals and expectations; strategic resourcing; curriculum planning, coordination, and evaluation; promoting and participating in teacher supervision and development; ensuring order and support.
Subjective Beliefs and Ex Ante Trade

We study a definition of subjective beliefs applicable to preferences that allow for the perception of ambiguity, and provide a characterization of such beliefs in terms of market behavior. Using this definition, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the efficiency of ex ante trade and show that these conditions follow from the fundamental welfare theorems. When aggregate uncertainty is absent, our results show that full insurance is efficient if and only if agents share some common subjective beliefs. Our results hold for a general class of convex preferences, which contains many functional forms used in applications involving ambiguity and ambiguity aversion. We show how our results can be articulated in the language of these functional forms, confirming results existing in the literature, generating new results, and providing a useful tool for applications.
Teachers' attitudes towards the advanced skills teacher policy and the impact of school level policy implementation on these attitudes

The Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) policy was first implemented in government schools in New South Wales in 1991. The policy was an attempt to reward teachers deemed to have advanced skills for remaining in the classroom. As such the policy was recognition that the traditional promotion path for proficient teachers increasingly removed them from classroom teaching. By rewarding classroom teachers with advanced skills, the policy intended to make classroom teaching more attractive for teachers and thus improve the educational outcomes for students. Original policy intent envisaged student outcomes would be improved, not only through the activity of an Advanced Skills Teacher in their own classroom, but also through their mentoring of other teachers at the school via their Advanced Skills Teacher role. This study explored the belief that at a school level, teachers had been witness to the disparate implementation of the policy. The Bowe, Ball and Gold, (1992) cyclical model of policy implementation was used to illustrate the opportunities and motives which made this disparate implementation not only possible but likely. Accepting this proposition, a questionnaire was designed to ascertain changes, if any, in teachers' attitudes towards the policy pre and post implementation. This was further examined by comparing the attitude changes of groups of teachers based on selected personal and school characteristics identified through a review of the literature. With a view to informing future policy development in this area, the questionnaire also used a framework based on theories of employee motivation and compensation to determine the school level implementation practices which had resulted in teachers having a positive attitude toward the policy.
Building extraction from remote sensing images with deep learning in a supervised manner

Building extraction from remote sensing images is a longstanding topic in land use analysis and applications of remote sensing. Variations in shape and appearance of buildings, occlusions and other unpredictable factors increase the hardness of automatic building extraction. Numerous methods have been proposed during the last several decays, but most of these works are task oriented and lack of generalization. This paper applys deep learning to building extraction in a supervised manner. A deep deconvolution neural network with 27 Convolution/Deconvolution weight layers is designed to realize building extraction in pixel level. As such a deep network is prone to overfitting, a data augment method that suits pixel-wise prediction tasks in remote sensing is suggested. Moreover, an overall training and inferencing architecture is proposed. Our methods are finally applied to building extraction tasks and get competitive results with other methods published.
Estimating permanent income and wealth of the US farm households

Farm households are unique in the way they derive income when compared to nonfarm households. Farm operators and spouses have dual income sources, from farm and off-farm activities. Further, farm households on an average possess higher wealth than nonfarm households. This article estimates permanent income for the US farm households using data from a large national farm level survey. The estimated income is then used to identify the determinants of wealth accumulation by the US farm households. Results confirm that permanent income is closely related to age of the operator, education, occupation, farm size, location and number of earners in the household. Along with age, permanent income is a significant determinant of household wealth. It was also found that the wealth–income curve is nonlinear, upward sloping, and convex. Hausman's specification test indicates that variations in farm household wealth is better explained by estimated permanent income than observed total household income. Off-farm income cannot be treated as residual or transitory income.
US-China relations after 11 September: a long engagement or marriage of convenience?

This article traces the evolution of US–Sino relations in the period since the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. It argues that the resultant, largely unanticipated rapprochement that has occurred between Beijing and Washington is actually more robust than many analysts have thus far been prepared to acknowledge. While conflictual elements will remain a feature of this all-important bilateral relationship, the article contends that the current ‘honeymoon period’ in US–Sino relations is likely to persist for some time yet, largely because it is underwritten by a deeper combination of economic, political and strategic considerations. While recognising that it is both natural and necessary to contemplate the ‘worst of times’ that may still lie ahead in US–Sino relations, the article concludes that it is particularly important for Australian policymakers to acknowledge the potential for a prolongation of the post-11 September ‘honeymoon’ and to actively encourage this possibility as they contemplate alternative approaches to managing China's rise.
Return transmissions between ADRs and A-shares of dual-listed Chinese firms

Purpose - – A number of Chinese firms have dual-listed in USA and China. The US listing takes the form of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) whereas the China listing in the form of A-shares. Though ADRs and their underlying A-shares lack full fungibility due to regulatory constraints, they nevertheless represent the same claiming rights and hence should be affected by the same fundamentals or news. The purpose of this paper is to examine the mutual return influences between ADRs and A-shares of dual-listed Chinese firms, and whether and how the recent global financial crisis has altered the mutual feedback dynamics. Design/methodology/approach - – The paper uses the bivariate VAR approach to model the returns of ADRs and A-shares. The model is jointly estimated with the three-stage least squares (3SLS) method. It also accounts for the non-synchronous trading problem caused by the fact that the Chinese and US markets are located in different time zones and that the two market observe different national and religious holidays. Findings - – The authors find significant mutual return transmissions between ADRs and their A-share counterparts. In the absence of local market sentiments, the return transmission is more prevalent going from USA to China than it is the other way around. After the market factors are included in the models, the information flows between A-shares and ADRs become stronger and bidirectional. Additionally, both ADR and A-share returns are strongly affected by the market sentiment of the marketplace where they are traded. Lastly, the authors find evidence showing that the recent global financial crisis has enhanced the linkage between ADRs and their underlying A-shares. Originality/value - – This paper adopts a more rigorous approach to overcome the potential issue caused by non-synchronous trading. It investigates how the global financial crisis has altered the ADR and A-share return feedback dynamics.
Tariffs and efficient performance by water suppliers: an empirical approach

Water leaks are an environmental and sustainable issue as well as an economic issue. The objective of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of a sample of Spanish urban water systems by considering water leaks in a network as undesirable outputs. Data envelopment analysis (DEA), an analytical benchmarking methodology, is used to calculate technical and economic efficiency. We also discuss the possible relationship between efficiency and tariffs charged to users. Results show that the possibilities for reducing water leaks in networks are high, thus demonstrating that there is room for savings from an economic and environmental point of view. The assessment of efficiency performance could usefully assist local authorities and water suppliers in the task of optimising urban water management.
Food security and African agriculture

Food security has become an important indicator of progress in agricultural development, but it is a concept that is hard to measure and that is context-specific. In this article an attempt is made to understand the four main pillars of food security — namely food availability, access to food, the utilisation of food and stability — in the context of African agriculture. The analysis leads to the conclusion that at least four aspects of the concept need specific attention in the African context: (1) the open-ended nature of the definition of food security; (2) the security aspects of the definition; (3) the effect of instability; and (4) the ‘missing middle’ that lies between the production of farm commodities and the consumption of food products. Future research should concentrate on these aspects in order to better address the challenge of food security in Africa.
An Examination of the Interactions Between the Antinociceptive Effects of Morphine and Various [micro sign]-Opioids: The Role of Intrinsic Efficacy and Stimulus Intensity

We examined the effects of several opioids that vary in intrinsic efficacy at the [micro sign]-opioid receptor alone and in combination with morphine in a rat warm water tail withdrawal procedure using 50[degree sign]C and 52[degree sign]C water (i.e., low- and high-stimulus intensities). Morphine,
Video Data Indexing by 2D C-Trees

Video data contains a large amount of spatial and temporal information. The changes of video frames are quite useful for motion analysis and cannot be provided by other media easily. Chang et al. had proposed an effective 2D string approach for spatial indexing of image data. In this paper, we extend this iconic approach and apply it to video data indexing. We propose 2D C-trees to represent the spatial content within individual frames. A video sequence can then be represented and indexed by a temporal set or an ordering set of 2D C-trees. The similarity retrieval of video matching problem becomes the problem of video sequence matching by computing the similarity, or the minimum cost of matched frames. We present three schemes, full-sequence matching, segment matching and subsequence matching, for video information retrieval. The matching schemes can be modified and extended to approximate sequence matching by computing the partial distance for providing a comprehensive retrieval of video data. A prototype video information system is also developed to validate the effectiveness of video data indexing by 2D C-trees. ( 1998 Academic Press
Nosocomial Bloodstream Infections in Patients Receiving Extracorporeal Life Support: Variability in Prevention Practices

Nosocomial blood stream infections (BSIs) increase both the morbidity and the mortality of patients receiving extracorporeal life support (ECLS). The aim of this study was to identify common practices for blood stream infection prevention among national Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) programs. An electronic survey that comprised of a 16-item questionnaire was sent out to all ECMO program directors and coordinators within the United States that are part of the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO) registry. A total of 152 institutions in 40 states were surveyed, with 85 (55%) responses. One-quarter of the institutions responded that an ECMO infection-prevention bundle or checklist was used during the cannulation. Less than half responded that an ECMO infection-prevention bundle or checklist was used for cannula maintenance, although a majority (82.9%) of institutions responded that a “standard approach to cannula dressings” was used. Half of the respondents reported antimicrobial prophylaxis was routinely prescribed for patients on ECMO, although specific regimens varied widely. Of the institutions, 34.2% reported sending daily blood cultures as part of routine surveillance. Smaller programs were more likely to send daily surveillance blood cultures (58.8%, P < .01). We found no clear consensus on practices used to prevent BSI in patients receiving ECMO.
Entrepreneurship education and boys’ and girls’ perceptions of entrepreneurs

There are many studies on the impacts of entrepreneurship education in higher education, but few studies have assessed how secondary schools can contribute to create a more dynamic enterprise culture. This paper assesses whether a European entrepreneurship programme directed at upper secondary school promote positive attitudes towards entrepreneurs. The programme investigated is called the company programme (CP), and the study is done in Norway where the programme CP reaches approximately 15% of all pupils. There is a particular focus on girls within entrepreneurship education in Norway, and we will present our results on the impact of CP for girls and boys separately. Results from multilevel models indicate that both boy and girl participants in CP are more likely than non-participants to think that an entrepreneur is "someone who wants to use his/her creativity" and less likely to think that an entrepreneur "is someone who cannot find another job". However, attitudes about entrepreneurs also vary among boy and girl CP-participants. Girls participating in CP are less likely to think that an entrepreneur is someone who wants to be his/her own boss. Boys in the CP programme are more likely to think that an entrepreneur "is someone who wants recognition by society" and less likely to perceive an entrepreneur as "someone who is not well educated".
Louisiana INTECH Professional Development: Middle School Administrators' Perceptions of Change as Related to Student Achievement

This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself.
ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE ON THE INFORMATION-CONTENT OF MANAGEMENT EARNINGS FORECASTS

Prior studies have documented that management earnings forecasts which exceed expected earnings ("good news" forecasts) are associated with significant positive abnormal stock returns, on average, when publicly released. However, no significant negative abnormal returns are observed immediately surrounding the release of management forecasts which are defined as bad news. ' These findings conflict with the results to date on price reactions associated with earnings announcements. For example, Ball and Brown [1968] found that good news (bad news) annual earnings announcements are associated with positive (negative) abnormal returns in the months preceding and including the annual earnings announcement. Foster [1977] reported similar findings for quarterly earnings announcements. Beaver, Clarke, and Wright [1979] found a positive ordinal association between the magnitude of "unexpected" earnings (the difference between actual earnings and expected earnings)
REGIONAL DESTINATION MARKETING: A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH

This article explores how small neighboring destinations with limited tourism products and resources can collaborate in marketing their destinations. Based on a critical literature review, a conceptual framework was developed and empirical data was collected via document analysis, a focus group interview as well as in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with senior executives of three convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) in Ohio. The research findings suggest that forming partnerships among neighboring destinations is beneficial for all participating CVBs in terms of enhancing product portfolio, cost reduction, and efficiency. However, there can be major challenges in developing and sustaining such long‐term partnerships which include differing priorities, different marketing directions, and limited resources. The research findings further suggest that achieving results from such a partnership may take a considerable amount of effort and time. The research findings imply that executives of CVBs need to be informed and educated not only about advantages of forming such partnerships and how they can form such partnerships but also how they can overcome potential challenges together in this endeavor. The research results also suggest that informal working relationships and trust among executives of neighboring CVBs are crucial in forming and maintaining such a partnership. Discussions and implications based on the study results are also provided.