Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of genotype and medium composition on linseed (Linum usitatissimum) ovary culture

Breeding linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.) using haploid techniques allows breeders to develop new cultivars in a shorter time period. Many research groups successfully created new linseed genotypes through anther culture; however ovary culture has been the subject of only a few earlier studies. In the present study, the effect of genotype and growth regulators combination on callus induction and shoots regeneration in ovary culture of nine commercially important linseed cultivars was investigated. Ovaries were cultured on modified MS medium supplemented with three different combinations of plant growth regulators. Variable callogenic responses were expressed by all of the genotypes tested on different induction media. The results suggested that specific combination of growth regulators for callus induction must be designed for each genotype. Shoot regeneration from ovary derived callus is a critical phase of the whole gynogenetic process. Differences in adventitious shoot formation frequency among genotypes were demonstrated and four responsive genotypes have been selected. Ovary derived callus from cultivar ‘Mikael’ manifested the highest adventitious shoot formation frequency with a high number of shoots per explant. The optimum ratio of growth regulators for shoot regeneration was shown to depend on the genotype. Cultivars ‘Linola’, ‘Mikael’ and ‘Szaphir’ showed the highest shoot regeneration frequency when callus had originated on induction medium supplemented with 2 mg L−1 BAP and 2 mg L−1 NAA, while combination of 1 mg L−1 BAP and 2 mg L−1 IAA promoted shoot formation in ovary-derived callus of ‘Barbara’. The highest rate of shoots per explant has been obtained in second subculture.
Heaping in Reported Earnings: Evidence from Monthly Financial Reports of Taiwanese Firms

Heaping is a phenomenon in which reported numbers tend to appear in increments that are important for cultural or other reasons. This study reports that heaping is present in monthly earnings reports for publicly listed companies in Taiwan. We find that Taiwanese firms tend to report monthly earnings in increments of 5 in the first two places (digits) of the earnings numbers. Furthermore, we observe predominantly more zeros in the third through fifth places of monthly earnings numbers, suggesting that monthly earnings tend to be reported in increments of 10 in the first three, first four, and first five places. Reporting of monthly earnings in Taiwan is discretionary, and our findings suggest that managers of Taiwanese firms are susceptible to heuristic bias when reporting monthly earnings. These findings complement studies on heaping in U.S. financial markets documenting that managers and financial analysts tend to make earnings per share estimates that heap in increments of nickels.
Enterprise Bargaining and the Process of Negotiation: A Case Study

Although industrial relations in Australia are undergoing a significant transition towards an enterprise-based System, there has been little research into the man agement-union negotiation process. This paper describes how an employer and two unions reached an enterprise agreement, and examines the choice and inter action aspects of negotiation to explore why and how this was done. The case study demonstrates the characteristics of genuine negotiation and suggests that strong motivation to reach agreement and inherently competitive interaction can have results that meet the needs of the parties.
Promoting community-led responses to violence against immigrant and refugee women in metropolitan and regional Australia: The ASPIRE Project: (State of knowledge paper 7)

This state of knowledge paper examines a broad range of national and international research to present the current knowledge about family violence against immigrant and refugee women. While the paper identifies critical evidence on the topic, it acknowledges that much of the available literature has methodological issues, including incomplete and inconclusive prevalence data; small sample sizes; and conceptualising family violence in ways that are not recognised by immigrant and refugee communities. The paper finds: Overall immigrant and refugee report similar forms of family violence as women from non-immigrant backgrounds, however there are some differences in the types of violence experienced and the structural contexts where it takes place. The constraints produced by immigration policies are of significant concern, where women depend on perpetrators for economic security and residency rights. Many immigrant and refugee women are motivated to resolve family violence without ending relationships and breaking up families, for reasons including immigration concerns and family and community pressures. There is scant evidence that the increase in criminal justice responses to family violence, such as “mandatory arrest” and “pro-prosecution” approaches, are helpful for immigrant women, and may deter them from seeking assistance in crisis situations. The paper also identifies key gaps in literature on this issue, particularly in connection to the ways immigration policies, structural disadvantage and location interact with immigrant and refugee women’s experiences of family violence.
Biased Estimators and Unstable Betas

STUDIES [1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10] ESTIMATING AND ANALYZING the stability of security betas have theoretical and practical implications. The measurement of pure, or systematic, risk of securities is important in portfolio selection and in applications of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). Ex post measurements are the usual base for estimates of systematic risk, so conditions that produce biased estimates and/or unstable betas are noteworthy. This paper shows that simultaneous violations of two ordinary-least-squares assumptions can lead to estimates that are both biased and unstable, even when the true betas are stable. Specifically, below we demonstrate that a combination of autocorrelated residuals and security returns that lead measured market returns yield biased estimates of the risk measure of the CAPM. The results of Friend and Blume [9] and Black, Jensen and Scholes [1] are consistent with this estimation problem. Several empirical studies suggest that significant autocorrelation is common for most levels of differencing [4, 6, 7, 14] and Francis [8] found that with monthly differencing intervals, for shorter periods (two to three years of data), returns for some securities lead measured market returns. The estimation problem is likely for regression estimates that are based on a few monthly observations, since the results by Francis [8] suggest the problem may not occur for estimates based on monthly data for long periods. ' However, autocorrelation and security returns that lead market returns may combine to produce the unstable betas that Blume [2], Brenner and Smidt [3], Fabozzi and Francis [5], and Levy [10] have noted, because these studies used monthly data and short time periods to estimate betas. Below a model that explains the instability problem is developed and tests show that the relationships hypothesized in that model are statistically significant.
Effects of Price Shocks on Consumer Demand: Estimating the QUAIDS Demand System on Czech Household Budget Survey Data

The purpose of his paper is to describe consumer behavior in the Czech Republic by estimating a demand system in which demand depends on income and prices, but also on other factors such as age, size of the household, and position on the labor market. We combine Household Budget Survey data with information on prices from alternative sources between 2000 and 2008. The main focus of our analysis is to provide estimates of both own-and cross-price and income elasticities, which can be used among other things when analyzing the impact of exogenous price changes on consumer demand. Based on our estimates, the commodity bundles of food, energy, and health and bodycare are necessary goods, as their budget elasticity is positive and below one at the same time. Clothing and shoes, transportation and communication, and education and leisure are luxury goods, with income elasticity above one. The own-price elasticities are negative for all commodity groups, as expected. The cross elasticities seem to be smaller than the own elasticities.We found expenditure on energy and transportation and communication to be the most affected by changes in their own prices. We use our estimates to analyze the impact of regulated price changes on consumer demand and discuss the further potential use of our results.
Understanding and addressing barriers to implementation of environmental and policy interventions to support physical activity and healthy eating in rural communities.

PURPOSE Rural residents are at greater risk of obesity than urban and suburban residents. Failure to meet physical activity and healthy eating recommendations play a role. Emerging evidence shows the effectiveness of environmental and policy interventions to promote physical activity and healthy eating. Yet most of the evidence comes from urban and suburban communities. The objectives of this study were to (1) identify types of environmental and policy interventions being implemented in rural communities to promote physical activity or healthy eating, (2) identify barriers to the implementation of environmental or policy interventions, and (3) identify strategies rural communities have employed to overcome these barriers. METHODS Key informant interviews with public health professionals working in rural areas in the United States were conducted in 2010. A purposive sample included 15 practitioners engaged in planning, implementing, or evaluating environmental or policy interventions to promote physical activity or healthy eating. FINDINGS Our findings reveal that barriers in rural communities include cultural differences, population size, limited human capital, and difficulty demonstrating the connection between social and economic policy and health outcomes. Key informants identified a number of strategies to overcome these barriers such as developing broad-based partnerships and building on the existing infrastructure. CONCLUSION Recent evidence suggests that environmental and policy interventions have potential to promote physical activity and healthy eating at the population level. To realize positive outcomes, it is important to provide opportunities to implement these types of interventions and document their effectiveness in rural communities.
Public Support for European Integration

Public opinion is increasingly at the heart of both political and scholarly debates on European integration. This article reviews the large literature on public support for, and opposition to, European integration, focusing on conceptualization, causes, and consequences: What is public support for European integration? How can we explain variation in support and Euroskepticism? What are the consequences of public support for elections and policy making in the European Union? The review reveals that although a growing literature has sought to explain individual support for European integration, more work is needed to understand the ways in which opinions are shaped by their national context and how increasing public contestation of the European Union poses a challenge to, and an opportunity for, the future of the integration project.
Revenue Elasticities in Complex Income Tax Structures: An Application to Spain

This paper derives analytical expressions for the revenue elasticity of complex income tax systems, as applied to tax units and in aggregate. Among the complexities considered are the schedular nature of income tax systems and the role of central and regional governments, along with the existence of a range of intricate tax credits and eligible expenditures and deductions. Empirical estimates are obtained for the case of Spain using a cross-sectional data set, which enables a number of important ancillary elasticities (relating to allowances and tax credits, and different income sources) to be estimated. It is found that there is considerable variation among tax units in the revenue elasticity, with highly positively skewed distributions. The nature of the distributions varies among regions of Spain, and the aggregate elasticities for each region were found to display some variation associated with income distribution differences. The national aggregate is found to be around 1.3.
The predictability of normative organizational commitment for turnover in Chinese companies: a cultural perspective

While many researchers have shown that affective organizational commitment is the most valuable predicator for organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction, the value of normative organizational commitment in predicting working behaviour needs to be clarified. Additionally, indices of organizational outcomes used in prior studies were almost always the employees' perceptions of and attitudes towards organizations, rather than actual behaviour. The current research aims to investigate the impact of normative organizational commitment on an employee's turnover, rather than attitudes or perceptions. A total of 242 employees completed questionnaires including the Organizational Commitment Scale, the Organizational Satisfaction Scale, and the Idiocentrism and Allocentrism Scale, and reported the number of organizations they had worked for. Regression analysis revealed that the affective commitment was an important predicator for organizational satisfaction (p < .01) whereas the normative commitment was the most important predicator for employees' job-changing behaviour (p < .01). Idiocentrism and allocentrism had a slight moderating effect upon these relationships. Thus, the different dimensions of organizational commitments have different functions, and more attention should be paid to normative commitment than previously thought. These findings underline the importance of the normative commitment for predicating organizational behaviour, especially in collectivistic contexts. The implications for management are also discussed.
No evidence of posttreatment control after early initiation of antiretroviral therapy

As part of a retrospective analysis of 616 individuals followed from incident HIV infection for up to 18 years as part of the San Diego Primary Infection Cohort, we found 16 individuals who started antiretroviral therapy (ART) within the first 4 months of infection and subsequently interrupted ART after being virologically suppressed for a median of 1.75 years. No individual maintained sustained virologic control after interruption of ART, even when treatment was started during the earliest stages of HIV infection. Median time to HIV-RNA rebound after ART interruption was 0.9 months (range: 0.2–6.4 months).
Rapid partial regeneration of brain volume during the first 14 days of abstinence from alcohol.

BACKGROUND Chronic alcohol abuse leads to severe damage of the nervous system, including a change in cerebral metabolism and brain morphology. Global volume reductions of gray matter (GM) and white matter and an increase in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) occur after severe alcohol consumption, but abstinent alcoholics also demonstrate a brain volume recovery. The aim of this study was to investigate whether volumetric amelioration takes place already within the first 2 weeks of abstinence. METHODS All 49 alcohol-dependent patients included in this study were scanned within the first 24 hours of detoxification and after 2 weeks of supervised abstinence. Amelioration of volumetric brain loss in alcohol-dependent patients has been investigated, and brain volumes have been compared with 55 healthy control subjects using whole-brain segmentation and a voxel-based morphometric approach. RESULTS On the first day of abstinence, the global CSF volume was larger and the GM volume was smaller in alcohol-dependent patients compared with healthy controls. The largest clusters with significant volumetric differences were in the cingulate gyrus, precentral and middle frontal gyrus, cerebellum, and insula. Already after 2 weeks of abstinence, a significant albeit partial recovery of GM volume occurred in several brain regions. CONCLUSIONS Our results show that recovery of GM volume in alcohol-dependent patients starts within a few days after detoxification but varies between brain regions. This suggests that the general ability to recover and the rate as well as onset of the recovery diverges for different brain regions.
A Biodynamic Feedthrough Model Based on Neuromuscular Principles

A biodynamic feedthrough (BDFT) model is proposed that describes how vehicle accelerations feed through the human body, causing involuntary limb motions and so involuntary control inputs. BDFT dynamics strongly depend on limb dynamics, which can vary between persons (between-subject variability), but also within one person over time, e.g., due to the control task performed (within-subject variability). The proposed BDFT model is based on physical neuromuscular principles and is derived from an established admittance model-describing limb dynamics-which was extended to include control device dynamics and account for acceleration effects. The resulting BDFT model serves primarily the purpose of increasing the understanding of the relationship between neuromuscular admittance and biodynamic feedthrough. An added advantage of the proposed model is that its parameters can be estimated using a two-stage approach, making the parameter estimation more robust, as the procedure is largely based on the well documented procedure required for the admittance model. To estimate the parameter values of the BDFT model, data are used from an experiment in which both neuromuscular admittance and biodynamic feedthrough are measured. The quality of the BDFT model is evaluated in the frequency and time domain. Results provide strong evidence that the BDFT model and the proposed method of parameter estimation put forward in this paper allows for accurate BDFT modeling across different subjects (accounting for between-subject variability) and across control tasks (accounting for within-subject variability).
The distribution of rural female generalist physicians in the United States.

Female physicians are underrepresented in rural areas. What impact might the increasing proportion of women in medicine have on the rural physician shortage? To begin addressing this question, we present data describing the geographic distribution of female physicians in the United States. We examine the geographic distribution of all active U.S. allopathic physicians recorded in the October 1996 update of the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile. Percentages and numbers of female physicians by professional activity, specialty type, and geographic location are reported. Findings reveal there were fewer than 7,000 female allopathic physicians practicing in rural America in 1996. The proportion of generalist female physicians who practice in rural settings was significantly lower than the proportion who practice in urban locations. Although members of the most recent 10-year medical school graduation cohort of female generalist physicians were slightly more likely to practice in rural areas than members of earlier cohorts, female physicians remained significantly underrepresented in rural areas. States varied dramatically in rural female generalist underrepresentation. Should female generalists continue to be underrepresented in rural locations, the rural physician shortage will not be resolved quickly. Effective strategies to improve rural female physician placement and retention need to be identified and implemented to improve rural access to physician care.
Happiness as a Societal Value

Executive Overview There has been a tremendous growth in research related to happiness and well-being in recent years, and an influential stream of this research has concerned itself with international differences in happiness. Our goal here is to describe some of the reasons happiness research is important to organizational researchers for both theoretical and practical purposes. We also describe significant methodological issues that should be considered when assessing these relationships at the group level. Finally, we provide suggestions for future research that might productively integrate insights from the organizational literature into happiness studies.
CEO Domination, Growth Opportunities, and their Impact on Audit Fees

This study examines the relationship between a firm's internal monitoring mechanism and its impact on the audit fee. The first hypothesis investigates whether firms with independent corporate boards (chief executive officer and chairman being separate individuals) provide a more effective internal monitoring mechanism and are thus associated with lower control risk, resulting in lower audit effort and fees as compared to nonindependent, CEO-dominated boards. The second hypothesis examines whether the effectiveness of the internal monitoring mechanism provided by independent corporate boards is independent of the firms' growth opportunities. High-growth firms are by nature more difficult to monitor due to the existence of discretionary investments and measurement problems associated with future assets. Thus, the negative association between independent corporate boards and audit fees is expected to be affected by a firm's growth. Results using 650 observations from Hong Kong companies provide support for both hypotheses.
Influence network effectiveness in promoting couples’ HIV voluntary counseling and testing in Kigali, Rwanda

Objective:To identify predictors of promotion of couples’ HIV voluntary counseling and testing (CVCT) in Kigali, Rwanda. Design:Analysis of CVCT promotional agent [influential network leaders (INLs), influential network agents (INAs)], and couple/invitation-level predictors of CVCT uptake. Methods:Number of invitations and couples tested were evaluated by INL, INA, and couple/contextual factors. Multivariable logistic regression accounting for two-level clustering analyzed factors predictive of couples’ testing. Results:Twenty-six INLs recruited and mentored 118 INAs who delivered 24 991 invitations. 4513 couples sought CVCT services after invitation. INAs distributed an average of 212 invitations resulting in an average of 38 couples tested/agent. Characteristics predictive of CVCT in multivariate analyses included the invitee and INA being socially acquainted [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.4; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.2–1.6]; invitations delivered after public endorsement (aOR = 1.3; 95% CI 1.1–1.5); and presence of a mobile testing unit (aOR = 1.4; 95% CI 1.0–2.0). In stratified analyses, predictors significant among cohabiting couples included invitation delivery to the couple (aOR = 1.2; 95% CI 1.0–1.4) and in the home (aOR = 1.3; 95% CI 1.1–1.4), whereas among noncohabiting couples, predictors included invitations given by unemployed INAs (aOR = 1.7; 95% CI 1.1–2.7). Cohabiting couples with older men were more likely to test, whereas younger age was associated with testing among men in noncohabiting unions. Conclusions:Invitations distributed by influential people were successful in prompting couples to seek joint HIV testing, particularly if the invitation was given in the home to someone known to the INA and accompanied by a public endorsement of CVCT. Mobile units also increased the number of couples tested. Country-specific strategies to promote CVCT programs are needed to reduce HIV transmission among those at highest risk for HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.