Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Farming for Walmart: the politics of corporate control and responsibility in the global South

To analyse corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a business tool and as a way to promote food security in the global South, this article draws on 65 interviews with supply chain personnel and a 2013 survey of 250 smallholder farmers in Nicaragua. Contrary to private governance literature, Walmart's efforts to control supply chains in Nicaragua are not advancing rural sustainability; feelings of mistrust and unfairness persist among farmers, and many are returning to local markets to regain independence. This analysis extends our understanding of why CSR is failing to help agrarian societies and confirms CSR as principally a business strategy.
Episodic heavy drinking in four Nordic countries: a comparative survey.

AIMS The purpose of this study was to compare the phenomenon of episodic heavy drinking (binge drinking) and its different indicators in the Nordic countries. DESIGN A comparative survey of four Nordic countries. SETTING Telephone interviews in Denmark, 1997; Finland, 1996; Norway, 1996; and Sweden 1996-97. PARTICIPANTS Random samples of men and women aged 19-71 years. MEASUREMENTS Episodic heavy drinking was measured by the frequency of subjective intoxication, of drinking six or more drinks at a time (6+), and of negative consequences (mainly hangover symptoms). Additionally, annual consumption and measures of intake per occasion were used. FINDINGS Annual consumption, overall frequency of drinking and frequency of drinking 6+ were highest in Denmark and lowest in Norway. Frequency of subjectively defined intoxication was highest in Finland. There it was clearly higher than the frequency of drinking 6+, whereas in Denmark the contrary was observed. Finnish and Norwegian men and Danish women reported the largest quantities drunk per occasion. Results on 6+ frequency and the prevalence of negative consequences, with annual consumption held constant, suggest that Danes have the least concentrated drinking pattern. With annual consumption held constant, Norwegians report as high a frequency of intoxication, as do Finns. CONCLUSIONS The relations between subjective and more objective measures of episodic heavy drinking vary considerably between the Nordic countries. The results suggest that the definition, acceptability and experience of intoxication vary even when a set of relatively homogeneous countries are compared.
The Comparison of Twinning Rates Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

Abstract Based on the birth record data from the National Vital Statistics in the 1990 Census of China, the present study analyzed the differences between urban and rural areas on monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin rates by maternal age in 1989. The twins by zygosity were calculated with Weinberg's differential method. Results show that the MZ and DZ twinning rates in China were associated with maternal age and that there were substantial differences between urban and rural areas. The MZ twinning rates in urban and rural areas were 2.36 pairs and 2.11 pairs per 1000 deliveries respectively, significantly lower than that in most studied populations. Furthermore, our analysis indicated that MZ twinning rates remained relatively constant for mothers under the age group of 36 to 38 years, but rose over this age group in both areas, albeit with a different slope. The DZ twinning rates were strikingly affected by maternal age, but the age for peak DZ rates was found within the age group of 33 to 35 years. In all maternal age groups except for 24 to 26 years, the DZ twinning rates in urban areas were higher than in rural areas. It remains unclear as to why the DZ twinning rates reversed to reach higher values within the older maternal age groups in China, but it is almost certain that the high twinning rates had nothing to do with in vitro fertilization.
Mobilising the entrepreneurial potential in local community development

This article focuses on the ‘younger’ Bengt Johannisson and some of his early studies aiming at developing an adequate understanding of the role of small firms in local communities, and how local mobilisation and the role of entrepreneurship could contribute to revitalisation of declining communities. Based on the network approach, he developed his perspectives on organising context and the socially constructed environment, and how the process of entrepreneurship could be regarded as a process of managing personal networks by which the entrepreneurs also enacted the environment. His approach to entrepreneurship stood at the time in strong contrast to traditional and mainstream entrepreneurship research, and in this way, he played an important role as a pioneer as well as an outsider in entrepreneurship research.
Accurate polyadenylation of procyclin mRNAs in Trypanosoma brucei is determined by pyrimidine-rich elements in the intergenic regions

Polycistronic precursor RNAs from trypanosomes are processed into monocistronic mRNAs by the excision of intergenic sequences and the addition of a 39-nucleotide spliced leader by trans splicing. These mRNAs are also polyadenylated, yet they do not contain the hexamer AAUAAA within their 3' untranslated regions (UTRs). To identify the signals required for the accurate polyadenylation of mRNAs, we tested the effects of deletions in either the procyclin 3' UTR or the downstream intergenic region on the polyadenylation of transcripts from a reporter gene. Deletion of the entire 3' UTR does not affect polyadenylation, but a crucial element is located in the intergenic region and includes a pyrimidine-rich sequence from positions 79 to 112 followed by an AG dinucleotide. Related motifs are also found a similar distance downstream of other genes in both the procyclin and the variant surface glycoprotein expression sites. These sequences bear a strong resemblance to splice acceptor sites, but they are generally several hundred base pairs upstream of the major splice acceptor site of the next gene in the transcription unit. There is evidence, however, that some of them can give rise to alternatively spliced transcripts with unusually long 5' UTRs.
Autoimmune hypophysitis: a single centre experience.

INTRODUCTION Autoimmune hypophysitis (AH) is a rare primary autoimmune inflammatory disorder involving the pituitary gland. METHODS A retrospective analysis of the clinical features and outcome of patients diagnosed with AH between 1988 and 2006, was carried out. RESULTS 15 patients (14 females and one male) with AH were identified. Three patients presented in the peripartum period. Headache, vomiting and visual field defects, suggestive of an expanding sellar mass, were the most common presenting symptoms (67 percent). The most common deficient hormone was adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) (67 percent), followed by thyroid stimulating hormone (53 percent) and gonadotropins (40 percent). Imaging revealed a definite, enhancing sellar mass in 87 percent of the patients and stalk thickening in 33 percent of the patients. Three patients underwent surgery. On serial monitoring, the sellar mass regressed or disappeared spontaneously without any immunosuppressive treatment in the other ten patients with a definite sellar mass. CONCLUSION We report a higher female to male ratio and a lower incidence of peripartum cases in our series. Symptoms of mass effect were the most common presentation, while ACTH was the most commonly-deficient hormone. Surgery was rarely needed, and most patients experienced a spontaneous resolution of the mass.
Organizational commitment and market orientation of Nigerian non‐oil exporting companies

Purpose – This paper aims to test the relationships between organizational commitment and market orientation within the context of the non‐oil sector of a developing country.Design/methodology/approach – Cross‐sectional data was collected from 190 managers of non‐oil exporting companies. Multiple regression analysis was adopted to test the impact of organizational commitment on market orientation.Findings – The analysis of the data shows that organizational commitment affects market orientation positively and that top management belief and the organizational reward systems are important in the implementation of market orientation. However, the use of cross‐sectional data limits the measurement of the impact of organization commitment on market orientation over a long period.Practical implications – Market orientation can be improved upon through concerted efforts in building organizational commitment. This can be achieved either individually or by combining organizational commitment with reward system and.
The Economics of Suicide, Revisited

Only a small fraction of suicide attempts are fatal. Nonfatal attempts might elicit resources and care from others, enhancing economic prospects for those who survive. I expand the standard utility-maximizing model of suicide to include a nontrivial probability of survival and the possibility that the utility function may be affected by the suicide attempt. This expanded model predicts that suicide attempts are more likely when future income may be positively affected by the attempt, conditional on survival. Data from the National Comorbidity Survey show that ex post, individuals who made a suicide attempt had higher incomes than peers who seriously considered suicide but who never made a suicide attempt. Moreover, those who reported making the most serious attempts experienced the largest subsequent effects on income.
Import Prices and Exchange Rate Pass-Through: Theory and Evidence from the United Kingdom

The appreciation of sterling that began in 1996 appeared to pass through into import prices very slowly, an apparent example of incomplete exchange rate pass-through. Incomplete pass-through has typically been explained by a combination of sticky prices and pricing to market. This can have implications for the monetary transmission mechanism, making it important to establish whether this phenomenon exists in practice. One implication for firms' import (and domestic) price setting is that competitors' prices might affect the mark-up, although this is not a necessary condition. Some of the factors supporting pricing to market may also introduce non-linear responses to exchange rate shocks. It is established that a model of pricing to market including a role for competitors' prices fits the data, but no evidence of non-linearity is found.
Consumer behaviour toward convenience store chains in Greece

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer behavior towards Greek convenience stores chains and to determine the criteria on which store selection is based. The paper also analyses the stores’ position in the retail sector. Design/methodology/approach – A random sample of 360 convenience store consumers was surveyed across four major cities. Data were collected through personal interviews, using a structured questionnaire. Statistical analysis was applied to further evaluate the information. Findings – Consumers choose convenience stores mainly to cover their daily needs and save time on shopping, despite their dissatisfaction with the provided services. The survey also identified the characteristics of convenience store customers and their preferences. Originality/value – The principal contribution of the present research is its focus on consumer behavior towards convenience stores in Greece.
Prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle in aromatase knock‐out mice: effects of age and gender

Estrogen has been suggested to play a neuromodulatory and neuroprotective role on the brain dopamine system. We used aromatase knockout (ArKO) mice that lack a functional aromatase enzyme and are unable to convert testosterone into estrogen, and assessed prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle, locomotor hyperactivity to amphetamine treatment and rotarod performance. Mice were tested at either 1 month, 4–5 months or 12–18 months of age. In male, but not female ArKO mice, there was an age‐related reduction of prepulse inhibition. The 12–18 months old male ArKO mice also showed significantly greater amphetamine‐induced hyperactivity. Mice heterozygous for the mutation showed no deficits or were in‐between wildtype mice and ArKO mice. We postulate that these data indicate a neuroprotective role of estrogen, particularly in male mice, on ageing of brain mechanisms involved in prepulse inhibition and locomotor activity regulation. It is likely that these brain mechanisms are or include dopaminergic activity.
Supervision by Fusion: Towards Unsupervised Learning of Deep Salient Object Detector

In light of the powerful learning capability of deep neural networks (DNNs), deep (convolutional) models have been built in recent years to address the task of salient object detection. Although training such deep saliency models can significantly improve the detection performance, it requires large-scale manual supervision in the form of pixel-level human annotation, which is highly labor-intensive and time-consuming. To address this problem, this paper makes the earliest effort to train a deep salient object detector without using any human annotation. The key insight is “supervision by fusion”, i.e., generating useful supervisory signals from the fusion process of weak but fast unsupervised saliency models. Based on this insight, we combine an intra-image fusion stream and a inter-image fusion stream in the proposed framework to generate the learning curriculum and pseudo ground-truth for supervising the training of the deep salient object detector. Comprehensive experiments on four benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method can approach the same network trained with full supervision (within 2-5% performance gap) and, more encouragingly, even outperform a number of fully supervised state-of-the-art approaches.
Safety of exercise in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Purpose of reviewPatients with rheumatoid arthritis benefit from long-term moderate or high-intensity exercises. Moderate or high-intensity exercises were found to improve aerobic capacity, muscle strength, functional ability, and psychological well-being, and slow the age-related and sex-related decrease in bone mineral density of the hip. Despite these positive findings, there is also concern about its risks. Studies on the effects of exercise on disease activity and joint damage are reviewed. Recent findingsStudies on the effects of moderate or high-intensity exercise in rheumatoid arthritis demonstrate either decreased or stable disease activity. From the few available studies that address exercise and radiologic progression of the small joints, results indicate that exercises are safe for the joints of hands and feet. However, a recent study suggests caution in prescribing long-term high-intensity weight-bearing exercises to patients who have significant radiologic damage of large joints, as some patients might develop additional damage. SummaryModerate or high-intensity weight-bearing exercises are safe with respect to disease activity and radiologic damage of the hands and feet. In the absence of sufficient data on exercise and radiologic progression of the large joints, patients with significant radiologic damage of the large joints should not be encouraged to participate in moderate to high-intensity weight-bearing exercise unless individualized to protect affected joints. A broader dissemination of the effectiveness and safety of moderate and high-intensity exercise for patients with rheumatoid arthritis is needed among rheumatologists, physical therapists, and patients.
Artificially induced unusual shape of erythrocytes: an atomic force microscopy study

We used air operating atomic force microscopy (AFM) to study several morphological modifications of human erythrocytes, artificially produced by addition of exogenous agents including phospholipids, low ionic strength media and drugs. Most experiments were performed on unfixed samples to avoid treating red blood cells (RBCs) with chemical agents that can, in principle, induce morphological alteration.
Development of an Effective Rent (Lease) Index for the Chicago CBD

This paper estimates changes in effective rental rates for the period 1985 to 1991 for office space in the Chicago CBD using information from individual leases provided by the Rubloff Company. This is the first study to use detailed lease-level data to estimate a price index for changes in effective rents for a metropolitan area. Effective rents are estimated from the perspective of the property owners and are defined as the annual-equivalent cash flows of the present value of all cash flows that are explicitly identified in the lease contracts including the contract rental rate, graduations in the contract rate, tenant improvements, moving allowances, buyout allowances, expense stops, broker commissions, and any other conditions of the lease that generate specific dollar receipts or expenditures for the owner. A real estate index based on changes in effective rents rather than property values is unaffected by changes in market capitalization rates and therefore provides a measure of changes in the market for space that is independent of changes in the market for capital. The results suggest that effective rents in the Chicago CBD declined almost 50% from 1985 to 1988 and increased only slightly from 1988 to 1991. Asking rents, on the other hand, were fairly constant over the same time interval. The average of the vase (contract) rents from the sample of leases in this study was lower than the average asking rents (as might be expected) and were more volatile through time. Base rents were greater (and had less volatility) than effective rents, however, due to the use of free rent and other concessions which appear to increase when the market weakens and decreases when the market strengthens. As a result, effective rents have much more volatility and provide a more accurate and timely representation of trends in the price of space than either asking rents or contract rents.
Preferences Over Sets of Lotteries -super-1

This paper studies a model in which in period 1, a decision-maker chooses a set of lotteries and in period 2, Nature chooses a lottery from the set chosen by the decision-maker and the decision-maker consumes the lottery chosen by Nature. Larger sets are interpreted as representing more ambiguous objective information about the lottery that will be consumed. The axioms imposed on preferences over sets of lotteries generalize those often imposed on preferences over single lotteries in the existing literature. A decision-maker who satisfies these axioms evaluates sets of lotteries according to a weighted average of the expected utilities of the best and the worst lottery in a set, with the weights interpreted as a measure of (comparative) attitude to objective ambiguity. Copyright 2007, Wiley-Blackwell.
Posterior lumbar interbody fusion and posterolateral fusion: Analogous procedures in decreasing the index of disability in patients with spondylolisthesis

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the disability in patients with spondylolisthesis who assigned either to posterolateral fusion (PLF) or posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) and to compare it between two groups. Methods: In a prospective observational study, 102 surgical candidates with low-grade degenerative and isthmic spondylolisthesis enrolled from 2012 to 2014, and randomly assigned into two groups: PLF and PLIF. Evaluation of disability has been done by a questionnaire using Oswestry Disability Index (ODI). The questionnaire was completed by all patients before the surgery, the day after surgery, after 6 months and after 1-year. Results: There were no statistically significant differences in terms of age and sex distribution and pre-operation ODI between groups (P > 0.05). Comparison of the mean ODI scores of two groups over the whole study period showed no significant statistical difference (P = 0.074). ODIs also showed no significant differences between two groups the day after surgery, 6 th months and 1-year after surgery (P = 0.385, P = 0.093, P = 0.122 and P = 433) respectively. Analyzing the course of ODI over the study period, showed a significant descending pattern for either of groups (P < 0.0001). Conclusion: Both surgical fusion techniques (PLF and PLIF) were efficient to lessen the disability of patients with spondylolisthesis, and none of the fusion techniques were related to a better outcome in terms of disability.
To What Extent Did Stock Index Futures Contribute to the October 1987 Stock Market Crash

The authors examine the extent to which futures contributed to the stock market crash. Correcting for nonsynchronous trading, they find that this explained little of the behavior of the markets, leaving breakdown as the most probable explanation. The authors investigate breakdown by analyzing the pricing relationship on the 19th and 20th of October 1987. They find that the arbitrage link broke on the 19th due to liquidity problems in the stock market. This drove traders to the futures market, alleviating the liquidity problem such that the link was restored on the 20th. The implication is that the problem lay with the stock market. Copyright 1993 by Royal Economic Society.
Evaluating levels of strategic integration and devolvement of human resource management in the UK

Evaluates the levels of strategic “integration” of human resource management (HRM) into the corporate strategy and “devolvement” of responsibility for HRM to line managers in the UK manufacturing sector. Summarises, initially, some of the primary theoretical debates existing in the HRM literature and then presents empirical results of a large‐scale study. Bases the findings on a questionnaire survey and in‐depth interviews. Not only highlights the present scenario regarding the concepts of integration and devolvement from the “subject‐matter experts”’ viewpoint, but also reveals the main logic surrounding them and the main factors and variables which determine these two practices in the UK. Contributes to the field of strategic HRM and opens avenues for further research.
The Volatility Effect

There is empirical evidence that stocks with low historical volatility have high risk-adjusted returns, with annual alpha spreads of global low-versus high-volatility decile portfolios of 12 percentage points over 1986-2006. This volatility effect appears independently in U.S., European, and Japanese markets. It is similar in size to classic effects such as value, size, and momentum, and cannot be explained by implicit loadings on these well-known effects. These results indicate that equity investors overpay for risky stocks. Possible explanations include leverage restrictions, inefficient two-step investment processes, and behavioral biases of private investors. To exploit the volatility effect in practice, investors might include low-risk stocks as a separate asset class in the strategic asset allocation phase of the investment process.