Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in Blood Antioxidants and Several Lipid Peroxidation Products in Women with Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Purpose The aim of this study was to evaluate the ferric reducing ability of plasma (FRAP), selected enzymatic and non-enzymatic components of the antioxidative system, and the intensity of peroxidative processes in the blood of patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Methods In the peripheral blood, we evaluated FRAP; concentrations of vitamins C, A, and E; and of thiols. We assayed the activity of enzymatic components of the antioxidative system-superoxide dismutase, catalase, ceruloplasmin and the concentration of reduced glutathione as an indicator of glutathione peroxidase activity. In order to determine the intensity of lipid peroxidation, we measured the concentrations of malondialdehyde and hydroxyalkenales (MDA-HNA) and conjugated diens (CD). Results We found a significant increase in FRAP in patients with AMD compared with the control group. The average concentrations of vitamins A and C were low and vitamins E and GSH were significantly higher in AMD than in the control group. The activity of almost all the antioxidative enzymes was high. We found a significant increase in MDA-HNA but no difference in CD. Conclusions The significantly higher concentration of lipid peroxidation products in patients with AMD indicates an important pathogenic role of oxido-reduction disturbance. The high FRAP concentration may be one of the protective mechanisms in oxidation stress. The adaptive increase of the antioxidant barrier mostly involves the enzymatic components.
The age of diminished expectations : U.S. economic policy in the 1990s

Part 1 The roots of economic welfare: productivity growth income distribution employment and unemployment. Part 2 Chronic aches and pains: the trade deficit inflation. Part 3 Policy problems: health care the budget deficit the embattled Fed the dollar free trade and protectionism Japan. Part 4 Financial follies: the savings and loan scandal corporate finance global finance. Part 5 American prospects: happy ending hard landing drift.
Is Geographical Targeting Cost-Effective? The Case of the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program in Illinois

This paper uses economic, hydrologic, and GIS modeling to assess the effectiveness of the Illinois Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program in the Lower Sangamon watershed. Our results show that for a representative five-year storm event, the acres currently enrolled in the program result in a 12% reduction in sediment loading, which is below the program goal of 20% and four times the least-cost solution. We also analyze the design of alternative rental payment instruments for improving the cost-effectiveness of geographical targeting for land retirement. Policy implications for the characteristics of the land parcels that should be targeted for enrollment in the program are discussed.
POLITICS, MILITARY CONSCRIPTION, AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Successive Ottoman governments excluded the religious colleges (medreses) from the ambitious educational policies they pursued beginning in the 19th century. Many historians and contemporary observers have seen this trend as an anomaly, because this was a period characterized by governmental activism and broad changes imposed from the top, including in the field of education. The inactivity of the government during the long reign of Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) appears particularly intriguing. The Hamidian regime enunciated the ideological, social, and political importance of Islam and extended its patronage to the religious establishment and its institutions. Nevertheless, the Hamidian government kept medrese education outside the fold of its educational project. The medreses were left unchanged in terms of administration, pedagogy, and curricula, even as the Hamidian regime impressively expanded the state school system, initiated a series of educational reforms, and promoted state education as a vanguard of progress and modernity. Meanwhile, in other parts of the Islamic world, initiatives were taken to reform and modernize institutions of Islamic learning. In the Ottoman Empire, the government took similar steps to reorganize medrese education only after the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) came to power in the wake of Constitutional Revolution of 1908. However, the new regime also gradually, but consistently, diminished the former prominence of the religious establishment and its institutions and prepared the ground for the complete nationalization of religious education in 1924 by the fledgling Turkish Republic.
Diffusion of Online Reverse Auctions for B2B Procurement: An Exploratory Study

Purpose – To investigate the diffusion of online reverse auctions by exploring differences between their early, late and lagging adopters. More specifically, adopter categories are compared against organizational characteristics and auction behavior as a result of learning. Organizational characteristics include number of employees and purchasing authority structure. Differences in learning are investigated by behavioral manifestations, consisting of the savings achieved, as well as the use of bundles in reverse auctions. Design/methodology/approach – Four hypotheses were developed based on academic and trade literature. Data were collected with a large-scale online survey among members of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), receiving 363 complete and useable responses. Records were split into three adopter categories based on whether the respondent’s firm adopted reverse auctions early (before April 2002) or late (after April 2002), or whether the adoption was merely planned. Differences related to the time of adoption were explored via nonparametric chi-squared contingency table analyses. The chi-square statistic was used to determine whether a hypothesis is supported or rejected. Findings – Adopter categories differ in regards to number of employees, the savings achieved, and their use of bundles. No differences were detected in terms of purchasing authority structure. Explanations for these findings are provided.Practical implications – The results support the diffusion of online reverse auctions, provide encouragement for their adoption especially also by smaller firms, and suggest that late adopters are not disadvantaged when compared to their early-adopting counterparts. Originality/value – No published studies have investigated the diffusion of online reverse auctions for B2B procurement, or explored potential differences between early adopters, late adopters and laggards.
A hybrid approach for continuous detection of sleep‐wakefulness fluctuations: validation in patients with Cheyne–Stokes respiration

Fluctuations in sleep/wake state have been proposed as an important mechanism contributing to the development of oscillatory breathing patterns, including Cheyne–Stokes respiration in patients with heart failure. In order to properly assess the interactions between changes in state and changes in ventilatory parameters, a methodology capable of continuously and reliably detecting state transitions is needed. Traditional fixed‐epoch analysis of polysomnographic recordings is not suitable for this purpose. Moreover, visual identification of changes in the dominant electroencephalogram activity at the transition from wakefulness to sleep and vice versa is often very subjective. We have therefore developed a hybrid approach – including both visual scoring and computer‐based procedures – for continuous analysis of state transitions from polysomnographic recordings, specifically tailored for fluctuations between wakefulness and non‐rapid eye movement‐1 and ‐2 sleep. The overall analysis process comprises three major phases: (1) manual identification of relevant electroencephalogram/electrooculogram features and events, including a sample of unequivocal alpha and theta‐delta activity; (2) automatic statistical discrimination of dominant electroencephalogram activity; and (3) state classification (wakefulness, non‐rapid eye movement‐1 and ‐2). The latter is carried out by merging information from visual scoring with the output of the discriminator. Validation has been carried out in 16 patients with heart failure during daytime Cheyne–Stokes respiration, using a training and testing set of electroencephalogram polysomnograms. The statistical discriminator correctly classified 99.1 ± 1.4% and 99.2 ± 1.1% of unequivocal alpha and theta‐delta activity. This approach has therefore the potential to be used to reliably measure the incidence and location of sleep–wake transitions during abnormal breathing patterns, as well as their temporal relationship with major ventilatory events.
Chromosome rearrangements and transposable elements.

There has been limited corroboration to date for McClintock's vision of gene regulation by transposable elements (TEs), although her proposition on the origin of species by TE-induced complex chromosome reorganizations in combination with gene mutations, i.e., the involvement of both factors in relatively sudden formations of species in many plant and animal genera, has been more promising. Moreover, resolution is in sight for several seemingly contradictory phenomena such as the endless reshuffling of chromosome structures and gene sequences versus synteny and the constancy of living fossils (or stasis in general). Recent wide-ranging investigations have confirmed and enlarged the number of earlier cases of TE target site selection (hot spots for TE integration), implying preestablished rather than accidental chromosome rearrangements for nonhomologous recombination of host DNA. The possibility of a partly predetermined generation of biodiversity and new species is discussed. The views of several leading transposon experts on the rather abrupt origin of new species have not been synthesized into the macroevolutionary theory of the punctuated equilibrium school of paleontology inferred from thoroughly consistent features of the fossil record.
Market Liquidity, Hedging and Crashes

In the absence of significant news, hedging strategies were blamed for the stock market crash of October 1987; but traditional models cannot explain how a relatively small amount of selling could cause so large a price drop. The authors develop a rational expectations model in which prices play an important role in shaping expectations; markets are much less liquid in their model than in traditional models. Discontinuities (or "crashes") can occur even with relatively little hedging. The model is consistent with theories as disparate as Keynes' "beauty contest" insights and Thom's "catastrophe" analysis and suggests means to reduce volatility. Copyright 1990 by American Economic Association.
Adult education for community development : the case of Ugandan non-governmental organization.

A number of studies have explored the relationship between adult education and community development. These often do not provide in-depth accounts of how such relationships emerge and develop. The case study of Emesco Development Foundation (EDF) was conducted to specifically interrogate this relationship from the contextual setting of a single NGO in Uganda. The interest was on how adult education emerged, is understood and practiced by novice adult educators in community development work. EDF is a rural-based, indigenous NGO located in Kibaale district, mid-western Uganda. The study, a qualitative investigation, was framed by the educational theories of Nyerere (1973) and Freire (1972) and located within the critical theory paradigm. The two theories, which provide radical perspectives of adult education, resonate well with the participatory approaches to community development that have taken centre stage in the NGO world and are reminiscent of practices in EDF. Youngman’s (2000) framework of political economy of adult education and development was also adopted, later during the study, to explain the understandings and practices of adult education in EDF within the socioeconomic, political and global context. As is the norm with case study design, a range of methods were used to generate data and these included interviews, focus group discussions, document review, observations and photovoice. Findings indicate that EDF’s philosophy, policies and practices on adult education have been characterised by change, power dynamics, ideological contradictions and compromises. EDF’s initial focus of social enterprise as a driver of community development has over time been replaced by a focus on ‘giving knowledge and skills’ or providing adult education. Consequently, most actors have had to re-negotiate identities of adult educator in addition to their professional identities. In a bid to harmonise the multiple forces and interests of various stakeholders, EDF has assumed the position of a ‘power broker’ as a survival strategy. The study noted that adult education as field of practice and discipline is broad, complex and dynamic. It therefore recommended that adult education unlike most professions should promote an inclusive culture in order to accommodate other professions and novice actors. The study further highlights a need for EDF to strengthen its income generation capacity to sustainably finance its projects and thus avoid having to compromise their valued ideology.
A Markov regime switching approach for hedging stock indices

In this paper we describe a new approach for determining time‐varying minimum variance hedge ratio in stock index futures markets by using Markov Regime Switching (MRS) models. The rationale behind the use of these models stems from the fact that the dynamic relationship between spot and futures returns may be characterized by regime shifts, which, in turn, suggests that by allowing the hedge ratio to be dependent upon the “state of the market,” one may obtain more efficient hedge ratios and hence, superior hedging performance compared to other methods in the literature. The performance of the MRS hedge ratios is compared to that of alternative models such as GARCH, Error Correction and OLS in the FTSE 100 and S&P 500 markets. In and out‐of‐sample tests indicate that MRS hedge ratios outperform the other models in reducing portfolio risk in the FTSE 100 market. In the S&P 500 market the MRS model outperforms the other hedging strategies only within sample. Overall, the results indicate that by using MRS models market agents may be able to increase the performance of their hedges, measured in terms of variance reduction and increase in their utility. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 24:649–674, 2004
Managerial perceptions of the role of the human resource function in Sri Lanka: a comparative study of local, foreign-owned and joint-venture companies

As debates on HRM continue, we contend that a number of important issues have not been given the adequate attention they deserve. One of the neglected issues, which we seek to explore in this paper, is the question of whether HRM models are being practised in developing countries. The specific context for the research is Sri Lanka. Therefore, the central objective of this paper is to explore one main research question, which is: To what extent does HRM play a significant role in organizational strategy processes in Sri Lankan organizations? The research is guided by four hypotheses. The hypotheses are based on the assumption that local Sri Lankan organizations will differ from MNCs in the way they deal with and practice HRM. The findings from the investigation reveal no significant differences between MNCs and local companies in relation to the research questions. The implications of the findings are discussed within the context of diffusion and convergence of management practices and the role of drivers of globalization.
Directional Variation in Distance Decay

Given that geographers excel at measuring and explaining spatial variations in attributes, it is surprising that they are not more aware that relationships may vary over space. It is still normal practice, for example, to estimate a set of parameters in a model and to assume that the relationships represented by these values apply equally to all locations and in all directions. Recently, however, there have been several applications of Casetti's expansion method that have been focused on measuring anisotropic trends around locations. Here this technique is used to examine possible anisotropy in distance-decay relationships around origins. That is, the authors attempt to answer the question: does the rate of distance decay vary with direction? The conclusions reached in previous research on this topic are only partially supported here. Via US migration data, it is suggested that although there is evidence of directional variation in distance decay around some origins, and this evidence leads to some interesting insights into the mental representation of space by US migrants, it is impossible to identify any overall trend across origins in directional variability.
Capital Structure, Management Ownership and Large External Shareholders: A UK Analysis

This paper examines empirically the effects of management ownership and ownership by large external shareholders on the capital structure of the firm from an agency theory perspective. The paper extends the US literature on the topic by examining the effect of interactions between management ownership and ownership by large external shareholders on the capital structure of UK firms. For a sample of UK firms, the paper provides empirical evidence that suggests the debt ratio is positively related to management ownership and negatively related to ownership by large external shareholders. Furthermore, the presence of a large external shareholder acts to negate the positive relationship between debt ratios and management ownership; in the presence of a large external shareholder, no significant relationship between debt ratios and management ownership exists. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the presence of large external shareholders affects the agency costs of debt and equity.
Brazilian-Portuguese Empathy Quotient: Evidences of its Construct Validity and Reliability

Empathy is the ability to read other's mind and understand their intentions. This paper examines the psychometric properties of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of a short form of the empathy quotient (EQ, 15 items). The EQ-15 was administered to 237 participants from the general population from João Pessoa, Brazil. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the tripartite model with cognitive, emotional and social empathy factors. In line with other studies, gender differences were only observed for the first two factors, with female participants scoring higher on both, which suggests that the social factor might not constitute a truly dimension of empathy. Strong evidence for convergent and discriminant validity was only observed for the cognitive factor. The poor psychometric parameters of the emotional and social factors are argued to reflect the complexity and contrasting ideas of their items. The possibility of elaborating specific items for the emotional and social factors is also discussed. La empatía es la capacidad de leer en la mente del otro y comprender sus intenciones. Este artículo analiza las propiedades psicométricas de la versión brasileña-portuguesa del formulario corto del cociente de empatía (EQ, de 15 ítems). El EQ-15 se aplicó a 237 participantes de la población general de João Pessoa, Brasil. Los análisis factoriales confirmatorios apoyaron el modelo tripartito con factores cognitivo, emocional y social de la empatía. En consonancia con otros estudios, las diferencias de género sólo se observaron en los dos primeros factores, con las mujeres participantes puntuando más en ambos, lo que sugiere que el factor social podría no constituir una verdadera dimensión de la empatía. Sólo en el factor cognitivo se observó una fuerte evidencia de validez convergente y discriminante. Se considera que los pobres parámetros psicométricos de los factores emocional y social reflejan la complejidad de sus ítems. También se discute la posibilidad de elaborar ítems específicos para los factores emocionales y sociales.
Characteristics of risk taking executives

More than 500 top-level business executives were studied to ascertain the validity of common stereotypes of who takes risks and who avoids risks. We began with 13 risk measures based on theoretical grounds, naturally occurring situations, and attitudes. These measures were formed into seven consolidated measures using factor analysis. Data were gathered on numerous socio-economic variables including ones relating to personal, financial, and professional characteristics. When these characteristics were subjected to factor analysis, four main factors emerged. Linear discriminant analysis was used to address the question of whether risk takers can be differentiated from risk averters. The results were surprisingly clearcut. The most successful executives were the biggest risk takers; the most mature executives were the most risk averse.
Improvised internationalization in new ventures: The role of prior knowledge and networks

How do entrepreneurs identify foreign market opportunities and how do they identify foreign market(s) and customers? We draw on the concepts of effectuation, improvisation, prior knowledge and networks to study the early internationalization of new ventures operating in the Irish Shellfish sector. We argue that the internationalization process was strongly influenced by two ‘resources to hand’: the entrepreneurs’ idiosyncratic prior knowledge and their prior social and business ties. We observe an effectuation logic and extensive improvisation in the internationalization process of these new ventures.
The Conditional Effects of Market Power on Bank Risk--Cross-Country Evidence

We investigate the relationship between market power and risk for a large panel of banks worldwide. Loan and deposit market power are measured separately at bank-year level, and the risk effect of market power is conditioned on several factors predicted by theory. Both loan and deposit market power have a stable, monotonically negative effect on risk, irrespective of risk measure. The effect is larger for asset risk, and is independent of charter value and capital ratios. The effect on default risk tends to decrease in the quality of banking regulation, whereas the conditioning effects of deposit insurance protection are mixed.
Openness of innovating: the new roles of customers and users in business-to-business context

This paper discusses open innovation from the viewpoint of customers and users, focusing on their new roles. The paper focuses particularly on the 'user as the innovator' approach that encourages outsourcing at least parts of innovation process to users and user communities. The 'user as the innovator' approach is based on three premises in the existing literature: users are capable and willing to innovate, communities are important entities in innovation activity and users are willing to freely reveal their ideas. The empirical material comes mainly from business-to-consumer contexts. The aim of this paper is to highlight the characteristics of the business-to-business context and discuss the premises in that light. Finally, the paper proposes a future research agenda in order to better understand and capitalise on the 'user as the innovator' approach in business-to-business contexts.