Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimental evidence that high levels of inbreeding depress sperm competitiveness

The effects of inbreeding on sperm quantity and quality are among the most dramatic examples of inbreeding depression. The extent to which inbreeding depression results in decreased fertilization success of a male’s sperm, however, remains largely unknown. This task is made more difficult by the fact that other factors, such as cryptic female choice, male sperm allocation and mating order, can also drive patterns of paternity. Here, we use artificial insemination to eliminate these extraneous sources of variation and to measure the effects of inbreeding on the competitiveness of a male’s sperm. We simultaneously inseminated female guppies (Poecilia reticulata) with equal amounts of sperm from an outbred (f = 0) male and either a highly (f = 0.59) or a moderately inbred (f = 0.25) male. Highly inbred males sired significantly fewer offspring than outbred males, but share of paternity did not differ between moderately inbred and outbred males. These findings therefore confirm that severe inbreeding can impair the competitiveness of sperm, but suggest that in the focal population inbreeding at order of a brother–sister mating does not reduce a male’s sperm competitiveness.
Capsulation and gene copy number at the cap locus of Haemophilus influenzae type b

Although more than 98% of natural isolates of Haemophilus influenzae type b carry a duplication of 17 kilobases (kb) of DNA at the chromosomal capsulation locus, only one copy is required for capsulation. In one laboratory-derived and two clinical type b strains, the capsulation locus had a single copy of this 17-kb segment, together with 1.3 kb of DNA identified as lying between the repeats of the duplicated locus. This 1.3 kb appears to be crucial for capsule production, since strains lacking it, although retaining a 17-kb segment, were capsule deficient. On comparing capsule polysaccharide production by these three type b strains with that by a prototypic type b strain with a duplicated locus, a gene dosage effect was demonstrated, with a halving of detectable polysaccharide in the single-copy strains. Despite this reduction in polysaccharide, these strains retained virulence potential as evidenced by bacteremia and meningitis in infant rats. As well as subserving augmented capsule polysaccharide production, a duplicated configuration of the type b cap locus endows strains with genetic instability not found in capsulate single-copy variants. We speculate that a survival advantage might be conferred on strains carrying a duplication at this locus as a result of gene dosage, the genetic instability of the locus, or both.
Effect of Maxillary Sinus Membrane Perforation on Implant Survival Rate: A Retrospective Study.

PURPOSE The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate implant survival rates (ISRs) for implants placed in grafted sinuses where a membrane perforation occurred during augmentation using exclusively anorganic bovine bone (ABB) by means of clinical and radiographic examinations. Histologic information of five biopsy specimens taken from large membrane perforations is also presented. MATERIALS AND METHODS Consecutive patients who underwent sinus augmentation procedures at a private practice Dental Institute between 2004 and 2013 were collected from a computer database. The following profiles were selected for data analysis: computed tomography prior to treatment; perforated membrane information according to size: not perforated, small (≤ 5 mm), medium (> 5 and < 10 mm), or large (≥ 10 mm); sinuses grafted exclusively with ABB and lateral window covered with a collagen membrane (CM); and implant survival after at least 2 years of functional loading placed in augmented sinuses. Implants were considered survivals in the absence of infection, mobility, or pain. RESULTS The sample in this retrospective study comprised 531 patients; 214 required bilateral sinus augmentation, and 317 required unilateral sinus augmentation (total = 745 sinuses). A total of 1,588 implants were placed. From 745 augmented sinuses, 237 (31.8%; 523 implants) were perforated during the procedure. Among these, 48 perforations were large (20.2%; 107 implants), 67 (28.3%; 150 implants) were medium, and 122 were small (51.5%; 266 implants). Of 523 implants placed in perforated sinuses, 15 were lost (ISR = 97.1%). Comparison of the ISRs for small (97.7%), medium (97.3%), and large (95.3%) perforations with 1,065 implants placed in nonperforated sinuses (ISR = 97.7%) was not statistically significant. The histomorphometric analysis of the five biopsy specimens showed 24.52% ± 6.99% of new bone, 24.32% ± 6.42% of marrow space, and 51.2% ± 3.75% of the remaining ABB. CONCLUSION The difference in ISR for implants placed in perforated and nonperforated sinuses was not statistically significant. Within the limits of the histologic data, histomorphometric results with 24.52% ± 6.99% of new bone formation in sinuses with large perforations showed similar bone formation compatible with nonperforated sinuses described in the literature. The authors attributed the high ISR shown in perforated sinuses in this study to the proper management of the perforations.
International Differences in the Timeliness, Conservatism and Classification of Earnings

In this study we compare the timeliness and conservatism of reported earnings across the U.S. and U.K. GAAP regimes. We present a theoretical model of the differential speeds of recognition of good news and bad news. This suggests informative and relatively robust ways of measuring dimensions of conservatism in income recognition. The analysis shows the importance of distinguishing between delays in reporting good news and early recognition of bad news, when comparing conservatism across GAAP regimes. Empirical results suggest that the treatment of extraordinary items is important in assessing relative conservatism. The degree of conservatism of the U.S. GAAP regime appears significantly greater than for the U.K. GAAP regime, when estimated using ordinary earnings. However, when conservatism is estimated using earnings after extraordinary items we find that the gap is far less pronounced, and may even disappear. Our results further indicate that the main feature distinguishing the timeliness of earnings between the U.S. and U.K. is not the relative speed of recognition of bad news, but the much slower recognition of good news under U.S. GAAP.
Bankruptcy prediction using a discrete-time duration model incorporating temporal and macroeconomic dependencies

The purpose of this paper is to build an alternative method of bankruptcy prediction that accounts for some deficiencies in previous approaches that resulted in poor out-of-sample performances. Most of the traditional approaches suffer from restrictive presumptions and structural limitations and fail to reflect the panel properties of financial statements and|or the common macroeconomic influence. Extending the work of Shumway (2001), we present a duration model with time-varying covariates and a baseline hazard function incorporating macroeconomic dependencies. Using the proposed model, we investigate how the hazard rates of listed companies in the Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) are affected by changes in the macroeconomic environment and by time-varying covariate vectors that show unique financial characteristics of each company. We also investigate out-of-sample forecasting performances of the suggested model and demonstrate improvements produced by allowing temporal and macroeconomic dependencies. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Agri-environment policy in an era of lower government expenditure: CAP reform and conservation payments

Governments are seeking to reduce levels of expenditure. In the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) it will be important to deliver the environmental objectives of agricultural policy more cost-effectively. This paper reviews the different agri-environmental mechanisms and their relative scale and performance. Likely reductions in the Single Farm Payment (SFP) imply a need to shift resources from payments for the reduction of intensity towards payments to prevent abandonment. More cost-effective policies may be achieved by shifting funds from the SFP into more targeted mechanisms, changing standards currently achieved by cross-compliance into regulations, and increasing targeting and competitive allocation mechanisms.
Risk Management Issues in Large-scale Sporting Events: a Stakeholder Perspective

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to identify the risk management issues in large-scale sporting events from the perspective of the organizing committee members and stakeholders. A comparative case study analysis of two major Canadian sporting events (the International Skating Union 2006 World Figure Skating Championships and the U-20 Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup Canada 2007) was conducted through analysis of archival material and interviews. A revised definition of risk management emerged from the data: “risk management is a proactive process that involves assessing all possible risks to the events and its stakeholders by strategically anticipating, preventing, minimizing, and planning responses to mitigate those identified risks”. Fifteen risk issue categories were also identified by the various stakeholder groups. The categories were: environment, financial, human resources, infrastructure, interdependence, legacy, media, operations, organizing, participation, political, relationships, sport, threats, and visibility.
Effects of Package Holiday Information Presentation on Destination Choice

Holiday travel packaging is an important tool for destination marketing. However, little is known on how presentation of travel package information influences tourists' decisions. This article reports on an experiment that tested whether package information and package heading can influence destination choice. It is hypothesized that destinations with a less favorable image will benefit from being presented in a format with more attribute information and with a price heading. The hypotheses were tested with 200 university students and 200 United Kingdom residents. They were asked to evaluate experimentally designed beach package holidays to Mediterranean destinations. Results show that effects of package presentation format do not differ between less favorable and more favorable image destinations. Variations in package presentation format show similar effects regardless of the destination presented. The student sample shows a higher intention to visit when price is used as the package heading. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.
Specialized Neural Systems Underlying Representations of Sequential Movements

The ease by which movements are combined into skilled actions depends on many factors, including the complexity of movement sequences. Complexity can be defined by the surface structure of a sequence, including motoric properties such as the types of effectors, and by the abstract or sequence-specific structure, which is apparent in the relations amongst movements, such as repetitions. It is not known whether different neural systems support the cognitive and the sensorimotor processes underlying different structural properties of sequential actions. We investigated this question using whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in healthy adults as they performed sequences of five key presses involving up to three fingers. The structure of sequences was defined by two factors that independently lengthen the time to plan sequences before movement: the number of different fingers (1-3; surface structure) and the number of finger transitions (0-4; sequence-specific structure). The results showed that systems involved in visual processing (extrastriate cortex) and the preparation of sensory aspects of movement (rostral inferior parietal and ventral premotor cortex (PMv)) correlated with both properties of sequence structure. The number of different fingers positively correlated with activation intensity in the cerebellum and superior parietal cortex (anterior), systems associated with sensorimotor, and kinematic representations of movement, respectively. The number of finger transitions correlated with activation in systems previously associated with sequence-specific processing, including the inferior parietal and the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd), and in interconnecting superior temporal-middle frontal gyrus networks. Different patterns of activation in the left and right inferior parietal cortex were associated with different sequences, consistent with the speculation that sequences are encoded using different mnemonics, depending on the sequence-specific structure. In contrast, PMd activation correlated positively with increases in the number of transitions, consistent with the role of this area in the retrieval or preparation of abstract action plans. These findings suggest that the surface and the sequence-specific structure of sequential movements can be distinguished by distinct distributed systems that support their underlying mental operations.
Consumer responses to corporate offshoring practices

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer responses to company communication of offshoring strategies and tries to discover which psychological mechanisms govern these responses. To do these, the authors examine offshoring strategy communication from the point of view of Regulatory Focus Theory. Design/methodology/approach – The authors tested the hypotheses in two different studies. Study 1 examines the associations between company offshoring motives and consumer’s prevention or promotion inferences about the company’s practices. Study 2 tests if and how the interaction effect between respondents’ self-regulatory focus and the company offshoring motive affects respondents’ attitude toward the offshoring company. Findings – The study demonstrated that each of three offshoring motives activates unique self-regulatory orientations (promotion or prevention focus) in consumers, and regulatory fit positively affects consumer attitudes toward the offshoring company. Practical implications –.
Top‐down change in a public sector bank: lessons from employees' lived‐in experiences

Purpose – This paper aims to examine a case study of an Indian public sector bank (PSB) to better understand the employee's experience of the change, specifically top‐down culture change.Design/methodology/approach – This study uses a qualitative case study approach to describe and extract lessons from a top‐down change in an Indian PSB. The data were collected twice to understand the extent of change with a gap of two years.Findings – The study indicates that selective change has occurred as a response to the external environment that affected organizational mission and strategy. The study findings indicate that there is a significant realignment of the strategy, structure, systems, and technology along with the level of customer satisfaction. Efforts to realign employees' experiences and attitudes, however, leave a lot to be desired.Research limitations/implications – The study is based on single case study.Practical implications – Lessons on how to implement change in the public sector are discussed. T.
Trust and confidence in financial services: a strategic challenge

The purpose of the paper is to offer an analytical framework for the Treating Customers Fairly initiative of the Financial Services Authority. The TCF agenda is set in the context of theory of consumer behaviour. The central theme is that retail financial transactions are fundamentally different from most other economic transactions made by retail consumers and to an extent that means the consumer needs to have Trust and Confidence in the products purchased and the suppliers of financial products and services. A distinction is made between different types of products and also between the degree of need for Trust and the extent to which the consumer actually does have Trust and Confidence when making decisions. The inculcation of Trust and Confidence needs to become a central strategic issue in financial firms and can be addressed by initiatives of collective self regulation rather than more prescriptive regulation.
A low-cost, near-real-time two-UAS-based UWB emitter monitoring system

In this paper, a low-cost UEM system is presented. The coarse and then fine frequency scanning guarantee the near-real-time detection and emitter classification, the hierarchical direction of arrival (DOA) estimation maintains the low computational complexity, and the fusion of DOAs and the terrain map obtains the necessary localization accuracy. The conducted simulation verified that the proposed system can localize emitters within 100 m of its real location in an area with a 2,000-m-radius geometrical control. Future work includes flight tests with the UEM system to verify the localization accuracy.
Realising Free Health Care for the Poor in Indonesia: The Politics of Illegal Fees

Abstract This paper examines why illegal fees persist at public health facilities in Indonesia. It suggests that their persistence reflects the political dominance of a coalition of interests consisting of politico-bureaucratic elements in the state apparatus and major business groups and the implications this has had for government spending on the health sector and programmes aimedat providing free health care to the poor in particular among other determinants of the level of illegal fees. Accordingly, the paper concludes that eliminating illegal fees from Indonesia's public health system requires not simply better funding of public health facilities and better change management, as much of the comparative health economics literature suggests – although these are certainly part of the solution – but also efforts to empower the poor and their allies vis-à-vis this coalition of interests.
Correlation of serum IGF‐I and IGFBP‐1 and ‐3 to cardiovascular risk indicators and early carotid atherosclerosis in healthy middle‐aged men

Objectives IGF‐I, IGFBP‐1 and IGFBP‐3 are putative mediators in cardiovascular disease. The present study examined (i) the correlations of circulating IGF‐I, IGFBP‐1 and IGFBP‐3 to established cardiovascular risk factors and signs of early atherosclerosis as reflected by ultrasound measurement of common carotid intima–media thickness (IMT), and (ii) whether serum concentrations of these analytes are modulated during alimentary lipaemia.
Collective Technology Learning Between Transnational Corporations and Local Business Partners: The Case of West Sweden

Unique firm-level data from 287 majority-owned foreign affiliates (MOFAs) located in West Sweden are used to analyse the extent in which transnational corporations (TNCs) in a developed host country have established technological linkages, leading to collective technology learning where both TNCs and their local business partners benefit. The findings indicate that local business partners have established substantial levels of organised technological cooperation, not only with manufacturing MOFAs but also with wholesale MOFAs supplying industrial products. This seems to result in collective technology learning where both MOFAs and business partners in Sweden, especially customers, earn advantages. In the case of manufacturing MOFAs, local business partners in West Sweden seem to be important as cooperative partners. By using a multiple logistic regression to analyse key determinants, it was found that the size of MOFAs positively affected the establishment of technological linkages to business partners in Sweden, among both manufacturing MOFAs and sales MOFAs. A positive correlation with linkage formation was also found among manufacturing MOFAs regarding both increasing age and the extent in which they operate within competitive Swedish industry clusters.
Caldesmon phosphorylation is catalyzed by two kinases in permeabilized and intact vascular smooth muscle

Smooth muscle contraction is initiated by myosin light chain (MLC) phosphorylation catalyzed by the Ca2+ dependent MLC kinase. However, many aspects of smooth muscle contraction cannot be accounted for by MLC phosphorylation. One hypothesis that has received experimental support involves the thin filament protein caldesmon. Caldesmon inhibits myosin ATPase activity; phosphorylation of caldesmon relieves this inhibitory effect. The primary candidates for catalysis of caldesmon phosphorylation are the p42/p44 ERK MAP kinases. However, we and others have shown that inhibition of the ERK MAP kinases has no effect on many smooth muscles. The goal of this study was to determine if evidence for a second endogenous caldesmon kinase may be obtained. We used Triton X‐100 skinned and intact tissues of the swine carotid artery to address this goal. Caldesmon phosphorylation was evident in resting and Ca2+ stimulated Triton X‐100 skinned fibers. Ca2+‐dependent caldesmon phosphorylation was partially sensitive to the ERK MAP kinase inhibitor PD98059, whereas all caldesmon phosphorylation was sensitive to the general kinase inhibitor, staurosporine. Histamine increased caldesmon phosphorylation levels in intact swine carotid artery, which was sensitive to both PD98059 and staurosporine. Histamine increased ERK MAP kinase activity, which was reversed by PD98059, staurosporine, and EGTA. Histamine‐induced contractions were inhibited by staurosporine but not by PD98059. We interpret these results to suggest that although ERK MAP kinases catalyze caldesmon phosphorylation, a second staurosporine sensitive kinase is also important in caldesmon phosphorylation and it is this pathway that may be more important in contractile regulation. J. Cell. Physiol. 198: 461–469, 2004© 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Structure Regulation, Price Structure, Cross-Subsidization and Marginal Cost of Public Funds

In this paper we study the social desirability of the structure regulation which transforms a single multi-product monopoly into an oligopoly where the industry produces differentiated complementary goods. In particular, we pay special attention to the cross-subsidization which will be eliminated by the structure regulation. It is established that if horizontal externalities between the goods are not too strong, then the monopoly has a socially optimal price structure. In contrast, the oligopoly always distorts the price structure. We also demonstrate that the monopoly will cross-subsidize a product if and only if this product has a relatively low absolute advantage.
The Effects of Coworker and Perceived Organizational Support on Hotel Employee Outcomes

The purpose of this study is to develop and test a research model that examines job embeddedness as a moderator of the effects of coworker and perceived organizational support on turnover intentions and service recovery performance. The model also tests the impacts of coworker and perceived organizational support on the aforementioned job outcomes. Data were gathered from a sample of full-time frontline hotel employees with a 1-month time lag and their immediate supervisors in Cameroon. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analysis reveal that job embeddedness moderates the relationship between coworker support and turnover intentions. The results also show that job embeddedness acts as a moderator of the effects of perceived organizational support on turnover intentions and service recovery performance. Consistent with the study predictions, coworker support alleviates turnover intentions, whereas perceived organizational support increases service recovery performance. Implications of the empirical findings are discussed and future research directions are offered.