Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of the ocular hypotensive effects of bimatoprost and timolol-dorzolamide combination in patients with elevated intraocular pressure: a 6-month study.

PURPOSE To compare the ocular hypotensive efficacy and safety of topical bimatoprost and timolol-dorzolamide combination in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) or ocular hypertension during 6 months of treatment. METHODS A sample of 65 patients with a diagnosis of POAG or ocular hypertension were randomized to receive either bimatoprost 0.03% once daily or timolol-dorzolamide combination twice daily. Study visits occurred at baseline and after 2 weeks and 1, 3 and 6 months of therapy. Intraocular pressure (IOP) measurements were performed at 12.00 hours at all study visits and also at 08.00 hours and 16.00 hours at baseline and 6-month visits. At each visit, local and systemic side-effects that occurred during the treatment period were recorded. Student's t-test was used to compare the differences between IOP values. RESULTS Differences in IOP between the bimatoprost and timolol-dorzolamide groups were statistically insignificant at all study visits (p > 0.05). In the bimatoprost-treated group, the IOP reduction was 6.2 +/- 1.8 mmHg, whereas it was 6.5 +/- 2.3 mmHg in the timolol-dorzolamide group after 6 months of treatment. The difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.48). CONCLUSIONS The IOP-lowering efficacies of bimatoprost and timolol-dorzolamide combination were similar over a 6-month follow-up. Both bimatoprost and the timolol-dorzolamide combination were well tolerated. Bimatoprost can be used as a longterm monotherapy agent in the treatment of POAG and ocular hypertension.
Learning together: new partnerships for new times

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to provide an overview of the learning that has emerged from two initiatives in which a multinational company, Unilever, and an international non‐governmental organization, Oxfam have worked together: the Sustainable Food Laboratory Initiative, a project focusing on the global food production system, and “Exploring the Links”, a joint research project exploring the links between wealth creation and poverty reduction in one country, Indonesia.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents an overview of learning as expressed by participants in the Sustainable Food Laboratory and a summary of the final report published by the joint research project, giving an overview of the process and highlighting the key lessons learned by both organizations.Findings – The paper finds that the common success of both projects is a contribution to a better understanding of current global systems and local impacts, as well as an indication of the opportunities for systemic change .
The Curriculum as a Governing Instrument – A Comparative Study of Finland and Norway

Traditionally, the Nordic curriculum has been viewed as a document with school subjects in focus. This article reports on how two national curricula function as instruments for governing education and explores the possible differences in how national curricula govern education. This investigation was carried out by researching curricula for compulsory schools in Norway (2006) and Finland (2004). In Norway, the governing that emphasises output mechanisms is compared to Finland where the governing is distributed in a more intricate manner at three identified levels. All three levels in the hierarchical legal levels (Act, Regulation and circular letters) are directly activated in the formal rule system, whereas only the two first levels, as part of the formal rule system, are used within the Finnish curriculum decision-making structure. A second finding is that a consequence of the use of the formal rule system is that, at the higher level of the legal status, legitimacy is acquired through a process of essential voices being heard in the process of creating the curricula. Unlike the Finnish curriculum, the Norwegian curriculum does not have the same level of democratic procedures behind it concerning consultation over the content.
Acts of entrepreneurial creativity for business growth and survival in a constrained economy: Case study of a small manufacturing firm (SMF)

Using a case study approach, this article presents findings on a small plastic manufacturing firm and entrepreneur in Nigeria. The study identifies performance factors of a firm that has received hardly any external support and, as a result, the entrepreneur had to independently sustain his firm through creative abilities. Findings from the study revealed that there are external and internal constraints such as lack of financial capital, inadequate infrastructure facilities, competition from large firms, unfavorable government policies, dearth of machines and spare parts and paucity of raw materials. Internal obstacles like incompetent planning, poor organizational skills and limited knowledge were also obstacles. Funding assistance is biased on the basis of favoritism and not on developmental goals being achieved. This particular case is an example of a potential avant‐garde entrepreneur whos talent should not be neglected.
The Impact of Postseason Restructuring on the Competitive Balance and Fan Demand in Major League Baseball

We analyzed issues of playoff uncertainty (PU) by examining competitive balance and outcome uncertainty. Specifically, we (i) developed an alternative measure of PU, (ii) analyzed the relationship between PU and postseason structure in Major League Baseball (MLB), and (iii) tested the PU of the outcome hypothesis using our PU measure. The results provide empirical evidence that postseason restructurings in 1969 and 1995 enhanced the PU significantly and had positive effects on fan demand for MLB. This implies that the league office can partly control PU by revising the league structure and thus increasing fan demand.
Introduction: William Ouchi's Theory Z: How American business can meet the Japanese Challenge

Executive Overview This article describes the Theory Z proposed by William Ouchi in his book published in 1981, “Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge. ” The author discusses how Ouchi's sociological approach differs from the management approaches of the 1960s and 1970s, as he outlines the new tools available to managers. Ouchi discusses human resource practices that increase employee loyalty, increased employee participation in decision making, and group-based reward systems. Further discussion of why Ouchi's book became so popular is presented, as is a discussion of the book in relation to other management-related publications at the time of publication.
Public administration and citizen satisfaction with democracy: cross-national evidence

This article examines the democracy–bureaucracy nexus by addressing the role of public administration in sustaining citizen satisfaction with democracy. Employing cross-national data across 35 countries, the multi-level analysis enables investigation at both the individual and the country level. With respect to the former, the findings indicate that citizens’ evaluation of public administration is related more strongly to their satisfaction with democracy than other explanations – such as political trust, electoral fairness, and political efficacy. With respect to the latter, they demonstrate that public administration quality is related to satisfaction with democracy to a degree similar to other macro-level factors – such as the level of democracy, political trust, and human development in a country. The results are discussed in the framework of the debate regarding the democracy–bureaucracy nexus. Points for practitioners This article points to the central role of public administration in sustaining citizen support of democracy. The analysis demonstrates that the image of public service correlated strongly with satisfaction with democracy and that public administration quality appears to be correlated positively with satisfaction with democracy to a degree comparable with alternative explanations. The implications for professionals working in public management and administration is that despite the ongoing castigating of the public service by politicians and pundits, its relevance for the democratic satisfaction of citizens should not be overlooked.
Service capabilities and customer relationship management: an investigation of the banks in Taiwan

This study seeks to explain the influence of several individual service capabilities and their interactions on customer relationship management (CRM) performance in the banking industry. Two samples are analysed (bank staff and bank customers) and an empirical study is carried out using a multiple interaction regression approach. The findings show the main effect of human resources, information knowledge and marketing knowledge, and their interactions (the dyadic and conjoint service capabilities) on the effectiveness of CRM performance. The interactions are compared with the main effects, taking an overall view of capability–performance linkage. The main conclusions suggest that the latter are far more important. These findings provide important information for banks, which need to build successful long-term CRM associations with their customers, to adapt in today's dynamic environment.
Inferring Policy Objectives from Economic Outcomes

This paper stresses that estimated policy rules are reduced form equations that are silent on many important policy questions. To obtain a structural understanding of monetary policy it is necessary to estimate the policymaker's objective function, rather than its policy reaction function. With these issues in mind, this paper proposes a system-based estimation approach that uses the solution to the policymaker's optimization problem to infer the underlying policy regime from the economy's evolution over time. The paper derives conditions under which the parameters in a policymaker's policy objective function can be identified and estimated. These identification conditions apply to forward-looking rational-expectations models as well as to backward-looking models, extending existing results. We apply these conditions to a New Keynesian sticky-price model of the US economy, estimating jointly all of the model's behavioral parameters and the policy regime parameters. The results show that the implicit inflation target and the relative weight placed on interest rate smoothing both declined with Volcker's appointment to Federal Reserve chairman. However, the estimates reveal that other - non-monetary-policy - parameters have changed over time also.
The Inverse Domino Effect: Are Economic Reforms Contagious?

This paper examines whether a country's economic reforms are affected by reforms adopted by other countries. A simple model of economic reforms is developed to motivate the econometric work. Unsurprisingly, the model predicts that reforms are more likely when factors of production are internationally mobile and reforms are pursued in other economies. More interesting is the finding that reforms are not driven by greater trade openness. Using the change in the Index of Economic Freedom as the measure of market-liberalising reforms, we examine two issues. Using data for a panel of 144 countries and the years 1995-2006, we identify the most important channels through which reforms are transmitted from country to country. We find evidence of the importance of reforms in other countries. Moreover, consistent with our model, international trade is not a vehicle for the diffusion of economic reforms, rather the most important mechanism is geographical or cultural proximity.
Globalization, Modes of Innovation and Regional Knowledge Diffusion Infrastructures

Firms increasingly transcend the boundaries of regional innovation systems in their search for technology and complementary capabilities, and only rarely can they build their knowledge bases on science system output alone. Whereas the former decouple firms from regional user–producer networks, the latter raises important questions concerning the role of local science and education system actors in industrial development. By applying the “modes of innovation” concept on a Norwegian region, this paper discusses how science and education institutions can respond to the challenges of knowledge base complexity and globalization. It concludes that such institutions may play a vital role in supporting knowledge-based development, albeit different from that of academic knowledge exploration followed by linear technology transfer to industry.
SOURCES OF STRESS IN AN AUTOMATED PLANT

Computer‐integrated manufacturing implementation is often hindered by human resource issues like stress. By focusing on one type of potential human obstacle to the integration of islands of automation in our exploratory case study, we examine the sources of stress and the lack of job control experienced in three functional departments: computer‐aided design and manufacturing, manufacturing planning and control, and computer numerical control/robot manufacturing; we also suggest management interventions to alleviate stress in each group of workers. We used three methods to collect data: self‐reporting, observation at the job level, and physiological screening. Our results indicated little difference in stress levels among the three groups. However, we found that each group faced a different set of pressures and exercised different levels of control over their jobs. We suggest specific managerial action to overcome the most critical pressures.
Developing a Protocol for Infrared Cryocrystallographic Analysis of Carbonmonoxymyoglobin

Investigating intermediate states of biomolecular processes requires the development of methods to probe extreme conditions. In this study, Fourier-transform infrared cryocrystallography was applied to studying an intermediate state of carbonmonoxymyoglobin, with unbound CO lying stationary in the heme pocket of myoglobin. An experimental protocol was designed to lower myoglobin crystals to cryogenic temperatures and subsequently photolyze the bonds in this intermediate state. Spectral data on crystals at these temperatures were collected and analyzed to determine the effectiveness of procedural innovations. Several components of the protocol worked successfully, while other aspects may require revision and further theoretical analysis. The protocol provides a foundation for the field of infrared cryocrystallography and offers suggestions for future refinement and application of the technique.
The Family Business and Its Social Responsibilities

The social responsibilities of family businesses are still a little-studied area. This article is based on the opinions of 44 academics who are directly involved in studying and advising this type of company. The study's results indicate that family businesses are better at carrying out the responsibilities of wealth creation and delivery of goods to the market than the development of individual skills and guaranteeing their long-term continuity.
New housing association development and its potential to reduce concentrations of deprivation: An English case study

Social housing across Western Europe has become significantly more residualised as governments concentrate on helping vulnerable households. Many countries are trying to reduce the concentrations of deprivation by building for a wider range of households and tenures. In England this policy has two main strands: (1) including other tenures when regenerating areas originally built as mono-tenure social housing estates and (2) introducing social rented and low-cost homeownership into new private market developments through planning obligations. By examining where new social housing and low-cost home ownership homes have been built and who moves into them, this paper examines whether these policies achieve social mix and reduce spatial concentrations of deprivation. The evidence suggests that new housing association development has enabled some vulnerable households to live in areas which are not deprived, while some better-off households have moved into more deprived areas. But these trends have not been sufficient to stem increases in deprivation in the most deprived areas.
The Adoption of Genetically Modified Cotton and Poverty Reduction in Pakistan

This article employs a propensity score-matching approach to examine the direct effects of adoption of "Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton on yields, pesticide demand, household income and poverty, using cross-sectional data from a survey of farmers in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Generally, the findings reveal that adoption of the new technology exerts a positive and significant impact on cotton yields, household income and poverty reduction, and a negative effect on the use of pesticides. The positive and significant impact of the technology on yields and household income is consistent with the potential role of new agricultural technology in directly reducing rural poverty through increased farm household income. " Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2009 The Agricultural Economics Society.
Funding, Management, and Individual-Level Factors: What Factors Matter in Predicting Perceived Organizational Effectiveness?

Scholars have examined organizational effectiveness in state and federal government agencies to determine which factors matter. Their findings revealed that public organizational effectiveness is affected by environmental, human resource management, organizational, and individual-level factors. However, what is conspicuously absent is the impact funding has on organizational effectiveness. To further previous literature, this article examined agency funding levels as well as management and individual-level factors to determine the relationship these factors had on organizational effectiveness. In doing so, a model was developed to predict perceived organizational effectiveness, and it was tested on 330 United States government workers in the state of New York. The findings from the analysis were clear: perceived organizational effectiveness was impacted by employee perceptions regarding the level of funding the agencies were allocated. Additionally, the level of role ambiguity and employee participation in decision-making as well as employee job performance and public service motivation levels were also found to matter. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed in the article.
Paradigms of manufacturing strategy re‐visited

Purpose – Seeks to provide observations on a paper published in 1995.Design/methodology/approach – The approach is a review and observations about the 1987 work.Findings – In the 1995 paper, “Alternative paradigms for manufacturing strategy”, the history of the development of manufacturing strategy was reviewed and it was concluded that three paradigms had emerged: competing through manufacturing; strategic choices in manufacturing, and best practice. Looking back on this work these three paradigms are remarkably robust. However, there has been considerable development in the intervening years both intellectually and in practice that needs to be considered when reviewing this paper.Originality/value – Shows that the three paradigms have remained robust, but there has been considerable development in practice and theory that both broadens the content and informs the nature of each paradigm.
Oral Factor Xa Inhibitors for Venous Thromboembolism Prevention in Major Orthopedic Surgery: A Review

Venous thromboembolism (VTE), which includes deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing major orthopedic surgery, and routine thromboprophylaxis has been the standard of care over the last 20 years. Currently available options for the prevention of VTE in major orthopedic surgery include low-molecular-weight heparins, vitamin K antagonists and, more recently, the synthetic pentasaccharide fondaparinux. Although effective, these drugs have several limitations, and new oral antithrombotics offering predictable, effective and safe anticoagulation are strongly needed. This overview focuses on the most advanced oral direct inhibitors of factor Xa, rivaroxaban, apixaban, LY517717, YM150 and betrixaban. Specifically, the results of phase II and III studies and the designs of ongoing clinical trials in patients undergoing elective hip and knee replacement are reviewed.
Transparency, Price Informativeness, and Stock Return Synchronicity: Theory and Evidence

Abstract This paper argues that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, stock return synchronicity (or R2) can increase when transparency improves. In a simple model, we show that, in more transparent environments, stock prices should be more informative about future events. Consequently, when the events actually happen in the future, there should be less “surprise” (i.e., less new information is impounded into the stock price). Thus a more informative stock price today means higher return synchronicity in the future. We find empirical support for our theoretical predictions in 3 settings: namely, firm age, seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), and listing of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs).
FULL EXTRACTION OF THE SURPLUS IN BAYESIAN AND DOMINANT STRATEGY AUCTIONS

The authors consider auctions for a single indivisible object when bidders have information about each other that is unavailable to the seller. They show that the seller can use this information to his own benefit, and they characterize th e environments in which a well-chosen auction gives him the same expected payoff as that obtainable were he able to see the object und er full information. This hinges on the possibility of constructing lotteries with the correct properties. The authors study the problem for auctions where the bidders have dominant strategies and those where the relevant equilibrium concept is Bayesian-Nash. Copyright 1988 by The Econometric Society.
Public and private information: Lessons from the emerging Tunisian stock market

The aim of the present research is to investigate the roles of public and private information flows in explaining intraday returns and intraday return volatility for a securities sample from the Tunisian stock market. Using an econometric approach based on uni-variate ARCH-type models, our empirical results reveal that in major Tunisian stocks the instantaneous private information proxied by the contemporaneous order imbalance is the dominant factor in explaining intraday returns. In addition, our findings cleary indicate that the trading volume represents a dominant factor to explain the intraday return volatility for the entirety of stocks when there is a simultaneous arrival of public and private information whether in the case of the instantaneous flow or in the sequential flow. Furthermore, our results indicate that volatility persistence disappears when trading volume and order imbalance are included as explanatory variables in the conditional variance equation.
Low-Complexity MMSE-SIC Equalizer Employing ${\bf LDL}^{H}$ Factorization for OFDM Systems Over Time-Varying Channels

A low-complexity minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer with successive interference cancellation (SIC) for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) over time-varying multipath channels is presented. The equalization algorithm exploits the property of matrix LDLH factorization to avoid direct or recursive computation of matrix inversion, thereby reducing the computational complexity. This algorithm also allows us to exploit the band approximation of the frequency-domain channel matrix to further reduce the complexity with minor performance degradation. Theoretical analysis and simulations show that the proposed algorithms reduce the computational complexity of the MMSE-SIC scheme while preserving a good performance.