Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Index of coexisting disease and old age as predictors of survival in hemodialysis patients Índice de doenças coexistentes e idade avançada como preditores de sobrevida em pacientes em diálise

Objective: To identify the factors that may influence survival in patients on chronic hemodialysis at a private hospital in Brazil. Methods: In this study, 99 patients in the CDE (Hemodialysis Unit of Hospital Albert Einstein) undergoing chronic hemodialysis for at least 3 months were evaluated retrospectively over the period from February 2000 to October 2006. The following patient characteristics were evaluated as possibly having an influence on survival: cause of chronic renal failure (with and without diabetes mellitus), sex, age, albumin levels, C-reactive protein (CRP), hemoglobin levels and ICED (Index of Coexisting Disease), an instrument to assess the presence and severity of comorbidities). Statistical analysis: Survival curves were calculated by the Kaplan-Meyer method and the differences between the curves were evaluated by a log-rank test. results: The mean age of patients was 63.14 ± 16.18 years, 34% of them were female and 40% of them presented diabetes mellitus as the cause of chronic renal failure. Mean albumin and hemoglobin levels on admission were 3.44 ± 0.58 g/dl and 10.55 ± 1.51 g/dl, respectively, and median CRP level was 9.55 g/dl. The distribution of patients by ICED was mild (25%), moderate (36%) and severe (38%). Thirty-three (33%) patients died, 24 (24%) underwent renal transplantation, 5 (5%) were transferred to another dialysis unit, 36 (36%) continued dialysis treatment and 1 (1%) recovered renal function. One-year survival was 80% and the median survival period was 42.34 months (95% CI: 28.06-54.84). In univariate analysis, the following variables were associated with survival of patients: CRP levels on admission (RR: 1.39; 95% CI: 1.041.85; p = 0.026), age (RR: 1.049; 95% CI: 1.017-1.082; p = 0.028) and the level of ICED 3 compared with the level of ICED 1 (RR: 9.25; 95% CI: 1.23-69.48; p = 0.03). In multivariate analysis, the following variables were associated with survival of patients: age (p = 0.0025) and severe ICED compared with mild ICED (p = 0.0341). Conclusion: The factors associated with survival of patients were advanced age and severity of comorbidities. The utilization of ICED enables stratifying the dialysis patients according to severity of their comorbidities and it is useful to identify the patients with a greater risk of death and hospitalization, as well as to aid in the forecast of and optimization of resources necessary for their treatment.
Reconstruction of sea surface temperature variations in the Arabian Sea over the last 23 kyr using organic proxies (TEX86 and U37K

well-established U37 0 based on long-chain unsaturated ketones synthesized by haptophyte algae and the newly proposed TEX86 derived from the membrane lipids of Crenarchaeota. Comparison of NIOP905 and 74KL core top data with present-day SST (0-10 m) values indicates that both proxies yield temperatures similar to local annual mean SSTs. However, TEX86 and U37 0 SST down-core records derived from the same cores differ in magnitude and phasing. The alkenone SST record of NIOP905 shows small changes in SST (� 0.5� C) over the last 23 kyr, while that of core 74KL shows a � 2� C increase from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (23- 19 calendar (cal) kyr B.P.) through the Holocene (the last 11.5 cal kyr B.P.) synchronous with changes in the Northern Hemisphere. In contrast, the TEX86 records of both cores show a large increase in SST from 22� -23� C in the LGM to 28� -30� C during Termination I (19-11.5 cal kyr B.P.), decreasing to present-day annual means of � 26� C. A cold phase between 14.5 and 12 cal kyr B.P. that may correspond to the Antarctic cold reversal is also observed. This implies a Southern Hemisphere control on tropical SST reconstructed by the TEX86, possibly related to SW monsoon. Our results suggest that the application of both TEX86 and U37 0 give different but complementary information on SST developments in past marine environments.
Species Richness of Galling Arthropods in Brisbane, Green Island, and Daintree National Park in Northeastern Australia

Wesurveyed the species richness of galling arthropods in northeastern Australia in October 2002 and found 38 sorts of arthropod gall. The gall midge species richness on Eucalyptus spp. may support the microenvironment hypothesis in which the galling habit is considered to be adaptive to dry areas. In Green Island, the species richness of galling arthropods was very poor, since the island is too small and far out at sea. The galling species richness in Daintree National Park was apparently higher than the data recorded by Price et al. (1998) in the places locating on lower latitudes, but was lower than the previous data in Iguassu and Amazon,Brazil. The present data indicates that the species richness of galling arthropods is relatively high both under humid conditions and under high plant species richness in tropical rainforests.
ANALISIS PENGARUH CASH POSITION, DEBT TO EQUITY RATIO, DAN RETURN ON ASSETS TERHADAP DIVIDEND PAYOUT RATIO PADA INDEKS BISNIS 27 DI BEI

Capital markets is a market for long-term financial instruments in the form of equity and debt maturities for over one year. In the capital market activity, investors have expectations of its investments, namely in the form of capital gains and dividends. Dividend payment affect policy for shareholders and companies that pay dividends. Dividend policy of the company is reflected on its dividend payout ratio is the percentage of profits distributed in the form of cash dividends. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that affect the Dividend Payout Ratio in Business Index 27 in the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). This study uses the fundamental factors that the company's financial ratios are represented by Cash Position (CP), liquidity ratios which is represented by the debt ratio Debt to Equity Ratio (DER), and profitability ratios are represented by Return on Assets (ROA) where CP, DER, ROA act as independent variables and the dependent variable is represented by Dividend Payout Ratio (DPR). The results showed that the cash position, Debt to Equity Ratio and Return on Assets simultaneously significant effect on the Dividend Payout Ratio. However, partial variable Cash position affect the dividend payout ratio, while the variable debt to equity ratio and return on
The nonculturable state of marine bacteria

Indigenous oligotrophic marine bacteria were counted and isolated by an extinction dilution method using 0.22 µm filtered in situ raw natural seawater (FRS) as a medium. The “nonculturable state” discussed here is tentatively defined as the physiological condition at which marine bacteria do not demonstrate visible signs of growth in nutrient rich media, such as colonies on agar plates and turbidity in liquid media. As usual, the viable count with VNSS (800 mg C/l) agar plates (3.0 x 10 2 CFU/ml) was three orders of magnitude lower than the direct microscopic (DC) counts (6.0 x 10 5 cells/ml) in pelagic seawater collected off Toyama Bay in Japan. However, the MPN values with FRS (2.8 x 10 5 cells/ml) were in the same range as the DC. The MPN with autoclaved FRS (FAS) were significantly lower than with FRS. This indicated that the marine bacteria in the pelagic seawater required heat-unstable substances in the ambient natural seawater. FRS and FAS were also used for the isolation of indigenous oligotrophic marine bacteria which were predominant in pelagic seawater. Ninety-five percent of 10 5 -times-diluted oligotrophic seawater samples (180 tubes) in FRS showed bacterial growth up to more than 10 5 cells/ml after one month incubation at 15 °C and all were nonculturable. These grown cells were transferred to freshly prepared FRS (second transfer). After two weeks, the second transferred bacteria grew up to 10 5 cells/ml again in more than 90% of the culture tubes, and 10% of them were culturable. The longer the storage in filtered natural seawater, the greater the increase in the number of transformed "culturable" marine isolates. Sphingomonas sp. strain RB2256 is also an indigenous marine isolate which used to be nonculturable but turned out to be culturable. This strain reverted to a nonculturable state when it went into stationary phase in marine minimum media with 50 µg/l of vitamin B12. The nonculturable state in RB2256 in the batch culture seems to be induced at high cell density.
Game-Theoretical Pragmatics

In his book Using Language (Clark 1996), Herb Clark makes a distinction between two approaches to the psychology of language. He favors what he calls an action approach to language use and distinguishes it from the more traditional product approach. The latter line of research focuses on linguistic structures, the former on processes. Clark’s distinction is also useful when considering languages of logic and logic-based approaches to natural language. While the language-as-product perspective may represent the mainstream of the logic-and-language line of research, the procedural aspects of language have been stressed over and over again by many researchers. (It is not a coincidence that a rather influential book on logical grammar, van Benthem 1991, is titled “Language in Action”.) This ranges from proof theoretic investigations into the algorithmic aspects of reasoning via the automata-theoretic reconstruction of generation and parsing of syntactic structures to the various brands of dynamic semantics that model the effects that the process of interpreting an expression has on the agent who does the interpreting. It is only natural to move one step further, from language-as-action to language-asinteraction. To get the full picture, the social aspects of language as a medium for communication have to be taken into account. If we further assume that the interacting agents are able to choose between different possible actions, and that they have preferences regarding the outcome of their interaction, we are entering the realm of game theory. The best worked-out implementation of such an approach is Game-theoretic semantics in the sense of Hintikka (1973). Here the process of interpreting a syntactically complex sentence S is modeled as a game. One can imagine the situation as a debate where one player, the proponent, tries to convince an invisible audience of the truth of S, while the opponent tries to disprove S. To take a simple example, consider the first-order sentence
Efficiency and Foreign Ownership in Banking: An International Comparison

This paper estimates cost and profit efficiency for Latin American and the Caribbean banking sectors. This study also conducts a comparative analysis of the performance of foreign and domestic banks operating in these counties. Using a model proposed by Battese and Coelli (1995), a common cost and profit frontiers with country-specific environmental variables have been estimated for a panel of 427 banking firms from sixteen countries. The empirical analysis reveals the importance of the environmental variables in explaining the efficiency differences among countries. The results show that profit efficiency levels are well below those corresponding to cost efficiency, implying that the most important inefficiency is on the revenue side. The results further indicate that on average foreign banks are more efficient than domestic banks.
College-School Dialogue and Mentoring in Teacher Training Programmes in Zimbabwe

Globally, mentoring has been recognized as one of the effective approaches in professional training and development of teachers. Most importantly, in Zimbabwe, mentoring has been largely adopted as one of the Teaching Practice strategies by teacher training colleges and schools. Good quality mentoring in schools makes an important contribution to developing professional skills especially to the student teachers (mentees) as this will ultimately ensure good quality learning experiences of learners. The purpose of this study was to establish the extent to which effective dialogue between colleges and primary schools can enhance effectiveness of the mentoring strategies in training teachers on teaching practice. Interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions were adopted in this study to establish the importance of dialogue between colleges and schools in strengthening the effectiveness of mentoring as a training strategy. The study concluded that lack of mutual sharing of ideas, skills, knowledge and information on mentoring between training colleges and schools have a negative impact on the quality of graduate teacher. The study recommends the development of communication strategies that break the barriers between colleges and schools so as to enhance the effectiveness of the mentoring approach.
The protective effect of Zataria multiflora Boiss. hydroalcoholic extract on TNF-α production, oxidative stress, and insulin level in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

Objective: Oxidative stress leads to reactive oxygen species (ROS) overproduction, which causes tissue injury in diabetic patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of Zataria multiflora extract on TNF-α, oxidative stress products, and insulin levels as well as lipid profile in diabetic rats. Materials and Methods: Rats were randomly divided into 6 groups of 10 animals. Diabetes was induced by a single injection of streptozotocin (STZ). Control and diabetic control rats orally received 1 mL/day of normal saline, whereas the other three groups received 250, 500 and 1000 mg/kg/day of Z. multiflora extract, and one non-diabetic group orally received 1000 mg/kg/day Z. multiflora extract, for 28 days. At the end of the treatment course, rats were anesthetized and their serum samples were analyzed for TNF-α, malondialdehyde (MDA), super oxide dismutase (SOD), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), lipid profile, total plasma protein, blood glucose, insulin, and liver enzymes levels. Results: Our results showed that cholesterol, LDL, TG, MDA and TNF-α levels decreased, but HDL, SOD, TAC, and total protein increased significantly in the diabetic group receiving 1000 mg/kg Z. multiflora compared to the diabetic control group (P<0.05). Moreover, blood glucose level was significantly reduced following administration of different concentrations of Z. multiflora. Liver sections of diabetic rats treated with Z. multiflora 1000 mg/kg showed normal hepatocytes and restoration of liver architecture. Conclusion: Z. multiflora extract ameliorated oxidative stress, TNF-α serum level, lipid abnormality, blood glucose, and liver damage in rats with diabetes mellitus.
A real options model for electricity capacity expansion

This paper proposes a real option capacity expansion model for power generation with several technologies that differ in operation and investment costs. The economy is assumed perfectly competitive and the instantaneous payoff accruing from the generation system is the instantaneous welfare defined as the usual sum of consumer and producer surplus. The computation of this welfare requires the solution of a multi- technology optimization problem and the obtained optimal function value is not additively separable in generation capacities, contrary to what is generally assumed in multi asset real option models to prove the optimality of a myopic behavior. Using the geometric Brownian motion as uncertainty driver we propose two regression models to approximate the instantaneous welfare. A first, additively separable approximation implies the optimality of myopia. The second approximation is non separable and hence forces to take myopic behavior as an assumption. Using myopia as an assumption, we propose a semi-analytic method which combines Monte Carlo simulations (used to compute the value of the marginal capacity) and analytical treatment (to solve an optimal stopping problem on a regression scheme).
Global coaching and evidence based coaching: Multiple perspectives operating in a process of pragmatic humanism

This article highlights relationships between the emerging practice of global coaching, described in Rosinski (2003a, 2006) and six leading ‘evidence based’ approaches to coaching (Stober & Grant, 2006). Attention is given to global coaching in the international business environment, positioning the treatment within an executive coaching framework. These connections clarify the concept of global coaching; and generate new insights, fresh angles, and empirical evidence to clarify and enhance the concept and practice of global coaching. The article emphasises themes and patterns essential for effective global coaching such as: openness, curiosity about other systems, comfort with complexity and interdependence, thriving on paradoxes, search for meaning, multiple perspectives, engagement with culture at multiple levels, and innovation at the edge of chaos. The article covers how global coaching and the cultural perspective interconnect with the following coaching perspectives; (1) Cognitive-behavioural, (2) Psychoanalytic, (3) Adult development, (4) Action learning, (5) Systemic, and (6) Positive psychology. A case study of an Australian-Guatemalan expatriate manager in Central America, drawn from a recent doctoral action research study (Abbott, 2006) is used to illustrate how the different perspectives intersect in practice and concludes that global coaching, which is both pragmatic and humanistic, may be an effective catalyst for bringing individual and organizational success as well as for promoting corporate citizenship.
Study of Delay Factors in Construction Projects

Construction Industry plays an important role in socio-economy development of any developing country. Construction time serves as a benchmark for assessing the performance of any project. Due to unexpected problems encountered during Conception, designing & construction phase often led to unwanted delay in project completion. A survey was conducted in Saudi Arabia to determine exact factors responsible for project delay. This was achieved by carrying a critical analysis of the literature and carrying out a questionnaires survey among consultants, project managers and engineers involved in construction projects and collecting their responses. The importance of Project owner's role, contractor related, Financing related, Materials related, Design documents have been cited as main delay factors. Causes of time and cost overruns comparison was done with various past researches done in Asia and Africa, which yielded 7 delay factors: Slowness and Lack of constraint; Incompetence; Design; Market and Estimate; Financial capability; Government; and Worker.
Cost Effective Heat Exchanger Network Design with Mixed Materials of Construction

This paper presents a simple methodology for cost estimation of a near optimal heat exchanger network, which comprises mixed materials of construction. In traditional pinch technology and mathematical programming it is usually assumed that all heat exchangers in a network obey a single cost model. This implies that all heat exchangers in a network are of the same type and use the same materials of construction (an assumption that is unwarranted). The method introduced in this article enables the designer to decomposes the total cost of a heat exchanger into two elements, namely cost of the tubes and cost of the shell, thereby predict a more reliable cost for the network. By subsequent use of the binary variables and evaluation of the physical conditions of the streams, one can assign the streams to pass either through shell or tubes. Whereby, shell and tubes can be of different materials and therefore different cost models can be applied. Another advantage of the approach is that the pressure drop in each side of the exchanger (shell or tubes) can be assessed leading to more accurate evaluation of corresponding heat transfer coefficient for each individual stream. Finally an objective function (total cost) can be defined based on mixed materials of construction and different values of heat transfer coefficients. The proposed model has been utilized in three different case studies and the results are compared with those of a commercially available software (SUPERTARGET). The comparison shows reductions of more than 17% and 14% in total annual costs in the two cases, and 2.5% reduction in third, confirming the fact that more accurate evaluation of heat transfer coefficient for each individual stream can lead to better network design.
Financial innovation and economic growth: evidence from Zimbabwe

The role of financial innovation on economic growth in developing countries has not been actively pursued. Stemming from the finance-growth nexus, literature suggests that financial innovation has a relationship to growth, which could be either positive or negative. Implicitly, financial innovation has a good and a dark side that affects growth. This study establishes the causal relationship between financial innovation and economic growth in Zimbabwe empirically. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds tests and Granger causality tests on financial time series data of Zimbabwe for the period 1980-2013, the study finds that financial innovation has a relationship to economic growth that varies depending on the variable used to measure financial innovation. A long-run, growth-driven financial innovationis confirmed, with causality running from economic growth to financial innovation. Bi-directional causality also exists after conditionally netting-off financial development. Policies that enhance economic growth inter-twined with financial innovation are essential, if developing countries, such as Zimbabwe, aim to maximize economic development.
The impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption on Foreign Direct Investments (FDI): Evidence from Africa and implications for managers of education

Foreign direct investments have been shown by previous studies to promote economic growth and development especially in the emerging markets through human capital development and technology transfer. In this study, adopting the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is considered a way of attracting FDI, improving comparability in financial reporting, reducing information asymmetries and cost for foreign investors. The effect of regulatory quality is found as an incentive for quality of accounting information and compliance to the IFRS by firms. Using the fixed effect model for the regression and a sample of 48 countries in Africa, we find that adoption of IFRS has a positive effect on the flow of FDIs. We also established that regulatory quality is an incentive for compliance to IFRS standards. The results which are very necessary for managers of education (teachers of accounting education), show that IFRS adoption by African countries will boost the flow of FDIs by increasing comparability. Improving regulatory quality will further strengthen the effect of IFRS adoption on the flow of FDI as it also enhances transparency. Key words: Foreign Direct Investments; International Financial Reporting Standards; Information Asymmetry; Education Managers, Africa
Drying of green bean and okra under solar energy

In this study, sun drying behaviours of green bean and okra were investigated. Drying experiments were conducted in Iskenderun-Hatay, Turkey. The drying study showed that the times taken for drying of green bean and okra from the initial moisture contents of 89.5% and 88.7% (w.b.) to final moisture content of around 15±0.5% (w.b.) were 60 and 100 h in open sun drying, respectively. The constant rate period is absent in drying curves. The drying process took place in the falling rate period. The drying data were fitted to thirteen thin-layer drying models. The performance of these models was investigated by comparing the determination of coefficient (R2), reduced chi-square (c2) and root mean square error (RMSE) between the observed and predicted moisture ratios. Estimations by Approximation of diffusion (for green bean) and Midilli et al. models (for okra) were in good agreement with the experimental data obtained.