Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Empowerment for sustainability : empowering women in rural communities in Georgia using participatory action research

I examine if participatory action research can be used to launch processes in women’s action groups in rural areas of a lower middle income country, which can lead to empowerment of the organization. Participatory action research conducted in Western Georgia was designed to investigate marginalization of rural women and whether a researcher can intervene by taking on a role of an external change-maker. The Georgian participatory action research consisted of community mobilization workshops, community action taken by two women’s action groups that participants of two workshops self-organized and reflection on community organizing process and outcomes during semi-structured interviews. The Georgian participatory action research lasted for six weeks. In addition to data from interviews, qualitative data consists of community action plans drafted in the workshops and observations. I found that participatory action research method can be used to help rural women organize into action groups in which they can take action to improve living conditions of their community. Results of the research indicate that a researcher played a crucial although small role by initiating a process of community organizing and co-creating knowledge with the local participants in the workshops. Another finding is that the three organizational-level processes that according to community empowerment theory developed by Speer and Hughey (1995) would lead to empowerment of the community organization had started to emerge women’s action groups. The three processes include inventing roles that can be rotated among organization members, establishing relations with community agencies and other societal actions, as well as sustaining organizational activity by enhancing relationships among organization members. Development of the processes imply that nine participants of the Georgian participatory action research and the other members of the women’s action groups can become empowered in the long run if they continue to take collective action in their community as members of the action groups they established during the research.
Exploring succession planning in small, growing firms

Purpose – The paper aims to explore some of the issues in voluntary succession associated with finding and successfully developing principal successors to ensure the survival and growth of small firms. It highlights the key issues identified, including recruiting employees with potential, considering the work/career motives of potential successors and ways of transferring organisational and personal/tacit knowledge from the owner‐manager to the successor, whether an internal employee or a new purchaser. An initial, simple model is presented, identifying three types of knowledge transfer and two tiers of succession.Design/methodology/approach – Literature from entrepreneurship, organisation studies and human resourcing highlights the issues associated with succession planning. Qualitative research provides empirical data from four owner‐managers and employees.Findings – Insight into the reasons why it is difficult to plan voluntary succession are provided.Research limitations/implications – A recognised li.
Budgeting and strategy in schools: The elusive link

This paper examines the effects upon management control in schools following the assumption of responsibility for delegated budgets required by the Education Reform Act (ERA) 1988. The paper examines the process of construction, approval and amendment of school budgets drawing on a neo-institutionalist framework. Our investigation has drawn upon extensive interviews in 17 schools in three North West local authorities, supplemented by a postal questionnaire and inspection of relevant documents. We develop two main arguments. First, in order to satisfy their statutory duties LEAs supervised the introduction of internal systems of budgetary control and school development planning in schools. Thus, control procedures were largely designed by internal auditors, who sought to provide an audit trail and to ensure financial probity mainly to satisfy external legitimacy, rather than to influence internal decision-making. Second, the specific nature of the relationship between budgeting and strategy varies between schools as the extent of formalised planning differs, but in general there is a very loose coupling between strategic objectives and budget expenditures.
The fine structure of laminae I, II and III of the macaque spinal cord

The neuronal and synaptic organization of the upper three laminae of the macaque monkey spinal cord have been examined by light and electron microscopy. Using a variety of light microscopic techniques it is possible to demonstrate a laminar pattern in the upper spinal cord which is comparable to that originally defined by Rexed ('52) in the cat. Lamina I contains an array of neurons and neuronal processes oriented chiefly in a horizontal pattern, parallel to the dorsal surface of the spinal cord. Most of the neurons of the lamina are small, 10‐15 μ in diameter, but an occasional cell exceeds 20 μ in diameter. The dorso‐ventral width of this lamina varies from 40‐150 μ, medially to laterally. Lamina II corresponds to the substantia gelatinosa and is readily recognized owing to its paucity of myelinated axons and the abundance of small neurons measuring 8‐10 μ. This layer varies in dorso‐ventral width from 150‐250 μ, medially to laterally, and may be divided cytoarchitecturally into an outer zone in which the cells are densely packed and an inner zone containing somewhat more dispersed neurons. The immediately subjacent lamina III contains a meshwork of small and medium sized axons which clearly separate it from the adjacent substantia gelatinosa. The neurons are about the same size as those of lamina II. The ventral border between lamina III and lamina IV is poorly defined as the differentiation between the two laminae is rimarily determined by the appearance of larger cells scattered in lamina IV. The dorso‐ventral width of lamina III is approximately 250 μ.
The Prevalence of Mental Disorders in the Working Population over the Period of Global Economic Crisis

Objectives: The ongoing global economic crisis may have affected people's mental health. This study aimed to, among a sample of the working population, estimate and compare the prevalence of depressive and anxiety disorders in different time intervals from January 2008 to October 2009 and to examine the demographic and socioeconomic correlates of mental disorders. Methods: From January 2008 to October 2009, 3579 employees in Alberta were recruited using the random digit dialing method. Mental disorders were assessed using the World Health Organization's Composite International Diagnostic Interview—Auto 2.1. The lifetime and 12-month prevalence of depressive and anxiety disorders in different time intervals were estimated and compared. Results: The 12-month prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) before September 1, 2008; between September 1, 2008, and March 1, 2009; and between March 1, 2009, and October 30, 2009, was 5.1%, 6.8%, and 7.6% (P = 0.03), respectively. The lifetime prevalence of dysthymia reported during the 3 periods was 0.4%, 0.7%, and 1.5% (P= 0.006), respectively. No changes in the 12-month prevalence of social phobia, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder were found over time. Conclusions: The ongoing global economic crisis may have contributed to the increased prevalence of MDD. Future studies are needed to monitor the changes in the prevalence and to describe how the event may affect people's employment status, income, and health.
OPEC and political considerations when deciding on oil extraction

Two oil price shocks changed the pattern of cheap oil. The first was the Arab embargo on oil exports in 1973. Oil prices rose five fold. In 1978, the second was the fall of Shah Iran. Prices soared to $80–$100 a barrel in today’s prices. In 1960, OPEC was established and since then it has been a considerable political and economic force in the oil market. Two thirds of the world’s oil reserves belong to OPEC members. OPEC is accused of being responsible for most of the price increases due to their production cuts and market power. This paper provides a general framework to examine the role of OPEC in affecting oil prices through the extracted quantities. A mathematical model is developed to explore the objective function of OPEC, which includes economic and political considerations. The idea is that OPEC members consider both the political support of their citizens and profits when determining oil extraction rates. This support is represented by a “harm function” which was added to the objective function of OPEC. The solution of the model lends some support for inclusion of this harm function, through which OPEC benefits from the cuts in production aimed at harming the western countries. For this harm function to be meaningful empirically, OPEC members should have a high harm indicator, αt. With high harm indicator values, OPEC harms itself financially. The results suggest that OPEC appears to be accepting considerable monetary setbacks to appease its citizens’ taste for harming the West. At different discount rates, the monetary losses range from about 10–20%. Solving the mathematical model required estimation of the residual demand that OPEC faces plus the cost function that applies to OPEC production. This paper reports the results of these estimations.
Vertical Imbalance and Local Fiscal Discipline in China

This article examines local fiscal behavior in contemporary China against the backdrop of decentralized spending responsibilities and recentralized rev enues. Vertical imbalance after the 1994 tax-sharing system reform, coupled with other features of the fiscal institutions, is not conducive to conservative local fiscal behavior. Moreover, a main driving force behind the expansion of local governments is the politically motivated intergovernmental transfer scheme. The center in effect "buys" political stability in sensitive areas while holding local leaders accountable for their tax efforts. A dynamic panel analy sis of Chinese counties reveals that a million-yuan increase in general transfer payment and salary raise subsidies would add, respectively, fifteen and sixteen employees to the county government payroll, other things being equal. At the same time, increased subsidies from upper-level governments do not "crowd out" or significantly affect local tax effort. Additional dynamic panel data analysis at the provincial level produced similar findings.
Performance and motivational deficits of helplessness: the role of motivational orientations.

The present study examined the hypothesis that the effect of failure feedback in producing learned helplessness would depend on the motivational orientation of a child. Extrinsically motivated children were predicted to exhibit performance decrement following a failure experience, whereas the opposite was predicted for intrinsically motivated children. In addition, success feedback was predicted to enhance subsequent performance only for the intrinsic group. Following success, failure, or no feedback on an activity reflecting spatial skills (an incomplete picture task), subjects' performance on an activity tapping different skills (i.e., anagrams) provided by a second experimenter served as the primary measure of helplessness. Subjects' intrinsic motivation in performing the incomplete picture task, a similar task (embedded figures) and a dissimilar task (dots-to-dots) was also examined. The results supported the predictions on both performance and intrinsic motivation measures. The results are discussed in terms of implications for learned helplessness as well as cognitive evaluation theories.
DEVELOPMENT OF BACK PROPAGATION NEURAL NETWORK MODEL TO PREDICT PERFORMANCE AND EMISSION PARAMETERS OF A DIESEL ENGINE

In this paper, development of Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) is proposed to predict performance and emission parameters of a diesel engine fuelled with sunflower oil and its blends with petro-diesel. Short term tests were conducted at various loads and with various blends of fuel to collect data. Various combinations of network parameters were investigated by varying number of hidden nodes, learning rate ( η), momentum factor ( �), and training algorithm. The developed neural network is able to predict brake specific fuel consumption (bsfc), torque, brake thermal efficiency, Hydro Carbon (HC) and Carbon Monoxide (CO) emissions within acceptable range of correlation coefficients, with load and percentage of blends as inputs.
CEO Pay and Company Performance

This paper examines the link between CEO cash compensation and company performance. We test for the influence of CEO pay on firm performance over a cross section of companies applying the same approach that is used by Lewellen, Loderer, Martin and Blum [1992]. In our study we account for the degree of common stock ownership by the CEO of each company as well. We find a positive and significant connection between the pay of CEOs and the performance of their respective firms. From our results it appears that CEO pay is used to align the interests of shareholders with company CEOs, reducing agency costs within the firm.
Are Retail Traders Compensated for Providing Liquidity?

This paper examines the extent to which individual investors provide liquidity to the stock market and whether they are compensated for doing so. We show that the ability of aggregate retail order imbalances, contrarian in nature, to predict short-term future returns is significantly enhanced during times of market stress, when market liquidity provisions decline. While a weekly rebalanced portfolio long in stocks purchased and short in stocks sold by retail investors delivers 19% annualized excess returns over a four-factor model from 2002 to 2010, it delivers up to 40% annualized returns in periods of high uncertainty. Despite this high aggregate performance, individual investors do not reap the rewards from liquidity provision because they experience a negative return on the day of their trade and they reverse their trades long after the excess returns from liquidity provision are dissipated. During the financial crisis, French active retail stock traders stepped up to the plate, increased stock holdings, and provided liquidity. In contrast, mutual fund investors fled from delegation by selling their mutual funds.
Do We Really Know That the WTO Increases Trade? Comment

In a recent article in the American Economic Review, Andrew K. Rose (2004) finds that countries belonging to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO), did not trade more than countries that abstained from membership. A vast literature on the GATT and the WTO presupposes that these organizations were important, but, until Rose, there were few systematic efforts to test the assumption that membership increased trade. Rose’s contribution is striking because he assembles a large dataset, performs a myriad of analyses, and uncovers scant evidence that the GATT and the WTO had any impact. Rose describes his negative findings as an “interesting mystery” (112). The solution to this mystery lies in understanding who actually participated in the GATT. We show that Rose has overlooked a large proportion of countries to which the agreement applied and mistakenly classified them as nonparticipants, when in fact they had rights and obligations under the agreement. This causes a downward bias in his estimates of the GATT’s effect on trade, because his gravity regressions
Trihalomethanes in Public Water Supplies and Risk of Stillbirth

Background: The chlorine used to disinfect public drinking water supplies reacts with naturally occurring organic matter to form a number of chemical byproducts. Recent studies have implicated exposure to chlorination byproducts in drinking water, trihalomethanes (THMs), in particular, with intrauterine death. Methods: We conducted a population-based case-control study in Nova Scotia and Eastern Ontario, Canada, to examine the effect of exposure to THMs on stillbirth risk. Cases were women who had a stillborn infant, and controls were a random sample of women with live births. Subjects were interviewed, and women with a public water source provided a residential water sample. Risks were examined according to residential THM level in tap water and to a total exposure metric incorporating tap water ingestion, showering, and bathing. Results: We enrolled 112 stillbirth cases and 398 live birth controls. Women with a residential total THM level of 80 or more μg/L had twice the risk of a stillbirth compared with women with no exposure to THMs (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 2.2; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.1–4.4). The highest quintile of total THM exposure using the total exposure metric was associated with an adjusted odds ratio of 2.4 (95% CI = 1.2–4.6) compared with women not exposed to THMs. Similar results were seen for specific THM compounds. A monotonic dose–response relationship was not seen. Conclusions: Our results provide evidence for an increased risk of stillbirth associated with exposure to chlorination byproducts through ingestion and showering and bathing, although there was not a clear dose–response relationship.
Corporate governance and firm operating performance

Using a unique dataset provided by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), we relate 51 governance provisions to firm operating performance as proxied by return on assets and return on equity. We identify six corporate governance provisions that are significantly and positively linked to return on assets, return on equity or both using at least two of our six regressions. We examine nine governance provisions that have been recently mandated by the three major U.S. stock exchanges, and we find none of them to be significantly and positively related to firm operating performance. Our results reveal that the governance provisions recently mandated by the U.S. stock exchanges are less closely linked to firm operating performance than are those not so mandated.
The Impact of the Asian Financial Crisis on Conservatism and Timeliness of Earnings: Evidence from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand

This paper examines conservatism and timeliness of earnings in the period surrounding the 1997 Asian financial crisis in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Prior research suggests that managers tended to be more aggressive in reporting good news and delayed recognition of bad news during the financial crisis (less conservative and less timely in financial reporting). After the crisis, these four countries implemented corporate governance measures to stabilize their financial systems and improve regulation and supervision (that should improve conservatism and timeliness). We examine and find that conservatism and timeliness of earnings during the crisis period are low, but improved in the post-crisis period. More importantly, conservatism and timeliness in the post-crisis period is even greater than in the pre-crisis period. We measure conservatism using Basu's model and the accumulation of non-operating accruals suggested by Givoly and Hayn. The findings from both measures are consistent with an increase in conservatism after the crisis period. Overall, the results indicate that corporate governance reforms in these four countries had a positive impact on conservatism and timeliness of earnings.
Deserción estudiantil universitaria: una aplicación de modelos de duración

A diferencia de estudios anteriores sobre la deserción universitaria, los cuales han tratado de explicarla sólo a partir de algunos de los factores que teóricamente han sido propuestos, en este artículo se analiza el problema de la deserción estudiantil en la Universidad de Antioquia incorporando conjuntamente factores individuales, académicos, socioeconómicos e institucionales como principales determinantes de la misma. Los resultados obtenidos a partir de la aplicación de modelos de duración, y en particular, de la comparación entre los modelos de riesgo proporcional con y sin hetererogeneidad no observable, parecen proporcionar evidencia sobre la importancia conjunta de estos cuatro factores. Palabras clave: deserción estudiantil, modelos de duración, riesgo proporcional, función de riesgo. Clasificación JEL: C41, C13, I21.
Inhibition of sarcoplasmic reticulum function by polyunsaturated fatty acids in intact, isolated myocytes from rat ventricular muscle

1 We have studied the effects of two polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) on spontaneous and electrically stimulated contractions in single, isolated ventricular myocytes from rat hearts. 2 The frequency of spontaneous waves of calcium release and contraction (induced by elevation of the bathing calcium concentration) is reduced in the presence of EPA. At the same time the resting level of intracellular calcium falls, the resting cell length increases and the amplitude of shortening decreases. All these effects are reversed on removal of EPA. 3 Imaging of the waves of calcium release shows that the amplitude and the rate of propagation of the wave is increased in EPA. Consistent with the increased amplitude, integration of the caffeine‐induced Na+‐Ca2+ exchange current (a measure of the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) calcium content) is increased by both EPA and DHA. 4 EPA has a maintained negative inotropic effect on voltage clamped myocytes. This seems to be entirely due to inhibition of the L‐type calcium current. Smaller depolarising pulses in control conditions that elicit the same calcium current as in EPA also activate the same level of contraction. This is in spite of the increased SR calcium content in EPA. 5 It is concluded that PUFAs have two effects on the SR; they reduce the availability of calcium for uptake and they inhibit the release mechanism. Both of these effects should lower the frequency of spontaneous waves of calcium release. As spontaneous release of calcium can initiate arrhythmias, some of the anti‐arrhythmic action of PUFAs must be exerted at the level of the SR.