Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Performance of Business Group Firms During Institutional Transition: A Longitudinal Study of Indian Firms

Question/Issue: Institutional and transaction costs theories highlight the idea that group affiliated firms outperform unaffiliated firms in emerging economies. The persistence of superior performance for group affiliated firms is, however, questioned by the fast and recent development of markets and institutions in these countries. In this article, we explore this link between firm performance and the evolution of institutional environment. Research Findings/Insights: The setting of the empirical investigation is India in the post-reform era (post 1990). We test for effects of business group affiliation on firm performance over a 17 year time period from 1990 to 2006. Our findings show that (i) the performance benefits of group affiliation erode with the evolution of the institutional environment; (ii) older affiliated firms are better able to cope with institutional transition than younger affiliated firms; (iii) service-sector affiliated firms are better able to cope with institutional transition than manufacturing-sector affiliated firms. Theoretical/Academic Implications: Our findings both support the institution - and transaction costs-based theory of business groups, and extends it by incorporating a dynamic and longitudinal component. They also demonstrate - in line with recent works - that the benefits of group membership differ for different types of member firms. Practitioner/Policy Implications: The article has implications for both managers and policy makers. Managers of business groups should timely adapt their strategy to the evolution of the institutional environment. Policy makers should, instead, devote attention to the consequences of their policies because they may undermine the efficiency of large national companies.
Determinants of Capital Structure: Evidence from the Global Renewable Energy Sector

The main purpose of this master thesis is to determine the factors that significantly influence the capital structure decisions in the global renewable energy sector during the period 2005-2013.This study is implemented through a quantitative approach, using a panel data model, in which leverage is the dependent variable, controlled by a set of firm-specific, industry-specific, tax-related and macroeconomic independent variables. Our regression analysis reveals that the determinants which are positively and significantly correlated with leverage are size,tangibility and median industry leverage. We find that profitability,market-to-book assets, SG&A expenses to revenues, dividends to assets, listed firms dummy and common law dummy are in negative and significant relation with leverage. Overall, the global financial crisis did not have a strong impact on the majority of determinants affecting capital structure decisions in the studied sector. Our results are consistent with the framework of the dynamic trade-off theory.
A 3-D Model of a Perennial Ryegrass Primary Cell Wall and Its Enzymatic Degradation

Abstract: We have developed a novel 3-D, agent-based model of cell-wall digestion to improve our understanding of ruminal cell-wall digestion. It offers a capability to study cell walls and their enzymatic modification, by providing a representation of cellulose microfibrils and non-cellulosic polysaccharides and by simulating their spatial and catalytic interactions with enzymes. One can vary cell-wall composition and the types and numbers of enzyme molecules, allowing the model to be applied to a range of systems where cell walls are degraded and to the modification of cell walls by endogenous enzymes. As a proof of principle, we have modelled the wall of a mesophyll cell from the leaf of perennial ryegrass and then simulated its enzymatic degradation. This is a primary, non-lignified cell wall and the model includes cellulose, hemicelluloses (glucuronoarabinoxylans, 1,3;1,4-β-glucans, and xyloglucans) and pectin. These polymers are represented at the level of constituent monosaccharides, and assembled to form a 3-D, meso-scale representation of the molecular structure of the cell wall. The composition of the cell wall can be parameterised to represent different walls in different cell types and taxa. The model can contain arbitrary combinations of different enzymes. It simulates their random diffusion through the polymer networks taking collisions into account, allowing steric hindrance from cell-wall polymers to be modelled. Steric considerations are included when target bonds are encountered, and breakdown products resulting from enzymatic activity are predicted.
Risk and Financing Cost of Small Firms

Based on a sample of 71,000 balance sheets of Austrian firms during 1989-1996 we can show that higher financing costs of small firms are a consequence of higher risk and larger debt burden of small firms in comparison with large firms. In the empirical analysis we partitioned the data in groups by firm size and used group summary statistics as observations in the ensuing regression analysis. Based on concepts from the strategic management literature, we applied a variation based risk measure. The results are similar across 13 industries and caution against seeing firm size as a direct factor explaining higher financing cost of small firms.
Affecting Others: Social Appraisal and Emotion Contagion in Everyday Decision Making

In a diary study of interpersonal affect transfer, 41 participants reported on decisions involving other people over 3 weeks. Reported anxiety and excitement were reliably related to the perceived anxiety and excitement of another person who was present during decision making. Risk and importance appraisals partially mediated effects of other's anxiety on own anxiety as predicted by social appraisal theory. However, other's emotion remained a significant independent predictor of own emotion after controlling for appraisals, supporting the additional impact of more direct forms of affect transfer such as emotion contagion. Significant affect-transfer effects remained even after controlling for participants' perceptions of the other's emotion in addition to all measured appraisals, confirming that affect transfer does not require explicit registration of someone else's feelings. This research provides some of the clearest evidence for the operation of both social appraisal and automatic affect transfer in everyday social life.
An Improved 9/12 Two-Phase E-Core Switched Reluctance Machine

There has always been a high demand for cost-efficient, reliable, low-noise, and durable low-maintenance motors, especially in high-quantity applications. A switched reluctance motor (SRM) can be a great candidate because of its rigid and simple construction. Among different SRMs, the two-phase type has the simple power converter, control unit, and geometry. In this paper, a short-flux two-phase SRM (2-phase SRM) known as E-Core 6/10 is modified to produce higher torque. The formulas for the number of rotor and stator poles have been amended, and in addition to alleviating some mechanical issues, the empty adjacent-pole spaces have been fully utilized. Comparisons are made based on simulations by 2-D finite-element analysis method and experimental results. It is obtained that for the same main dimensions, the average torque in the modified 6/10 two-phase SRM improves by about 35% that validates the new proposed motor.
Capital Market Development, Corporate Governance and the Credibility of Exchange Rate Pegs

We build a model of a fixed exchange rate regime with escape clauses and output persistence. In the spirit of the literature following the Asian crisis in 1997, persistence in our model arises from the inability of the domestic financial institutions to intermediate international credit. Our main message is that since persistence generates long run credibility effects that are sensitive to the prevailing policy preferences, the choice of an optimal exchange rate regime and the preference for a policy target should reflect the degree of development of the domestic financial institutions. If the domestic financial market suffers from credit constraints that generate persistence, the likelihood of self-fulfilling currency crisis may be reduced if the government assigns a greater weight on the output stabilisation objective. However, if financial market liberalisation successfully eliminates the credit constraints, liberalisation should be associated with a switch in policy preferences more in favour of exchange rate stability.
Variability in amino acid composition of alpine crustacean zooplankton and its relationship with nitrogen-15 fractionation

Amino acids (AAs) are critical biochemical compounds for living organisms. Because of the limited capacity for their de novo synthesis in many animals, the nutritional value of food largely depends on its AA composition relative to the animal's requirements. To improve present knowledge on AA variability in freshwater crustaceans, we studied the inter- and intraspecific variability in three contrasting species from an oligotrophic alpine lake (Daphnia pulicaria, cladocera; Cyclops abyssorum, cyclopoid copepod and Diaptomus cyaneus, calanoid copepod). Inter-species differences were larger than intraspecific variation, confirming a non-strict homeostasis in freshwater crustacean zooplankton. The intraspecific variability differed for each species: in Daphnia, it was mainly related with ontogenetic changes rather than reproduction; in Cyclops, both factors were equally important; and reproduction was the most relevant in Diaptomus. Reproduction changes were associated with serine and phenylalanine in the three species, while the AAs responsible for ontogenetic changes differed in each species. There were no gender differences in AA composition in any of the two copepod species. Free AAs formed a very low percentage of total AA pool (<2.7%). Taking advantage of the fact that Daphnia is the main prey for Cyclops in the lake studied, we further investigated to what extent the AA composition is related with Cyclops-Daphnia nitrogen stable isotope fractionation. Only those AAs that are both essential and are not trans-aminated during protein synthesis had a significant correlation with nitrogen stable isotope fractionation, supporting the hypothesis that an AA imbalance can be responsible for a variable nitrogen stable isotope fractionation.
Cardioprotective Effect of Renalase in 5/6 Nephrectomized Rats

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic renal disease. It has been recently postulated that the loss or reduced levels of renalase in patients with chronic renal disease are, at least in part, responsible for elevated plasma catecholamine levels, which leads to increased CVD. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to evaluate whether renalase administration might serve as a therapeutic drug, decreasing the severity of CVD in 5/6 nephrectomized (Nx) rats. The current study was conducted on 30 male Wistar albino rats divided into the following groups: group I: sham-operated rats that received phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) subcutaneously (s.c.) for 4 weeks following sham operation, group II: rats in which 5/6 Nx was done and then the rats received PBS daily s.c. for 4 weeks following 5/6 Nx, and group III: rats in which 5/6 Nx was done and then the rats received recombinant renalase daily s.c. for 4 weeks following 5/6 Nx. 5/6 nephrectomy resulted in a significant increase in mean arterial pressure, left ventricular (LV)/body weight ratio, LV hydroxyproline concentration, plasma creatinine, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and noradrenaline (NA) levels as well as significant decrease in LV papillary muscle developed tension in group II compared with the sham-operated group I. Administration of renalase to group III resulted in significant amelioration of all studied parameters with the exception of plasma creatinine and BUN which were not significantly different from nontreated group II. The results of the current study identify renalase as a new therapeutic modality that might modulate cardiac function and systemic blood pressure in renalase-deficient states like chronic renal disease.
A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Effect of Consumer Animosity on Purchase Involvement

The effects of consumer involvement on product choice have been studied extensively. However, to the knowledge of the researcher of this work, only a single pilot study has been conducted to examine whether consumers become more involved with a product choice when it is associated with a country towards which they harbor feelings of animosity (Abraham (2013)). Hence, the purpose of the present study is to examine whether the model proposed by Abraham may be extrapolated to other contexts (i.e. countries and product categories). This is a cross-cultural investigation conducted in the context of the Holocaust. 340 Israeli and British Jews took part in this experimental research. Structural equation modeling was employed to examine the relationship between consumer animosity and purchase involvement employing a model originally adapted from Klein et al.(1998). A positive and statistically significant relationship was observed between consumer animosity and purchase involvement. This work provides support to the research model proposed by Abraham and suggests that the model is both reliable and valid when employed in other contexts.
Entropy-Based Estimation of Client Preferences in Wireless Push Systems

Knowledge of the clients' preferences in communication systems enables adaptive, precise resource allocation in real-time. The present work introduces a novel scheme for estimating the clients' preferences in wireless data broadcast systems. The proposed scheme relies on the principle of maximum entropy, with statistical moments of the clients' overall waiting time serving as inputs, and the probability distribution of the broadcast data items being the output. Observations regarding periodic broadcast scheduling enabled the reduction of the convergence time well below that of related well-known approaches, in both noisy and noiseless environments. Simulation results showed that the technique can be used for accurate adaptation in minimal times, compared to the alternatives.
Closing the nutrient loop.

A pattern of hauling nutrients from rural to urban areas prevails in thousands of cities on the planet. This massive shifting of nutrients had diminished the vitality of many of the planet's most productive croplands, grazing lands, and fisheries, and it could accelerate more of the human population concentrates in the cities in the coming decades. It is also creating a dilemma of feeding the growing number of people who are far removed from their main sources of food, without unbalancing and collapsing the ecosystems on which those people ultimately depend. City dwelling people are adopting urban farming to support their feeding needs. The approach will not only feed the people but it can also play an important role in the municipal waste management. Governments are beginning to recognize that local food production may be an important component of food security; these include the US, Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada, where empty lots are turned into farmland that propagates vegetation.
One relative risk versus two odds ratios: implications for meta-analyses involving paired and unpaired binary data

Background There are debates on whether the conditional odds ratio or marginal odds ratio should be used in meta-analysis involving both paired and unpaired binary data. Although statistically sound, both approaches result in overall odds ratios which are known to be less meaningful to consumers. Purpose To show that while two odds ratios can be calculated in a pair-matched study, there is only one relative risk for such design, and to discuss the implications for meta-analysis involving both paired and unpaired binary data. Methods Algebra and an example, along with standard software for implementing relative risk regression models. Results The choice of relative risk as the effect measure in pair-matched design not only simplifies analysis and interpretation for individual studies, but makes mata-analysis involving both paired and unpaired studies straightforward. Pooling marginal odds ratios in a meta-analysis of diabetic retinopathy treatment resulted in a summarized odds ratio of 2.25 (95% CI 1.83–2.75), compared with that of 2.44 (95% CI 1.95–3.04) from pooling conditional odds ratios. In contrast, summarizing relative risks resulted in an overall effect measure of 1.09 (95% CI 1.06–1.11), implying the treatment reduces visual deterioration rate by 9%. Conclusion Relative risk may be the first consideration in measuring effect for analyzing prospective studies with binary outcomes.
External Financing and Cross-Sectional Returns: A Global Analysis

Net external financing predicts cross-sectional returns in a large sample of firms drawn from 38 non-U.S. countries. In contrast, the proportion of net equity issues in total net financing, often used to measure the extent of managerial market timing, does not. With a strong cross-firm association between net external financing and investment growth rates, this suggests that firms’ real investment behavior rather than their strategic switching between equity and debt financings contains information relevant to future returns. Despite its popularity in the literature, the behavioral market-timing effect is absent globally even among countries with weak investor protection, limited corporate disclosure, and less developed financial markets.
Exploring predictors of work competence in schizophrenia: The role of theory of mind

ABSTRACT In schizophrenia employment rate is dramatically low, also among patients receiving job support interventions. Recent studies showed a direct relationship between neurocognitive deficits and work functioning, as well as proving the benefits of combined neurocognitive and work interventions. Current evidence also supports a role of Theory of Mind (ToM), on work functioning. However, the effect of integrated rehabilitation programmes including a social cognitive training on job outcome is still less explored. The aim of this pilot study is to investigate the relationship between work competence and clinical factors, neurocognitive and ToM abilities, as well as to explore the effect of neurocognitive and ToM treatments combined with work therapy. Thirty-seven outpatients with schizophrenia were assigned to either a Computer-assisted Cognitive Remediation (CACR) plus work therapy group (WTG) or to CACR and WTG added to ToM Intervention, both followed by a job support programme. All patients were assessed for psychopathology, neurocognition, ToM and work functioning. Work outcome was significantly predicted by age at onset, neurocognitive abilities and the degree of ToM improvement after the specific intervention. This study provides preliminary insight on predictors of work competence in schizophrenia, highlighting the importance of ToM abilities.
Neural dysregulation of peripheral insulin action and blood pressure by brain endoplasmic reticulum stress

Chronic endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress was recently revealed to affect hypothalamic neuroendocrine pathways that regulate feeding and body weight. However, it remains unexplored whether brain ER stress could use a neural route to rapidly cause the peripheral disorders that underlie the development of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and the metabolic syndrome. Using a pharmacologic model that delivered ER stress inducer thapsigargin into the brain, this study demonstrated that a short-term brain ER stress over 3 d was sufficient to induce glucose intolerance, systemic and hepatic insulin resistance, and blood pressure (BP) increase. The collection of these changes was accompanied by elevated sympathetic tone and prevented by sympathetic suppression. Molecular studies revealed that acute induction of metabolic disorders via brain ER stress was abrogated by NF-κB inhibition in the hypothalamus. Therapeutic experiments further revealed that acute inhibition of brain ER stress with tauroursodeoxycholic acid (TUDCA) partially reversed obesity-associated metabolic and blood pressure disorders. In conclusion, ER stress in the brain represents a mediator of the sympathetic disorders that underlie the development of insulin resistance syndrome and T2D.
Dose-reducing H2 receptor antagonists in the presence of low glomerular filtration rate: a systematic review of the evidence.

BACKGROUND While it is recommended that H2 receptor antagonists (H2RAs) be dose reduced in the presence of low glomerular filtration rate (GFR), in practice such adjustments often do not occur. We reviewed the evidence for this recommendation. METHODS We searched multiple medical reference databases for relevant cohort studies and randomized clinical trials. Studies that enrolled five or more participants with low GFR who also received at least one unadjusted dose of an H2RA, and who were compared with controls were included. Data were abstracted on study and participant characteristics and drug-related adverse effects. Pharmacokinetic measures were pooled using meta-analysis. RESULTS A total of 22 articles were included, comprising 19 unique cohort studies. With declining GFR, there was a significant increase in the area under the curve (AUC) and elimination half-life (t(1/2)) of the serum drug concentration of H2RAs (P < 0.001). Compared with a GFR >80 ml/min/1.73 m2, drug AUC increased by 200% when the GFR was 30 ml/min/1.73 m2, and by 300% when the GFR was 20 ml/min/1.73 m2. In hospitalized patients with low GFR, reducing the interval dose of intravenous H2RA was associated with fewer adverse reactions. The gastro-protective effects of H2RAs were similar with reduced and unadjusted doses. CONCLUSIONS Reducing the dose of H2RAs in persons with low GFR will decrease drug expenditure and may prevent adverse events, without a change in efficacy. Quality assurance programmes, which improve deficiencies in H2RAs prescribing, appear justified.
Electrooptic mapping of near-field distributions in integrated microwave circuits

A field mapping system based on external electrooptic sampling has been developed in order to determine the vectorial components of the electric near-field distribution within microwave integrated circuits. The capabilities of the setup are demonstrated by two-dimensional measurements of normal and tangential fields in a coplanar microwave distribution network at frequencies up to 15 GHz. Results obtained on a functioning power-distribution network, as well as on two nonfunctioning networks, show the ability of the technique to interrogate internal circuit operation and to isolate faults through investigation of the field distributions.
Building employee engagement

The Acas Policy Discussion Papers series is designed to stimulate discussion and debate about key employment relations issues. 1 , was significant both in the depth and scope of its enquiry into employee engagement and in its reception. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Lord Mandelson, said that " this timely report sets out for the first time the evidence that underpins what we all know intuitively, which is that only organisations that truly engage and inspire their employees produce world class levels of innovation, productivity and performance ". This view was widely shared by many commentators.