Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Breakfast consumption and CVD risk factors in European adolescents: the HELENA (Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence) Study

Abstract Objective To examine the association between breakfast consumption and CVD risk factors in European adolescents. Design Cross-sectional. Breakfast consumption was assessed by the statement ‘I often skip breakfast’ and categorized into ‘consumer’, ‘occasional consumer’ and ‘skipper’. Blood pressure, weight, height, waist circumference, skinfold thickness, total cholesterol (TC), HDL cholesterol (HDL-C), LDL cholesterol (LDL-C), TAG, insulin and glucose were measured and BMI, TC:HDL-C, LDL-C:HDL-C and homeostasis model assessment–insulin resistance index (HOMA-IR) were calculated. Setting The European Union-funded HELENA (Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence) Study. Subjects European adolescents, aged 12·50–17·49 years, from ten cities within the HELENA study (n 2929, n 925 with blood sample, 53 % females). Results In males, significant differences across breakfast consumption category (‘consumer’, ‘occasional consumer’ and ‘skipper’) were seen for age, BMI, skinfold thickness, waist circumference, cardiorespiratory fitness, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, TC:HDL-C, LDL-C:HDL-C, glucose, insulin, HOMA-IR and LDL-C; in females, for cardiorespiratory fitness, skinfold thickness, BMI, insulin and HOMA-IR. In overweight/obese males significant differences were also seen for TC and LDL-C, whereas no differences were observed in non-overweight males or in females regardless of weight status. Conclusions Our findings among European adolescents confirm previous data indicating that adolescents who regularly consume breakfast have lower body fat content. The results also show that regular breakfast consumption is associated with higher cardiorespiratory fitness in adolescents, and with a healthier cardiovascular profile, especially in males. Eating breakfast regularly may also negate somewhat the effect of excess adiposity on TC and LDL-C, especially in male adolescents.
Effect of Water-Based Training Frequency on the Balance and Motor Function in Sedentary Elderly Men

Objectives Water-based exercise (WEX) is one of the methods proposed to improve the performance of the elderly, because physical activities on dry land may cause some problems and increase the risk of the injury. Considering a longer recovery period in the elderly and lack of physical activity (especially WEX) facilities for the older adults, manipulating training sessions is very important. Therefore, the aim of this research is assessing WEX on balance and functional indices of untrained elderly man. Methods & Materials This applied research is quasi-experimental in study design. Out of the sedentary elderly men living in Tehran, 36 subjects voluntarily participated in this study. They were selected by random available sampling method. Their demographic variables were as follows: mean [SD] age of 64.72] kg/ m2. After signing personal consent forms by the participants, initial assessments were done. Then, the subjects were randomly divided into three groups; 2 d/wk (n=12), 3 d/wk (n=12), and control (n=12) group. Water training protocol followed for 6 weeks. Threshold stimulation training intensity was considered 55% of the maximum heart rate. Also, the volume of training for two WEX groups was exactly the same. Indicators of static and dynamic balance and mobility, lower extremity strength, and flexibility were evaluated at the conception and completion of the training protocol. To examine differences in pretest and posttest for each group, the paired t-test was used. Also, we used 1-way (ANOVA) to compare three groups with each other. For all statistical operations, SPSS 17 at significant level of P≤0.05 was used. Results Based on the study results, there were no significant differences between 2 d/wk, 3 d/wk WEX groups with regard to the static and dynamic balance as well as movement ability (P≥0.05). Both groups experienced similar improvements in these factors. On the other hand, lower extremity strength and flexibility in 3 d/wk WEX group compared to 2 d/wk was significantly improved (P≤0.05). Furthermore, the t test results showed significant differences (P≤0.05) with regard to all operating between pretest and posttest scores of the experimental group. However, this difference was not significant in the control group (P≥0.05). Moreover, comparing posttest results with pretest ones, lower extremity strength and flexibility in 3 d/wk WEX participants showed much more improvement than those scores in 2 d/ wk group. Conclusion It seems that after 6 weeks WEX training, static and dynamic balance and mobility parameters of the elderly people are more …
An international study of quality improvement approach and firm performance

Investigates what approaches to quality lead to best quality and financial performance across different regions of the world. Reports a survey of 977 firms in Asia/South Pacific, Europe, and North America. Fifty‐two items that suggest how a firm might improve quality were factor analysed and grouped into 11 factors, each factor a broader approach to quality improvement than any one item. Actual quality was measured eight different ways. Each approach to quality improvement (factor) was correlated to each quality measure, as well as to several financial measures. The results suggest that a company’s approach to quality correlates to actual quality and to a lesser extent to financial performance. The major factors found to influence actual quality were the organization’s knowledge of quality management, its degree of customer focus, and management involvement. When the task was to predict performance outcomes in any region, the specific factors that best predict performance were found to vary from region to region. That is, there were specific models within a region that better predicted performance than the model which predicted performance across all regions.
An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship between Information Quality and Individual Impact in Organizations

The aim of this research is to confirm that information quality impacts individual work, considering external variables that may influence knowledge workers perception of information quality and individual impact. This research is descriptive and the constructs used are known and previously validated. However, the research model, that includes external variables that may influence the relationship between perceived information quality and individual impact, has never been proposed nor validated by other researchers. The research unit is the individual that work in organizations and use at least one information system to do his/her job. A survey using self employed electronic questionnaire was applied to one large organization that operates in Parana State, Brazil. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze the data. The results confirmed the positive influence of information quality on individual impacts and pointed out external variables that influence these perceived variables.
Perceptions of Different Stakeholders on Reclaimed Water Reuse: The Case of Beijing, China

Public involvement is critical to the successful implementation of reclaimed water reuse programs. Based on the participatory research method, we studied the attitudes of the stakeholders who are involved in reclaimed water reuse in Beijing, China. Results showed that the general public’s knowledge on water resources was poor, while their awareness on reclaimed water reuse was high. The general public showed a strong acceptance of non-contact and non-potable reclaimed water reuse, but their acceptance of the three major water reuse types of river water supplement, park water supplement, and agriculture irrigation was not high. The beneficial use of reclaimed water was admired by water resource managers, industrial sectors, and researchers, and these stakeholders strongly supported the advancement of reclaimed water reuse. However, some of the stakeholders showed concerns about the potential risks from reclaimed wastewater reuse. Among them, risks from waste water treatment facilities were the biggest concern. Stakeholders’ perception of reclaimed water was influenced by their social-economic attributes. This study will enrich the current survey findings on public perception of reclaimed water reuse, particularly in developing countries.
European Regional Policies in Light of Recent Location Theories

Despite large regional policy expenditures, regional inequalities in Europe have not narrowed substantially over the last two decades, and by some measures have even widened. Income differences across States have fallen, but inequalities between regions within each State have risen. European States have developed increasingly different production structures. And European regions have also become increasingly polarised in terms of their unemployment rates. This paper describes these trends, and discusses how recent location theories can help us to explain them and reconsider the role of regional policies, and specially of transport infrastructure improvements, in such an environment.
Financial Decisions under the Shadow of Terrorism

We investigate, using the 2002 US Health and Retirement Study, individuals’ insecurity and expectations about terrorism, and their effects on household financial decisions. We find that those without any military experience, the less educated, the more religious and females worry a lot about their safety. In addition, fear of terrorism discourages households from investing in stocks and owning a business, while it makes them more likely to buy term life insurance.
Impure Altruism and the Volunteering Puzzle

There have been few attempts to model the behavioural microfoundations of charitable giving, particularly with regard to the choice between giving money and volunteering. An hour of a volunteer’s time is usually of a lower worth to the charity than a donation of their hourly market wage. However the aggregate levels of donations of money and time are approximately equal in value– a fact long regarded by economists as the “volunteering puzzle”. To provide a solution to this puzzle, this thesis proposes a theoretical model of pure and impure altruism and confirms its predictions with an experiment. Donors are shown to derive a “warm glow” from volunteering which is greater than the warm glow from monetary donations. The thesis also develops a novel measure to estimate the cost and scale of impure altruism. Approximately two thirds of the utility derived from charitable donations is from impure motivations, and the remaining third is pure. Consistent with this finding, the experiment shows that priming the pure motivations in donors reduces the overall provisioning of charity. JEL Classification: D64, D78, H41.
Toward electronic commerce ecosystems in developing countries

Electronic commerce (EC) adoption in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries is confronted with different difficulties. This is due to reasons relating to the SME's structure and to issues concerning the surrounding environment. This research investigates factors influencing EC adoption and success in SMEs in a developing countries represented here by the case of Jordan. A review of the technological innovations adoption theories in SMEs was used to develop an adoption framework. This framework could be used as a “positivist” framework to examine EC adoption in SMEs in developing countries. The issues discussed in this research raise different theoretical contributions and implications.
Price Manipulation and Industry Momentum: Evidence from the Chinese Stock Market

Recent theoretical studies (Aggarwal and Wu, 2006; Mei, Wu and Zhou, 2004) show that trade-based stock price manipulation is a possible source of the momentum effect. This paper proposes three sets of testable hypotheses and provides empirical evidence for a manipulation-based explanation of momentum. Using weekly data on 14 CITIC industries in the Shanghai A-share market from 1997 to 2006, our analysis of industry momentum shows that cumulative returns first increase then decrease across holding periods, and the returns monotonically decrease across formation periods. This return pattern is consistent with a so-called "pump and dump" scheme, where momentum is created by manipulators and chased by speculators. We attribute the source of momentum to the positive own-autocorrelation, which dominates the cross-autocorrelation effect of industry returns. We also find that momentum profits are higher in the bull than in bear market, and most of the profits come from the gains of winning industries rather than the losses of losing industries. These empirical results, when related to some well-documented behavioral biases of Chinese speculators, tell us a possible stock-market manipulation story of momentum.
An FPGA implementation of low-latency video transmission system using lossless and near-lossless line-based compression

In this paper, we present an FPGA implementation of low-latency video transmission system. The proposed system is capable of lossless video transmission using line-based compression. Assuming transmission over wireless communication channel where the data throughput dynamically changes, our system supports lossless to near-lossless scalable compression. According to the FPGA implementation result, we confirmed that our system can archive 45% of data reduction in average and can be implemented using 14,777 slice LUTs and 4,343 slice registers.
Replication and pathogenicity of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 accessory gene mutants in SCID-hu mice

The functional roles of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) accessory genes (nef, vpr, vpu, and vif) are as yet unclear. Using the SCID-hu model system, we have examined the infectivity, replicative capacity, and pathogenicity of strains of the molecular clone HIV-1NL4-3 that contain deletion mutations in these individual accessory genes. We determined that deletion of these genes had differential effects on both infectivity and pathogenicity. Deletion of vpr had little or no effect on viral infectivity, replication, and pathogenicity; however, deletion of vpu or vif had a significant effect on infectivity and moderate effects on pathogenicity. nef-minus strains were the most attenuated in this system, demonstrating significantly lower levels of infectivity and pathogenicity. However, deletion of these individual genes attenuated but did not abrogate the pathogenic properties of HIV-1. Mutant viruses still retained the ability to induce thymocyte depletion to various degrees if implants were infected with higher doses of virus or observed for longer periods of time. The relative contributions of these genes to in vivo pathogenic potential should be taken into consideration when one is contemplating a live attenuated vaccine for HIV-1.
Aesthetic Emotions Across Arts: A Comparison Between Painting and Music

Emotional responses to art have long been subject of debate, but only recently have they started to be investigated in affective science. The aim of this study was to compare perceptions regarding frequency of aesthetic emotions, contributing factors, and motivation which characterize the experiences of looking at painting and listening to music. Parallel surveys were filled in online by participants (N = 971) interested in music and painting. By comparing self-reported characteristics of these experiences, this study found that compared to listening to music, looking at painting was associated with increased frequency of wonder and decreased frequencies of joyful activation and power. In addition to increased vitality, as reflected by the latter two emotions, listening to music was also more frequently associated with emotions such as tenderness, nostalgia, peacefulness, and sadness. Compared to painting-related emotions, music-related emotions were perceived as more similar to emotions in other everyday life situations. Participants reported that stimulus features and previous knowledge made more important contributions to emotional responses to painting, whereas prior mood, physical context and the presence of other people were considered more important in relation to emotional responses to music. Self-education motivation was more frequently associated with looking at painting, whereas mood repair and keeping company motivations were reported more frequently in relation to listening to music. Participants with visual arts education reported increased vitality-related emotions in their experience of looking at painting. In contrast, no relation was found between music education and emotional responses to music. These findings offer a more general perspective on aesthetic emotions and encourage integrative research linking different types of aesthetic experience.
Production Based Asset Pricing

This paper exploits producer's first order conditions to link asset prices to data on investment, output, etc. through marginal rates of transformation, just as consumer's first order conditions are commonly used to link asset prices to consumption data or proxies through marginal rates of substitution. It presents simulation economies analogous to the consumption based models of Mehra and Prescott (1985) and Backus, Gregory and Ziri (1986) that capture the size of the equity premium and the size and cyclical timing of the forward rate term premium
Scattering of intense laser radiation by a single-electron wave packet

A quantum theoretical description of photoemission by a single laser-driven electron wave packet is presented. Energy-momentum conservation ensures that the partial emissions from individual momentum components of the electron wave packet do not interfere when the driving field is unidirectional. In other words, light scattering by an electron packet is independent of the phases of the pure momentum states comprising the packet; the size of the electron wave packet does not matter. This result holds also in the case of high-intensity multiphoton scattering. Our analysis is first presented in the QED framework. Since QED permits the second-quantized entangled electron-photon final state to be projected onto pure plane-wave states, the Born probability interpretation requires these projections to be first squared and then summed to find an overall probability of a scattering event. The QED treatment indicates how a semiclassical framework can be developed to recover the key features of the correct result.
Matrix metalloproteinase-2, caveolins, focal adhesion kinase and c-Kit in cells of the mouse myocardium

Matrix metalloproteinase‐2 (MMP‐2) may play roles at intracellular and extracellular sites of the heart in ischaemia/reperfusion injury. Caveolins (Cav‐1, ‐2 and ‐3) are lipid raft proteins which play roles in cell sig‐nalling. This study examined, using immunohistochemistry and two photon confocal microscopy, if MMP‐2 and caveolins co‐localize at the plasma membrane of cardiac cells: cardiomyocytes (CM), fibroblasts (FB) and capillary endothelial cells (CEC) in the left ventricle (LV) of the Cav‐1+/+ and Cav‐1−/− mouse heart. In Cav‐1+/+ mouse LV MMP‐2 and Cav‐1 co‐localized at CM plasma membranes, and at multiple locations in FB and CEC. MMP‐2 co‐localized with Cav‐2 only at CEC. MMP‐2 co‐localized with Cav‐3 at CM plasma membranes and Z‐lines, and partially at FB and CEC. In Cav‐1−/− LV Cav‐1 and MMP‐2 were absent or reduced everywhere. Cav‐2 appeared at CEC despite the absence of Cav‐1. Cav‐3 appeared at CM plasma membranes and Z‐lines, FB and CEC. Also, FAK in FB and c‐Kit in interstitial Cajal‐like cells (ICLC) were completely absent. By transmission electron microscopy in Cav‐1+/+, regular size caveolae (Cav) were at CEC, irregular size Cav were at CM and a few were at FB. In Cav‐1−/− there were few Cav at CM and FB and some at CEC. To conclude, MMP‐2 is closely associated with caveolins at FB and CEC as well as at CM. Also, MMP‐2 is closely associated with FAK at FB and c‐Kit at ICLC. Thus, Cav‐1 expression is not necessary for Cav‐2 expression. Cav‐3 or Cav‐3 with Cav‐2 has the capability to make Cav.
Demand Uncertainty, Development Timing and Leasehold Land Valuation: Empirical Testing of Real Options in Residential Real Estate Development

type="main"> This article develops and tests a long-dated American call option pricing model for valuing development land under leasehold. We analyze and test option values in ten detailed Hong Kong cases involving purchase, holding, converting and developing land. We also test for optimal exercise of long-dated American calls using processes based on the optimal trigger ratio feature of the perpetual American call option model. Generally, the empirical results confirm presence of a positive and nontrivial option premium (mean +5.274%) in the cases, and that developers appear to delay exercise to the point predicted by the real options model.
Ethical Issues in Global Supply Chains : Converging Interests or Insoluble Contradictions

Despite all technological advances, global supply c hains are always based on the interaction of people. And wherever people inte ract, a kaleidoscope of ethical issues emerges. Starting at the origins of the supply chain, the pl ight of individual farmers, minors or production workers is frequently examined in terms of working conditions or fair wages (Cotton et al., 2005; Lock e and Romis, 2007). Other concerns pertain to the production itself. Issues l ike ecological soundness and infringement of intellectual property rights are fr quently debated. Recently, the ethics of shifting production from one country to a nother has also been questioned. Moving further down the supply chain, m iddlemen like exportand import companies or wholesalers are commonly scruti nized for what should be their “fair share” in the value creation process. C ritical debate has also focused on their discriminatory sales and purchase practices. R tailers, in turn, have been in the centre of the ethical debate for issues like tr uthful packaging or inept use of cause-related marketing (Varadarajan and Menon, 198 8). Finally, it appears that consumers are no angels either: for do they not qui ckly abandon any ethically motivated hesitations and willingly buy counterfeit s whenever the price is low enough (Stöttinger et al., 2003; Penz et al., 2008) ? However, there is not only gloom and doom when it c omes to ethics in international supply chains. Media attention focusi ng on the plight of Third World production workers is beginning to show resul ts. Of course, many problems remain, but unsafe and unhealthy working c onditions and ecological excesses are more difficult to hide. The Fair Trade movement, trying to ensure that Third World farmers are getting a better deal and curtailing the power of
Multivariate option pricing using copulae

The complexity of financial products significantly increased in the past ten years. In this paper we investigate the pricing of basket options and more generally of complex exotic contracts depending on multiple indices. Our approach assumes that the underlying assets evolve as dependent GARCH(1,1) processes and it involves to model the dependency among the assets using a copula based on pair-copula constructions. Unlike most previous studies on this topic, we do not assume that the dependence observed between historical asset prices is similar to the dependence under the risk-neutral probability needed for the pricing. The method is illustrated with US market data on basket options written on two or three international indices.