Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of glycosylation in the functional expression of an Aspergillus niger phytase (phyA) in Pichia pastoris.

Economical and thermostable phytase enzymes are needed to release phytate-phosphorus in plant foods for human and animal nutrition and to reduce phosphorus pollution of animal waste. Our objectives were to determine if a methylotrophic yeast, Pichia pastoris, was able to express a phytase gene (phyA) from Aspergillus niger efficiently and if suppression of glycosylation by tunicamycin affected its functional expression. The gene (1.4 kb) was inserted into an expression vector pPICZalphaA with a signal peptide alpha-factor, under the control of AOX1 promoter. The resulting plasmid was transformed into two P. pastoris strains: KM71 (methanol utilization slow) and X33 (wild-type). Both host strains produced high levels of active phytase (25-65 units/ml of medium) that were largely secreted into the medium. The expressed enzyme was cross-reacted with the polyclonal antibody raised against the wild-type enzyme and showed two pH optima, 2.5 and 5.5, and an optimal temperature at 60 degrees C. Compared with the phyA phytase overexpressed by A. niger, this phytase had identical capacity in hydrolyzing phytate-phosphorus from soybean meal and slightly better thermostability. Deglycosylation of the secreted phytase resulted in reduction in the size from 95 to 55 kDa and in thermostability by 34%. Tunicamycin (20 microg/ml of medium) resulted in significant reductions of both intracellular and extracellular phytase activity expression. Because there was no accumulation of intracellular phytase protein, the impairment did not seem to occur at the level of translocation of phytase. In conclusion, glycosylation was vital to the biosynthesis of the phyA phytase in P. pastoris and the thermostability of the expressed enzyme.
Three articles on the politics of the Medal of Honor

Despite its prominence and overlap with so many fields of political science, the Medal of Honor has received little scholarly attention. This dissertation contributes to our understanding with three articles that view the Medal of Honor as a political tool. The first explains that, because the president uses the Medal of Honor as a tool and the tool’s effectiveness varies with its value, he has worked to reduce the number of unworthy recipients by creating several layers of independent review. Multiple layers help prevent one person’s preferences from dominating, and each additional layer makes it more difficult for unworthy nominees to get through. The rules of the game allow for appeals to reverse incorrect decisions. These rules influenced two recent cases. In the first, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates avoided an Inspector General investigation into Sergeant Rafael Peralta’s nomination, which would have lowered the value of the award, by retracting his endorsement. In the second, General Davis Petraeus recommended downgrading Captain William Swenson’s nomination to a Distinguished Service Cross; but his administrative clerks lost the paperwork, which allowed the process to restart, and the nomination received an endorsement from Petraeus’s replacement. The second article considers the Medal of Honor as a motivational tool. Although most theii oretical economics studies suggest that awards increase employee productivity, the little research that exists on the topic has shown that awards actually decrease overall effort (Gubler, Larkin and Pierce, 2013). In addition, those theoretical studies assume that individuals succeed or fail on their own and that employees do not affect cost functions for one another. Chapter 3 explores a game that accounts for these deficiencies in a military context, where success is determined at the group level and soldiers can make action more or less costly for other soldiers (for example, by digging trenches). The model suggests that wages and awards decrease a soldier’s effort but increase other soldiers’ effort. These results are more consistent with the empirical findings than most theoretical
Small business owner-managers as latent informal investors in Japan: Evidence from a country with a bank-based financial system

Start-up support by small business owner-managers looks extremely promising for the formation of a pool of latent informal investors in countries like Japan with a bank-based financial system and small-scale informal investing. First, small business owner-managers have superior potential in regard to the hands-on capacity to provide management know-how. Second, there are a large number of small businesses in Japan. Third, small businesses exist not only in financial centres and new venture clustering areas, but also in all regional areas. This paper demonstrates the activities of small business owner-managers acting as financial and non-financial supporters of business start-ups in Japan, by using two data sets both surveyed in 1999 by the National Life Finance Corporation. The empirical results showed that owner-managers who are younger, from larger small businesses, or who had received support when their own businesses were starting tended to provide start-up support. It was shown that there was a clear tendency to provide financial support to business types 'different' from the managers' own businesses. One way of increasing the pool of informal investors would be to attract managers in various positions to make informal investments and expand their businesses and entrepreneurial skills.
Sensory Experiences and Expectations of Italian and German Organic Consumers

We explore sensory experiences and expectations of Italian and German organic consumers when purchasing and eating organic food. Ten focus group interviews were performed and the results were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Outcomes indicated that although sensory attributes are not the main purchase drivers, flavor and odor are the most important in driving consumers' choice. Findings also suggested that training consumers' sensory abilities offers new market opportunities to organic marketers. From a marketing perspective, Italian consumers seem to equally appreciate nonsubjective as well as subjective marketing information about organic products, whereas in Germany non subjective aspects appear to be predominant.
The contributions of social learning to collaborative forest governance in Canada and Uganda: Lessons from forest-based communities

Collaborative forest governance arrangements have been viewed as promising for sustainable forestry because they allow local communities to participate directly in management and benefit from resource use or protection. Such arrangements are strengthened through social learning during management activities that can enhance capacity to solve complex problems. Despite significant research on social learning in collaborative environmental governance, it is not clear how social learning evolves over time, who influences social learning, and whether learning influences management effectiveness. This study investigates how social learning outcomes change over time, using an in-depth study of a community forest in Canada. Personal interviews, focus group meetings, and participant observation revealed that most participants started engaging in community forestry with limited knowledge and learned as they participated in management activities. However, as the community forest organization became effective at complying with forestry legislation, learning opportunities and outcomes became more restricted. Our results run contrary to the prevalent view that opportunities for and outcomes of social learning become enlarged over time. In our case, learning how to meet governmental requirements increased professionalism and reduced opportunities for involvement and learning to a smaller group. Our findings suggest the need to test propositions about social learning and collaborative governance.
Estimating the effect of counselling and monitoring the unemployed on their job finding rate, application intensity and matching probability

This paper examines the impact of "Counselling and Monitoring" the unemployed on their job finding rate, application intensity and matching probability by using a semi-structural duration model in which the job finding rate is equal to the product of the application intensity and the matching probability. "Counselling and Monitoring" is an intensive guidance programme for unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits which should help them to escape from the state of unemployment as quickly as possible. The empirical results, based on a control-group approach, showthat "Counselling and Monitoring" the unemployed reduces the duration to find a job because guided people apply more than nonguided people, while keeping about the same matching probability.
The governance evidence of e-government procurement

Purpose – E‐government procurement (E‐GP) can improve the traditional government procurement process. E‐GP can help decrease corruption. This research aims to present the factors of E‐GP that can create good governance in government procurement through e‐auction.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was conducted with Thai public managers who are involved in e‐government procurement. The sample size is 169 professionals representing 67 government agencies.Findings – There are five factors that enhance governance procurement. These relate to the transparent e‐procurement process, committed public managers and political officials, honest vendors, and specific policies and regulations. A transparent e‐procurement process has a positive effect on good governance practice, increasing cost effectiveness and accountability, and decreasing collusion among vendors. Vendor honesty has a negative impact on collusion. Supportive policy and regulations requirements improve cost effectiveness, accountability, and law .
Cross‐functional integration and performance: what are the real benefits?

Purpose – Conventional wisdom has it that cross‐functional integration is a “must”. The purpose of this paper is to take an information‐processing approach to integration and elaborate the conventional wisdom by theoretical examination of both the concept of integration as well as theoretical and empirical elaboration of its link to operational performance.Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop six propositions on how cross‐functional integration affects performance and test the propositions in an international sample of 266 manufacturing plant organizations in nine countries.Findings – The results strongly suggest that disaggregation of performance is important, because the effects of cross‐functional integration on performance are contingent: even though the effects of achieved integration on several dimensions of operational performance are positive, the performance effect varies from one dimension to the next. This is an important finding given that performance has typically been treated at.
The effect of gainsharing on business performance at a Papermill

Despite gainsharing's long history and its increasing use, little attention has been directed toward understanding how it works to affect organizational performance. The most common explanations are either philosophical claims (for example, gainsharing provides identity, equity, and involvement), single-cause/either-or explanations (for example, money or employee involvement motivates, gainsharing changes the culture), or static lists that emphasize management issues and tend to ignore dynamic relationships among the many factors identified. These explanations do not provide much help to someone designing a gainsharing program. An answer to the “how” question is important because it would provide gainsharing program designers with a useful model by which to guide their efforts. In addition, it would help those individuals interested in the gainsharing concept to distill higher quality information from gainsharing literature, discussions with gainsharing experts, and site visits. To find out how gainsharing affects organizational performance, the authors asked managers at a papermill identified here as “Commonwealth Paper” to note the company operations and performance areas that they believed were affected by their gainsharing program and to describe how they believed the program affected those operations and areas. On the basis of their descriptions, a causal model was developed that depicts the key variables, cause-and-effect relationships, and feedback loops that show how the gainsharing program works to affect Commonwealth Paper's performance. The core of the model suggests that gainsharing affects organizational performance by providing additional forces—both financial and social-psychological—for achieving performance goals. This article presents that model, the general insights that it provides, and what it suggests for gainsharing program design.
Patient Satisfaction Outcomes after Robotic Arm-Assisted Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Short-Term Evaluation

Abstract Robotic arm-assisted total knee arthroplasty (RATKA) presents a potential, new added value for orthopedic surgeons. In today's health care system, a major determinant of value can be assessed by patient satisfaction scores. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to analyze patient satisfaction outcomes between RATKA and manual total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Specifically, we used the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC) to compare (1) pain scores, (2) physical function scores, and (3) total patient satisfaction outcomes in manual and RATKA patients at 6 months postoperatively. In this study, 28 cemented RATKAs performed by a single orthopedic surgeon at a high-volume institution were analyzed. The first 7 days were considered as an adjustment period along the learning curve. Twenty consecutive cemented RATKAs were matched and compared with 20 consecutive cemented manual TKAs performed immediately. Patients were administered a WOMAC satisfaction survey at 6 months postoperatively. Satisfaction scores between the two cohorts were compared and the data were analyzed using Student's t-tests. A p-value < 0.05 was used to determine statistical significance. The mean pain score, standard deviation (SD), and range for the manual and robotic cohorts were 5 ± 3 (range: 0–10) and 3 ± 3 (range: 0–8, p < 0.05), respectively. The mean physical function score, SD, and range for the manual and robotic cohorts were 9 ± 5 (range: 0–17) and 4 ± 5 (range, 0–14, p = 0.055), respectively. The mean total patient satisfaction score, SD, and range for the manual and robotic cohorts were 14 points (range: 0–27 points, SD: ± 8) and 7 ± 8 points (range: 0–22 points, p < 0.05), respectively. The results from this study further highlight the potential of this new surgical tool to improve short-term pain, physical function, and total satisfaction scores. Therefore, it appears that patients who undergo RATKA can expect better short-term outcomes when compared with patients who undergo manual TKA.
Role of single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography in diagnostic iodine-131 scintigraphy before initial radioiodine ablation in differentiated thyroid cancer

Objectives: The study was performed to evaluate the incremental value of single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography (SPECT/CT) over planar radioiodine imaging before radioiodine ablation in the staging, management and stratification of risk of recurrence (ROR) in differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) patients. Materials and Methods: Totally, 83 patients (21 male, 62 female) aged 17–75 (mean 39.9) years with DTC were included consecutively in this prospective study. They underwent postthyroidectomy planar and SPECT/CT scans after oral administration of 37–114 MBq iodine-131 (I-131). The scans were interpreted as positive, negative or suspicious for tracer uptake in the thyroid bed, cervical lymph nodes and sites outside the neck. In each case, the findings on planar images were recorded first, without knowledge of SPECT/CT findings. Operative and pathological findings were used for postsurgical tumor–node–metastasis staging. The tumor staging was reassessed after each of these two scans. Results: Single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography localized radioiodine uptake in the thyroid bed in 9/83 (10.8%) patients, neck nodes in 24/83 (28.9%) patients and distant metastases in 8/83 (9.6%) patients in addition to the planar study. Staging was changed in 8/83 (9.6%), ROR in 11/83 (13.2%) and management in 26/83 (31.3%) patients by the pretherapy SPECT/CT in comparison to planar imaging. SPECT/CT had incremental value in 32/83 patients (38.5%) over the planar scan. Conclusion: Single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography is feasible during a diagnostic I-131 scan with a low amount of radiotracer. It improved the interpretation of pretherapy I-131 scintigraphy and changed the staging and subsequent patient management.
Dual Emphasis and the Long-Term Financial Impact of Customer Satisfaction

This paper draws on the quality profitability emphasis framework of Rust, Moorman, and Dickson (2002) (Rust, Roland T., Christine Moorman, Peter R. Dickson. 2002. Getting returns from service quality: Revenue expansion, cost reduction, or both. J. Marketing66(October) 7-24. ) to examine the association between customer satisfaction and long-term financial performance among firms that achieve a dual emphasis (focusing on both revenue-expansion and cost-reduction simultaneously, rather than solely emphasizing one over the other). Using a longitudinal data set of 77 firms from the United States, we test this hypothesis and find that the association between customer satisfaction and long-term financial performance is positive and relatively stronger for firms that successfully achieve a dual emphasis. We build on the work of Rust, Moorman, and Dickson (2002), who investigated the financial impact of engaging in the process of achieving a dual emphasis. Collectively, these studies show that while achieving a dual emphasis is desirable for long-run financial success, the process of achieving a dual emphasis may not be as financially rewarding in the short run. Firms pursuing a dual emphasis need to consider both short- and long-term consequences of their strategy.
Pharmacokinetic aspects of theophylline in premature newborns.

To characterize further the pharmacokinetics of theophylline in premature infants, its concentraion in blood was measured by high-pressure liquid chromatography after intravenous infusion given to six apneic premature newborns three to 15 days of age. Theophylline's apparent volume of distribution was 0.690 +/- 0.095 liters per kilogram (mean +/- S.E.), a value similar to that of children, but the half-life (30.2 +/- 6.5 hours) was nine times longer. Blood clearance rate (17.6 +/- 2.3 ml per kilogram per hour) was lower than plasma clearance rate (100 ml per kilogram per hour) of young children. At a total plasma concentration of 17 mg per liter, 56.4 +/- 3.8 and 36.4 +/- 3.8 per cent of the theophylline was bound to adult or full-term cord plasma proteins, respectively. Bilirubin and theophylline did not compete for plasma protein. Calculations suggest that a loading doses of 5.5 mg per kilogram and a maintenance dose rate of 1.1 mg per kilogram per eight hours would achieve and maintain a mean blood concentration of 8 mg per liter (about 10 mg per liter in plasma).
Analysis and Mitigation of Asynchronous Interference in Coordinated Multipoint Systems

Next generation cellular wireless networks need to achieve both high peak and average data rates. Also, they need to improve the fairness by providing more homogenous quality of service distribution over the entire cell area. Base station (BS) cooperation is one of the techniques which is used to achieve these requirements, especially the fairness requirement. It is able not only to mitigate inter-cell interference, but also to exploit this interference and to use it as a useful signal. Although BS cooperation or what is called coordinated multipoint (CoMP) communications proves that it can achieve high gains in theory, there are some challenges that need to be solved in order for it to be widely deployed. One of the major challenges which prevents the CoMP concept from being widely deployed in new cellular systems is timing synchronization. This problem is particularly challenging when OFDM is employed which is the case in the uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) of WiMAX systems and in the DL of LTE systems. The problem is inherited from the limitations caused by integer time offsets in OFDM systems. In order to achieve the gains promised by CoMP systems, the user equipments’ (UEs) signals in UL or the BSs signals in DL should be synchronized such that the time difference of arrivals do not exceed the cyclic prefix length of the transmitted signals. In this thesis, we first provide a detailed mathematical analysis of the impact of integer time offsets on the performance of single-input-single-output (SISO) OFDM systems. In particular, closed-form expressions for the different types of interference caused by the integer time offset are derived. Furthermore, we derive exact closed-form expressions for the bit error rate (BER) and the symbol error rate (SER) of BPSK, QPSK and 16-QAM modulation for transmission over both AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels. The effect of the fractional carrier frequency offset (CFO) is taken into consideration in the derivations. For OFDM systems with a large number of subcarriers, an approximate method for evaluating the BER/SER is given. Next, we generalized our expressions to be suitable for the single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) OFDM systems. The derived closed-form expressions for the interference and probability of error enabled us to investigate the timing synchronization problem of UL CoMP systems, where it is not possible for a UE to be synchronized to more than one BS at the same time. This synchronization problem imposes an upper limit on the percentage of cooperation which could occur in an UL CoMP system. By using geometrical and analytical approaches, we define this upper bound. Moreover, an MMSE-based receiver that mitigates the unavoidable asynchronous interference is proposed. Furthermore, a simple joint channel
Law of Incorporation and Ownership Structure: The Law and Finance Theory Revisited

La Porta et al.'s [La Porta, R. , Lopez-de-Silanes, F. , Shleifer, A. , & Vishny, R. (1998). Law and finance. Journal of Political Economy, 106(6), 1113-1155] theory of law and finance predicts that minority controlled ownership structures, i.e. those that allow voting rights to exceed cash-flow rights, are more numerous in legal contexts that do not adequately protect investors against expropriation attempts by dominant shareholders. The purpose of our study is to test this prediction in a unique environment, that of the province of Quebec. Quebec owes its distinct status to the fact that it is the only jurisdiction among the 10 provinces of Canada to operate under civil law, while the other nine provinces operate under common law. We show that, in comparison to those in the rest of Canada, dominant shareholders in Quebec corporations hold a higher percentage of voting rights, with a wider gap between their voting rights and cash-flow rights.