Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
‘Stressed out of my box’: employee experience of lean working and occupational ill-health in clerical work in the UK public sector

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is under-researched in the sociology of work and employment. This deficit is most pronounced for white-collar occupations. Despite growing awareness of the significance of psychosocial conditions – notably stress – and musculoskeletal disorders, white-collar work is considered by conventional OHS discourse to be ‘safe’. This study’s locus is clerical processing in the UK public sector, specifically Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, in the context of efficiency savings programmes. The key initiative was lean working, which involved redesigned workflow, task fragmentation, standardization and individual targets. Utilizing a holistic model of white-collar OHS and in-depth quantitative and qualitative data, the evidence of widespread self-reported ill-health symptoms is compelling. Statistical tests of association demonstrate that the transformed work organization that accompanied lean working contributed most to employees’, particularly women’s, ill-health complaints.
The Impact of Assessment and Accountability on Teacher Recruitment and Retention

This article uses data on every teacher in New York State public elementary schools from 1994-1995 through 2001-2002 to examine the response of teachers to the implementation of state-mandated testing. The authors ask whether the introduction of testing in the fourth grade has increased the turnover of fourth-grade teachers, whether testing differentially affected the decisions of teachers with particular attributes, and whether the characteristics of teachers entering the fourth grade changed with the introduction of testing. The authors find that the turnover rate of fourth-grade teachers decreased relative to teachers in other elementary grades since testing began. In addition, entering fourth-grade teachers are less likely to be inexperienced teachers than those moving into other elementary school grades.
Comparing South African and Latin American Experience: Migration and Housing Mobility in Soweto

Given similar levels of economic development and inequality, it seems strange that more effort has not been made by South Africans to learn from the earlier experience of urbanisation in countries such as Brazil, Chile and Colombia. The paper shows that there are problems in drawing comparisons about migration and residential movement in Latin America and South Africa, but that there are growing signs of similarity. Some of these similarities were apparent even before the demise of apartheid, a policy that was never consistent and changed many times. The paper observes that South African migrants are becoming more like Latin Americans in demonstrating a growing attachment to the city. Many Sowetans' lives do not fit the model of the 'circular' African migrant; many have lived in Johannesburg for a long time. Semi-permanent residence means that residential movement within the city is increasingly similar to that typical in many Latin American cities. To judge from Latin American experience, the dismantling of formal apartheid is unlikely to reduce levels of social segregation in Johannesburg. Rather, class divisions will be just as effective as apartheid in guaranteeing residential segregation.
How great are the great ratios?

The balanced growth and neoclassical stochastic growth literatures imply stationarity of certain macroeconomic ‘great ratios’. Four such ratios are considered: consumption:output, investment:output, the real interest rate and real money supply growth, and evidence for ratio stationarity in the G7 countries is examined. Univariate unit root and stationarity tests are performed, and analysis of the cointegrating relations between output, consumption and investment is conducted. Almost no evidence of stationarity is found for the consumption:output and investment:output great ratios. Empirical evidence supports real money supply growth stationarity, but is more mixed for the real interest rate.
Competition, corporate governance, ownership structure and risk reporting

Purpose – This study aims to measure the extent of mandatory and voluntary risk reporting and investigate the impact of competition, corporate governance and ownership structure on risk reporting practices in annual reports of Egyptian companies. Design/methodology/approach – A number of theoretical perspectives including proprietary cost, agency theory, stakeholder theory, political cost, signalling theory and legitimacy theory are used to derive research hypotheses and identify the potential determinants of risk reporting practices in the annual reports of Egyptian companies. The annual reports of 105 listed companies for 2007 were examined to measure the extent of risk reporting and examine potential determinants of risk reporting. An unweighted disclosure index, based on Egyptian Accounting Standards (EAS) 25, has been used to measure the level of mandatory risk reporting while content analysis – sentence approach – is used in coding voluntary risk reporting. Multiple regression analysis is used in ev.
Effects of a Sativex-Like Combination of Phytocannabinoids on Disease Progression in R6/2 Mice, an Experimental Model of Huntington’s Disease

Several cannabinoids afforded neuroprotection in experimental models of Huntington’s disease (HD). We investigated whether a 1:1 combination of botanical extracts enriched in either ∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol (∆9-THC) or cannabidiol (CBD), which are the main constituents of the cannabis-based medicine Sativex®, is beneficial in R6/2 mice (a transgenic model of HD), as it was previously shown to have positive effects in neurotoxin-based models of HD. We recorded the progression of neurological deficits and the extent of striatal deterioration, using behavioral, in vivo imaging, and biochemical methods in R6/2 mice and their corresponding wild-type mice. The mice were daily treated, starting at 4 weeks after birth, with a Sativex-like combination of phytocannabinoids (equivalent to 3 mg/kg weight of pure CBD + ∆9-THC) or vehicle. R6/2 mice exhibited the characteristic deterioration in rotarod performance that initiated at 6 weeks and progressed up to 10 weeks, and elevated clasping behavior reflecting dystonia. Treatment with the Sativex-like combination of phytocannabinoids did not recover rotarod performance, but markedly attenuated clasping behavior. The in vivo positron emission tomography (PET) analysis of R6/2 animals at 10 weeks revealed a reduced metabolic activity in the basal ganglia, which was partially attenuated by treatment with the Sativex-like combination of phytocannabinoids. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H+-MRS) analysis of the ex vivo striatum of R6/2 mice at 12 weeks revealed changes in various prognostic markers reflecting events typically found in HD patients and animal models, such as energy failure, mitochondrial dysfunction, and excitotoxicity. Some of these changes (taurine/creatine, taurine/N-acetylaspartate, and N-acetylaspartate/choline ratios) were completely reversed by treatment with the Sativex-like combination of phytocannabinoids. A Sativex-like combination of phytocannabinoids administered to R6/2 mice at the onset of motor symptoms produced certain benefits on the progression of striatal deterioration in these mice, which supports the interest of this cannabinoid-based medicine for the treatment of disease progression in HD patients.
Effects of web site characteristics on customer loyalty in B2B e-commerce: evidence from Taiwan

This study proposes a model to explain how web site characteristics influence customer e-loyalty and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) via relationship quality (trust, satisfaction, and commitment) in business-to-business e-commerce. Three hundred and twelve online services users of the Market Intelligence Center in Taiwan were recruited and structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses. The result indicates that web site characteristics positively influence relationship quality. A follow-up post-analysis showed how five dimensions of the web site characteristics impacted relationship quality. In addition, both trust and satisfaction have a positive direct effect on e-loyalty, but not on positive WOM. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications of the findings were discussed.
Mind the Gap: Education Inequality at the Regional Level in Portugal, 1986-2005

Portugal stands as one of the most unequal countries in terms of income among the developed countries. Over the period 1980-2005, income inequality kept high, fostered mainly by a monotonic increase in earnings inequality. Given the close link between education and earnings, it is of major importance to study the distribution of education. This paper examines the distribution of education at the regional level in Portugal between 1986 and 2005. Our results indicate that education inequality decreased for the whole country as the average education level of the workforce rose, over the sample years. This finding does not apply at the regional level however, with several districts initially poor in terms of education exhibiting an increase in education inequality. The evidence also supports the existence of a Kuznets curve of education: as the average level of education rises, education inequality first increases, and, after reaching a peak at 5.13 years of schooling, starts declining.
Visualization of ATP Release in Pancreatic Acini in Response to Cholinergic Stimulus

The energy providing substrate ATP can be released from various cells and act extracellularly to regulate the same cells or neighboring cells. However, the pathway for ATP release and the eliciting physiological stimulus are unclear. Recently, we showed that ATP activates P2X and P2Y purinergic receptors on pancreatic ducts. Thus, it was relevant to ask whether the upstream acini could be the source of releasable ATP and what the stimulus might be. We used freshly prepared rat pancreatic acini and applied conventional luminescence measurements of luciferin/luciferase reaction. As a new application of this reaction in confocal microscopy, we monitored luciferin fluorescence as a sign of ATP release by single acini. In addition we used quinacrine to mark ATP stores, which were similar to those marked with fluorescent ATP, 2′-(or-3′)-O-(N-methylanthraniloyl) adenosine 5′-triphosphate, but only partially overlapping with those marked by acridine orange and LysoTracker Red. In functional studies we show that native pancreatic acini release ATP in response to various stimuli but most importantly to cholinergic stimulation, a very likely physiological stimulus in this epithelium. In a close vicinity of acini we detect about 9 μm ATP after cholinergic stimulation. Thus, ATP is poised as the paracrine mediator between pancreatic acini and ducts.
Stock and Option Grants with Performance-Based Vesting Provisions

We assemble a sample of 983 equity-based awards that include either an accelerated- or a contingent-vesting provision tied to firm performance and explore the frequency, contractual nature, usage, and implications of such awards. We find that performance-vesting (p-v) provisions specify meaningful performance hurdles and provide significant incentives for executives. The propensity to use p-v provisions is positively related to the arrival of a new CEO and the proportion of outsiders on the board of directors and negatively related to prior stock performance. Performance-vesting firms have significantly better subsequent operating performance than control firms. Abnormal accounting performance does not arise from earnings management or discernible differences in financial or investment policy. The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org. , Oxford University Press.
Piracy and Box Office Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload

In this paper we evaluate the heterogeneous effects of online copyright enforcement. We ask whether the unexpected shutdown of the popular file hosting platform Megaupload had a differential effect on box office revenues of wide-release vs. niche movies. Identification comes from a comparison of movies that were available on Megaupload to those that were not. We show that only movies that premiere in a relatively large number of theaters benefitted from the shutdown of Megaupload. The average effect, however, is negative. We provide suggestive evidence that this result is driven by information externalities. The idea is that online piracy acts as a mechanism to spread information about product characteristics across consumers with different valuations for the product. Our results question the effectiveness of blanket public anti-piracy policy, not only from a consumer perspective, but also from a producer perspective.
Do (Fe)Male Auditors Impair Audit Quality? Evidence from Going-Concern Opinions

Abstract Recent research indicates that there may be a relationship between the characteristics of the audit engagement partner and audit quality. In this paper, we examine the relationship between audit quality and the presence of a female or male audit engagement partner. We use the likelihood that an auditor issues a going-concern opinion (GCO), conditional on the client's financial situation, as an indicator of audit quality. Using a sample of 7105 financially distressed, private Belgian companies, we find that female auditors are, ceteris paribus, more likely to issue GCOs than male auditors. Our results also show that this effect is stronger when clients are either important (i.e. represent a material portion of the auditor's revenues) or high-risk (i.e. associated with increased uncertainties and risks). Collectively, these results indicate higher audit quality by female auditors.
Novice Art Teachers: Navigating Through the First Year

Four researchers collaborated on this multisite qualitative case study that examined 11 novice art teachers negotiating their way through their first year of teaching. Participants in three states were selected through a criterion method sampling strategy. The subjects were employed in rural, urban, and suburban public school districts. Researchers conducted 3-4 structured interviews using the same time line and interview protocols during the 2005-2006 academic year. Results indicate that, as novice art teachers assimilated into their respective school cultures, logistical and classroom management issues were of primary concern. Successes reported included a sense of community with their students, improving dialogue about art, and showcasing their art program.
Shifting Imperatives: An Integrative View of Resource Scarcity and Agency Reasons for Franchising

Alternative explanations of franchising offer contrasting predictions as to how the proportion of franchised outlets changes as franchisors age. We propose that two dominant views—resource–scarcity and agency theory—can be integrated by delineating when each is most relevant. Data from 102 franchisors over a 21–year period suggest that resource–scarcity considerations take precedence when franchisors are young, but that agency considerations prevail as franchisors age. Thus, the proportion franchised exhibits a cubic pattern as franchisors age—increasing rapidly at first, decreasing, and then increasing again. Future researchers and practitioners alike can benefit from understanding how the relative influences of resource and agency considerations shift over time.
Violent crime: a function of drug use or drug enforcement?

An assumption of many national drug control policies is the existence of a causal relationship between illegal drug use and violent crime. However, robust empirical findings supporting this relationship are scarce. Alternatively, there is extensive research, much of it in economics, which suggests that there may actually be a stronger causal relationship between drug enforcement/control/prohibition and violent crime than drug use and criminal violence. The paper presents some of the research pertaining to the relationship between illegal drugs and violent crime. In addition, a violent crime model is empirically tested using data from 24 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States to determine the nature and strength of this relationship.
Carboxypeptidase D (gp180), a Golgi-Resident Protein, Functions in the Attachment and Entry of Avian Hepatitis B Viruses

ABSTRACT Carboxypeptidase D (gp180), one of many candidate receptors proposed for hepatitis B viruses (HBVs), was examined and found to be the actual cellular receptor for avian HBVs. This conclusion was based on the following observations: (i) gp180 was the only host protein that bound with high affinity to the pre-S ectodomain of the large duck hepatitis B virus (DHBV) envelope protein, which is known to be essential for virus infection; (ii) a pre-S subdomain which determines physical binding to gp180 was found to coincide with a domain functionally defined in infection competition experiments as a receptor binding domain; (iii) soluble gp180, lacking the membrane anchor, efficiently inhibited DHBV infection; (iv) efficient interspecies gp180–pre-S interaction was limited to the natural hosts of avian hepadnaviruses; and (v) expression of gp180 in a heterologous hepatoma cell line mediated cellular attachment and subsequent internalization of fluorescently labeled viral particles into vesicular structures. However, gp180 expression did not render transfected heterologous cells permissive for productive infection, suggesting that a species-specific coreceptor is required for fusion to complete viral entry. In contrast to the case for known virus receptors, gp180 was not detected on the hepatocyte cell surface but was found to be concentrated in the Golgi apparatus, from where it functions by cycling to and from the plasma membrane.
MULTIWAVELENGTH OBSERVATIONS OF V2775 Ori, AN OUTBURSTING PROTOSTAR IN L 1641: EXPLORING THE EDGE OF THE FU ORIONIS REGIME

Individual outbursting young stars are important laboratories for studying the physics of episodic accretion and the extent to which this phenomenon can explain the luminosity distribution of protostars. We present new and archival data for V2775 Ori (HOPS 223), a protostar in the L 1641 region of the Orion molecular clouds that was discovered by Caratti o Garatti et al. to have recently undergone an order-of-magnitude increase in luminosity. Our near-infrared spectra of the source have strong blueshifted He i λ10830 absorption, strong H2O and CO absorption, and no H i emission, all typical of FU Orionis sources. With data from the Infrared Telescope Facility, the Two Micron All Sky Survey, the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Herschel, and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment that span from 1 to 70 μm pre-outburst and from 1 to 870 μm post-outburst, we estimate that the outburst began between 2005 April and 2007 March. We also model the pre- and post-outburst spectral energy distributions of the source, finding it to be in the late stages of accreting its envelope with a disk-to-star accretion rate that increased from ∼2 × 10−6 M☉ yr−1 to ∼10−5 M☉ yr−1 during the outburst. The post-outburst luminosity at the epoch of the FU Orionis-like near-IR spectra is 28 L☉, making V2775 Ori the least luminous documented FU Orionis outburster with a protostellar envelope. The existence of low-luminosity outbursts supports the notion that a range of episiodic accretion phenomena can partially explain the observed spread in protostellar luminosities.
Government Policy and Ownership of Equity Securities

Since World War II, direct stock ownership by households has largely been replaced by indirect stock ownership by financial institutions. We argue that tax policy is the driving force. Using long time-series from eight countries, we show that the fraction of household ownership decreases with measures of the tax benefits of holding stocks inside a pension plan. This finding is important for policy considerations on effective taxation and for financial economics research on the long-term effects of taxation on corporate finance and asset prices.
Mechanistic Insights into Replication Termination as Revealed by Investigations of the Reb1-Ter3 Complex of Schizosaccharomyces pombe

ABSTRACT Relatively little is known about the interaction of eukaryotic replication terminator proteins with the cognate termini and the replication termination mechanism. Here, we report a biochemical analysis of the interaction of the Reb1 terminator protein of Schizosaccharomyces pombe, which binds to the Ter3 site present in the nontranscribed spacers of ribosomal DNA, located in chromosome III. We show that Reb1 is a dimeric protein and that the N-terminal dimerization domain of the protein is dispensable for replication termination. Unlike its mammalian counterpart Ttf1, Reb1 did not need an accessory protein to bind to Ter3. The two myb/SANT domains and an adjacent, N-terminal 154-amino-acid-long segment (called the myb-associated domain) were both necessary and sufficient for optimal DNA binding in vitro and fork arrest in vivo. The protein and its binding site Ter3 were unable to arrest forks initiated in vivo from ars of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in the cell milieu of the latter despite the facts that the protein retained the proper affinity of binding, was located in vivo at the Ter site, and apparently was not displaced by the “sweepase” Rrm3. These observations suggest that replication fork arrest is not an intrinsic property of the Reb1-Ter3 complex.
Anal cytology and p16 immunostaining for screening anal intraepithelial neoplasia in HIV-positive and HIV-negative men who have sex with men: a cross-sectional study

Summary Akin to cervical cancer in sexually-active women, men who have sex with men (MSM) are predisposed to anal cancers, especially those with HIV co-infection. This cross-sectional study endeavored to assess the prevalence of anal dysplasia using Pap smears and p16 immunostaining amongst Indian MSM. A total of 31 consecutive HIV-positive and 34 HIV-negative MSM, from a cohort of sexually transmitted infection clinic attendees, underwent anal cytological evaluation with Pap smear and p16 staining. Chi square test and coefficient of correlation were used for comparison. Eighteen (27.7%) had abnormal anal cytology; increased in HIV-positive as compared to HIV-negative men (35% versus 20%, p = 0.180). Similarly, both low-grade (25.8% versus 17.6%) and high-grade lesions (8.3% versus 4.8%) were comparable in HIV-positive and HIV-negative group. Thirteen (20%) smears were p16-positive with a sensitivity and specificity for anal dysplasia of 72.3% and 100%, respectively. Anal cytology may be used to screen for anal dysplasia in MSM irrespective of HIV status. Furthermore, the addition of p16, with greater specificity for high-grade lesions, may improve diagnostic accuracy especially for high-grade lesions. A larger study to further corroborate these observations is warranted.