Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disclosure of Governance Information by Small and Medium-Sized Companies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of compliance with the governance regulatory requirements by small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) listed on the alternative investment market (AIM). Design/methodology/approach – The paper focuses on AIM-listed companies over a period of three years (2002, 2003 and 2004) and concentrates on their extent of compliance with the corporate governance disclosure guidelines set out by the regulatory bodies. To measure the extent of disclosure, a checklist was compiled based on the Combined Code and FSA listing rules. Having reviewed the literature on large companies (as there were no studies on SMEs), a number of governance and firm structure-specific characteristics were selected. The relationships between the level of governance disclosure and the chosen characteristics were examined in order to highlight those factors that are associated with and affect the level of governance disclosure. Findings – On average about 50 percent of governance items required to be disclosed had been reported by AIM-listed companies. As for large companies, there is a positive relationship between the number of non-executive directors in governance mechanisms and the extent of disclosure. Considering that there has been a declining interest in AIM-listed companies, the presence of more non-executive directors is recommended, as this would ultimately mean more compliance with the governance disclosure requirements and could result in restored investor interest and confidence. The findings also indicate that SMEs are more likely to have adopted a stakeholder approach when concentrating on their governance arrangements. Originality/value – The study presents evidence on governance disclosure practices of SMEs and indicates that, in spite of a less stringent regulatory regime set up within AIM, non-executive directors, who bring in an element of independence to boards, play a significant role in elevating corporate transparency.
Modelling bi‐directional research: a fresh approach to stakeholder theory

Purpose – While Freeman's stakeholder management approach has attracted much attention from both scholars and practitioners, little empirical work has considered the interconnectedness of organisational perspectives and stakeholder perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to respond to this gap by developing and empirically testing a bi‐directional model of organisation/stakeholder relationships.Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual framework is developed that integrates how stakeholders are affected by organisations with how they affect organisations. Quantitative data relating to both sides of the relationship are obtained from 700 customers of a European service organisation and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling technique.Findings – The findings provide empirical support for the notion of mutual dependency between organisations and stakeholders as advocated by stakeholder theorists. The results suggest that the way stakeholders relate to organisations is dependen.
Demand and Supply Shocks in the Caribbean Economies: Implications for Monetary Union

This paper uses the method of structural vector autoregressions to decompose movements of real output and prices into demand and supply innovations for four Caribbean economies: Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. The aim of the analysis is to assess if these economies could feasibly form part of a Caribbean monetary union. Correlations between the demand and supply innovations are, however, typically low, indicating that monetary union may lead to greater stabilisation problems for these economies.
Increased risk of adefovir resistance in patients with lamivudine‐resistant chronic hepatitis B after 48 weeks of adefovir dipivoxil monotherapy

Although adefovir dipivoxil (ADV) has a unique profile of delayed and infrequent resistance in treatment‐naïve chronic hepatitis B patients, the association of ADV resistance with previous lamivudine (LAM) resistance is not well understood. We compared the emergence of the ADV‐resistant mutations rtA181V/T and rtN236T between LAM‐resistant patients and treatment‐naïve patients at 48 weeks of ADV monotherapy. Fifty‐seven LAM‐resistant patients and 38 treatment‐naïve patients were treated with 10 mg/d ADV for more than 48 weeks. Both baseline and 48‐week blood samples were analyzed for ADV‐resistant mutations via restriction fragment mass polymorphism analysis. Antiviral responses were evaluated according to changes in serum HBV DNA (measured via real‐time polymerase chain reaction) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels and loss of hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg). After 48 weeks, 10 (18%) of the 57 LAM‐resistant patients were found to have developed ADV‐resistant mutations, whereas none of the 38 treatment‐naïve patients developed such mutations (P < .01). Among LAM‐resistant patients, the reduction in serum HBV DNA levels was significantly lower in patients with ADV‐resistant mutations than in those without such mutations (−1.04 vs. −2.63 log10 copies/mL) (P = .01). However, the rates of serum ALT normalization (60% vs. 55%) and HBeAg loss (14% vs. 21%) were not significantly different between the 2 groups (P > .05). In conclusion, the emergence of the rtA181V/T and rtN236T mutations was more common in LAM‐resistant patients than in treatment‐naïve patients after 48 weeks of ADV therapy and was associated with reduced antiviral efficacy to drug treatment. (HEPATOLOGY 2006;43:1385–1391.)
Does Model Misspecification Matter for Hedging? A Computational Finance Experiment Based Approach

To find out whether the model misspecification matters for hedging accuracy, we carefully select six increasingly complicated asset models, i.e., the Black-scholes (BS) model, the Merton model (M), the Heston (H) model, the Heston jump-diffusion model (HJ), the double Heston (dbH) model and the double Heston jump-diffusion model (dbHJ) model, and then impartially evaluate their performances in mitigating the risk of an option, under a controllable experimental market. In experiments, the $\mathbb{P}$ measure asset paths are piecewisely simulated by a hybrid-model (including the Black-Scholes type and the (double) Heston types, with or without jump-diffusion) with randomly given well-defined parameters. We access the hedging accuracy of six models under the dynamic hedging framework of He et al. (2006) and Kennedy et al. (2009), and apply the Fourier-COS-expansion method (COS formula, see F. Fang & C.W. Oosterlee (2008)), to price options and to calculate the Greeks. Extensive numerical results indicate that the model misspecification shows no significant impact on hedging accuracy, but the market fit does matter critically for hedging.
Downsizing outcomes: Better a victim than a survivor?

Is it better to be laid off when a downsizing initiative is announced? We analyze the outcomes experienced by both victims and survivors involved in a major downsizing program, and present a model of downsizing stress. Results indicate that displaced employees, or “victims,” who secure new employment fare better than survivors. The victims in our study perceive higher levels of control, less stress, and fewer negative job strains than continuing workers, or “survivors. ” These results lend credence to suggestions that stress and control are critical factors in understanding employee reactions to downsizing. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Ctrl-alt-change : educators' perceptions of technology in schools

The purpose of this study is to explore educators’ perceptions of technology in education, with a focus on the following research questions: 1) To what degree has the educator changed his education strategies to respond to new technologies? 2) To what degree does self-efficacy play in the educator’s use of or lack of use of technology in the classroom? 3) What is the educator’s perceived ideal incorporation of technology in
The interaction of intellectual capital assets and knowledge management practices in organizational value creation

Purpose – Organizational performance is increasingly grounded on knowledge-related issues. The two key academic discussions addressing knowledge in organizations are the intellectual capital (IC) and knowledge management (KM) literatures. However, there are very few earlier studies systematically combining these approaches and demonstrating how IC assets and their management mechanisms might interact in organizational value creation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop and argue a theoretical model depicting the connections between IC, KM practices and organizational performance outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on IC and KM literatures to build a theoretical model on how intellectual asset assets and their management practices interact in producing organizational performance. Several conceptual models and related discussion on the interaction of IC and KM practices are put forth. Findings – Organizational value creation is based on both static (IC assets) and dynamic .
Reactivation of coccidioidomycosis in pregnancy

A woman presented in the third trimester with a recurrence of coccidioidomycosis. She had been treated 5 years earliei for coccidioidal meningitis. We induced delivery, and both mother and infant had favorable outcomes. We believe thai this case represents a reactivation of the previously treated disease.
Determinants of Migration and Remittance in India: Empirical Evidence

This paper attempts to study the migration behaviour of Indian internal migrants combining both Todaro’s individual utility maximising behaviour and Stark’s household approach. The theoretical model presented here is based on the joint utility maximisation principle in which there are two agents, the migrant and his family members, who maximise their utility in two different situations i.e., first, when the migrant stays out of the home (in migration situation) and second, when the migrant stays in the home (or returns). This model is empirically estimated to study the determinants of both migration and remittance using the National Sample Survey data for 2007-08. The results suggested that individual characteristics like age, marital status and human capital endowments, and household characteristics like the size of the household, caste and land possession have immense influence on both the decision to migrate and sending remittance.
Limited surgery for lower-segment Hirschsprung's disease.

OBJECTIVE To determine if rectal myectomy is an effective treatment for a specific group of patients with Hirschsprung's disease. DESIGN Retrospective series with follow-up of 6 to 132 months (mean follow-up, 37.1 months). SETTING Children's hospital. PATIENTS Fourteen children aged 2 to 14 years with chronic constipation and nondiagnostic barium enema contrast study findings. INTERVENTION Posterior rectal myectomy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Laxative use, frequency of stools, incidence of soiling or incontinence, and patient's assessment of improvement. RESULTS The conditions of all 14 patients improved regardless of the presence of ganglion cells in the myectomy specimen; there were six excellent, six good, and two fair assessments. laxatives were used intermittently by seven of 14 patients. No patients complained of incontinence or soiling. CONCLUSIONS Rectal myectomy is an effective, less-extensive operation that should be considered for older children with Hirschsprung's disease.
Padding Required: Assessing the Economic Impact of the Super Bowl

Abstract Civic boosters generally have estimated the Super Bowl to have an impact of $300 to $400 million on a host city's economy. The National Football League has used the promise of an economic windfall to convince skeptical cities that investments in new stadiums for their teams in exchange for the right to host the event makes economic sense. Evidence from host cities from 1970–2001 indicates the Super Bowl contributes approximately one-quarter of what the boosters have promised and that the game could not have contributed by any reasonable standard of statistical significance, more than $300 million to host economies.
Corruption and Electoral Support for New Political Parties in Central and Eastern Europe

More than 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the electoral volatility in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is still remarkably high. A considerable part of the volatility derives from the votes for new political parties, since they are very often on the winning side of elections. This article examines corruption as a potential determinant of their electoral support. It argues that the effect of corruption is twofold: on the one hand, the historically derived corruption level reduces the electoral support for new political parties due to strong clientelist structures that bind the electorate to the established parties. On the other hand, an increase in perceived corruption above the traditional corruption level leads to a loss of trust in the political elite and therefore boosts the electoral support for new competitors. A statistical analysis of all democratic elections in CEE between 1996 and 2013 confirms these two counteracting effects.
Are perceived neighborhood hazards a barrier to physical activity in children?

BACKGROUND We hypothesized that children's perceptions of more neighborhood hazards would be associated with less physical activity, less aerobic fitness, and a higher body mass index. OBJECTIVE To examine the association between a hazardous neighborhood context and physical activity in children. METHODS Fourth-grade students (n = 796) of diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds completed measures of neighborhood hazards, self-reported physical activity, physical fitness, height, and weight. Parents (n = 518) completed telephone interviews and provided data on their education level and occupation. RESULTS As expected, children from families of lower socioeconomic status perceived significantly more neighborhood hazards. Contrary to our hypothesis, the perception of more hazards was significantly associated with more reported physical activity. This finding was not explained by school heterogeneity, alteration of the hazards measure, or differences in socioeconomic status. CONCLUSION To further examine the relationship between neighborhood hazards and physical activity, we suggest that future studies include assessments of sedentary behavior, parental fear of violence, parental regulation of children's leisure activities, and cost and quality of available play areas and organized sports.
Evolution of pallium, hippocampus, and cortical cell types revealed by single-cell transcriptomics in reptiles

Evolution of the brain Just how related are reptilian and mammalian brains? Tosches et al. used single-cell transcriptomics to study turtle, lizard, mouse, and human brain samples. They assessed how the mammalian six-layered cortex might be derived from the reptilian three-layered cortex. Despite a lack of correspondence between layers, mammalian astrocytes and adult neural stem cells shared evolutionary origins. General classes of interneuron types were represented across the evolutionary span, although subtypes were species-specific. Pieces of the much-folded mammalian hippocampus were represented as adjacent fields in the reptile brains. Science, this issue p. 881 Transcriptomics tracks the mix of evolutionary derivation and species-specific elaboration that generates brains from reptiles to mammals. Computations in the mammalian cortex are carried out by glutamatergic and γ-aminobutyric acid–releasing (GABAergic) neurons forming specialized circuits and areas. Here we asked how these neurons and areas evolved in amniotes. We built a gene expression atlas of the pallium of two reptilian species using large-scale single-cell messenger RNA sequencing. The transcriptomic signature of glutamatergic neurons in reptilian cortex suggests that mammalian neocortical layers are made of new cell types generated by diversification of ancestral gene-regulatory programs. By contrast, the diversity of reptilian cortical GABAergic neurons indicates that the interneuron classes known in mammals already existed in the common ancestor of all amniotes.
Assessing the quality of media reporting of suicide news in India against World Health Organization guidelines: A content analysis study of nine major newspapers in Tamil Nadu

Objectives: Suicide rates in India are among the highest in the world, resulting in an estimated 250,000 suicide deaths annually. How the media communicates with the Indian public on the topic of suicide has thus far gone without sufficient scrutiny. The objective of our study was to assess the quality of newspaper reporting of suicide-related news in India against World Health Organization suicide reporting guidelines. Methods: We used content analysis to assess the quality of suicide reporting against World Health Organization guidelines in nine of the most highly read daily newspapers in the southern state of Tamil Nadu between June and December 2016. Five of the nine newspapers under review were in the top 20 most circulated daily newspapers in the country. Results: A total of 1681 suicide articles were retrieved. The mean number of suicide articles per day per newspaper was 0.9%, and 54.5% of articles were 10 sentences or less. The vast majority (95.9%) of articles primarily focused on reporting specific suicide incidents. Harmful reporting practices were very common (e.g. a detailed suicide method was reported in 43.3% of articles), while helpful reporting practices were rare (e.g. just 2.5% gave contact details for a suicide support service). Conclusions: We observed that a daily diet of short and explicit suicide-related news was served up to readers of newspapers. Attempts should be made to understand the perspectives of media professionals in relation to suicide reporting, and to devise strategies to boost the positive contribution that media can make to suicide prevention.
Relative profit maximization and equivalence of Cournot and Bertrand equilibria in an asymmetric differentiated duopoly

We study the relation between a Cournot equilibrium and a Bertrand equilibrium in an \emph{asymmetric} duopoly with differentiated goods in which each firm maximizes its relative profit that is the difference between its profit and the profit of the rival firm. Both demand and cost functions are linear but asymmetric, that is, demand functions for the goods are asymmetric and the firms have different marginal cots. We will show that a Cournot equilibrium and a Bertrand equilibrium coincide even in an asymmetric duopoly.
Proliferation and skeletal myotube formation capability of C2C12 and H9c2 cells on isotropic and anisotropic electrospun nanofibrous PHB scaffolds

This study aims at investigating the behavior in terms of the proliferation and skeletal muscle differentiation capability of two myoblastic cell lines, C2C12 and H9c2, on both isotropic and anisotropic electrospun nanofibrous poly(hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) scaffolds, as well as on PHB films and polystyrene controls. After a careful characterization of the matrices in terms of surface morphology, surface roughness and mechanical properties, the proliferation rate and the capability of the two cell lines to form skeletal myotubes were evaluated. Genetic analyses were also performed in order to assess the differentiation level of the cells on the different substrates. We demonstrated that the aligned nanofibrous mesh decreases the proliferation activity and provides a higher differentiative stimulus. We also clarified how the nanofibrous substrate influences myotube formation, and quantified a series of myotube-related parameters for both C2C12 and H9c2 cells.
Determinants of audit fees for quoted UK companies

This study reports further evidence as to the determinants of the audit fees paid by quoted companies in the UK. It outlines a framework based on the findings from semi-structured interviews with partners in four large audit firms and the results of previous research, and tests this framework by means of multivariate analysis using 1987 data for a large sample of quoted UK companies. A model explaining 87 per cent of the variation in audit fees is constructed. The principal explanatory variables are found to be auditee size, return on shareholders equity, the number of subsidiaries, the lag between the year end and the date of the audit report, the size of the auditor, a measure of auditee diversification, the ownership structure of the auditee, and whether the auditor was based in London, with the last three being new variables introduced in this study.
Is the Allocation of Resources within the Household Efficient? New Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

I study whether households make Pareto‐efficient intrahousehold resource allocation decisions. Combining randomized variation in women’s income generated by the evaluation of the Mexican PROGRESA program with variation attributable to localized rainfall shocks as distribution factors in the collective model, I find evidence favoring Pareto optimality. More specifically, female‐specific income changes have positive effects on children’s goods expenditures, whereas changes due to rainfall shocks have a smaller influence on household public goods expenditures. The evidence is consistent with female partners having greater sensitivity to own‐income changes and norms that oblige women to devote their earnings to meet collective consumption needs.
The Reference Child and Adolescent Models of Body Composition: A Contemporary Comparison a

Abstract: Changes in the relative proportions of bone, muscle, water, visceral tissues, and body fat occur during growth. In the 1980s, reference models of body composition for children and adolescents were constructed by adjusting data on total body water (TBW), total body potassium (TBK), and regional bone mineral (BMC) data from several different Caucasian populations. In our study, we measured TBW, TBK, and total body BMC in 856 healthy European‐American, African‐American, and Mexican‐American children. When we reconstructed the reference models using our contemporary data, we found that the body's bone, protein, and fat compartments are slightly but significantly different from the earlier models. Our study provides the range of normal body composition of healthy children, aged 5–18 years, and accounts for differences related to gender and ethnicity.
Topology Optimization of Conical-Beam Antennas Exploiting Rotational Symmetry

Microstrip conical-beam antennas are designed by the topology optimization of metallic patches combining the discrete optimization of vias. The antennas are designed to be angular-periodic structures with eight identical sectors, which makes the rotational symmetric radiation pattern more easily to be achieved and the optimization problem much easier to be solved. A restarting technique is introduced for the circular polarization design case, where the high cross-polarization discrimination (XPD) is hard to be realized. By increasing the weight of cross-polarization penalization function after the optimization restarts, much higher XPD is achieved compared to that of the antennas optimized with fixed subobjective weighting factors. By this method, two conical-beam antennas, which are linearly polarized and left-handed circularly polarized antennas, respectively, are designed. Simulated and measured results show that the antennas have expected conical shape radiation patterns, good matching, and high polarization purities.