Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Top Management Ethical Behavior on Job Satisfaction: Evidence from Pakistan

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of top management ethical behavior on job satisfaction of banks employees in Pakistan. Data was collected through questionnaire survey from 120 employees Random sampling method was used so that to mitigates the biasness and obtain fair results and response rate was 71%. Results of the study show significant impact on job satisfaction. Practical implications of study in banking industry is that top management act as a role model to promote ethical behavior in the organization that is definitely have the impact on employee ethical behavior and it will cause to increase the satisfaction.
Helium-like titanium x-ray spectrum as a probe of QED computation

We discuss the first absolute energy measurements of the intercombination and forbidden transitions ( x , y , z ? > ) in trapped Ti20+ ions to 15 parts per million accuracy. We present new measurements on helium-like titanium, in which the orbital radius is reduced and QED terms are magnified by the increased nuclear charge. The measured transition energies are higher than predicted.
Nutrient effects in consumer demand systems: evidence from panel data

Abstract This papers aims to analyse the demand for main food groups in Spain. Apart from the traditional economic factors (prices and income), our theoretical framework incorporates the nutrient composition of food into a demand model in the form of food attributes, as a proxy to take into account the rising consumer concern about the relationship between diet and health. A CBS functional form is chosen for the empirical model, which is estimated using a complete panel data set. Ten broad categories, nine nutrients and the most relevant socio-economic variables have been considered. Finally, after employing an appropriate selection strategy, the chosen model is used to calculate expenditure, price and nutrient elasticities, as well as the main socio-demographic effects. Results indicate that the introduction of nutrient-based determinants generates elasticities that differ from those obtained when only economic factors are included, particularly in the case of price elasticities. As the nutrients effect is incorporated in the model through adjusted prices, unhealthier food groups (cereals, white meat and eggs, dairy and sugar) become more inelastic as they are associated with higher perceived prices.
Changes in mood and autonomic functioning during the menstrual cycle.

The autonomic nervous system activity and mood ratings of 12 women were studied 6 days a week for a complete menstrual cycle. The daily procedure consisted of a resting period, a series of 5 mild tones, time estimation (TE), and reaction time (RT) trials, and a final resting period. Significant increase in heart rate (HR), respiration rate, and body temperature, and a significant decrease in resting skin conductance (SC) were found during the luteal phase. During the ovulatory phase there were significant increases in autonomic responsivity, as shown by greater amplitude of SC response in the TE and RT situations as well as in faster SC drop-rate and greater HR variability. All of these autonomic variability measures coincided with a significant peak in feelings of elation and vigor. Significant age effects were that older women had higher basal body temperatures, less marked HR variability, and tended to have lower levels of SC, particularly in the luteal phase of the cycle. The results are discussed in terms of the psychophysiological effects of estrogen and progesterone.
Market Selection and the Information Content of Prices

We study information aggregation when n bidders choose, based on their private information, between two concurrent common‐value auctions. There are k s identical objects on sale through a uniform‐price auction in market s and there are an additional k r objects on auction in market r, which is identical to market s except for a positive reserve price. The reserve price in market r implies that information is not aggregated in this market. Moreover, if the object‐to‐bidder ratio in market s exceeds a certain cutoff, then information is not aggregated in market s either. Conversely, if the object‐to‐bidder ratio is less than this cutoff, then information is aggregated in market s as the market grows arbitrarily large. Our results demonstrate how frictions in one market can disrupt information aggregation in a linked, frictionless market because of the pattern of market selection by imperfectly informed bidders.
Turbo-roundabout use and design

The turbo-roundabout concept has recently emerged in the Netherlands as a viable alternative to conventional multilane roundabouts, aiming to solve a set of functional problems related to the weaving maneuvers in the entry and negotiation zones. Although this is a recent concept, the Dutch experience has been showing that it is an extremely efficient solution, mainly in terms of safety. In fact, using physical raised elements in the entrances, ring and exit zones it is possible to define a spiral path which links the entry to the desired exit with a high safety level. These results have justified the concept dissemination to other European countries and the development of some design guidelines. At the moment, the construction of a turbo-roundabout in Portugal is under study. Therefore, this paper is focused in the turbo-roundabout concept and its general characterization. The different turboroundabout layouts are presented as well as their application domain. Based on the Dutch and Slovenian manuals, some general rules and specific geometric design are presented too. The general dimensions for a turbo-roundabout are specified and rules for the quality evaluation of the global solution are explained. Finally, in order to test the applicability of the concept, the general design guidelines were used in a real case study, converting a double-lane conventional roundabout into a turbo-roundabout. Using some performance indicators, the predictable operating performance of the turbo-roundabout is compared to the initial solution.
Private Information, Industry Specialization and Performance: A Study of Mutual Funds

A significant body of literature initiated by Grossman (1976) and Grossman and Stiglitz (1980) predicts that mutual funds with higher levels of private information are more specialized and deliver superior performance. We analyse the impact of private information on mutual funds' performance for a sample of 224 US sector funds and a control sample of 1135 US equity funds. Using the degree of concentration in economic sectors as a proxy of private information, we find a positive and significant relation between performance and private information for sector funds but not for equity funds. Our results are robust to asset pricing models and benchmark specification.
Pengaruh Praktik Total Quality Management (TQM) terhadap Budaya Kualitas, Daya Saing dan Kinerja Perusahaan (Studi pada Industri Manufaktur di Kota Makassar)

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to investigate the TQM practices effect on quality culture, competitiveness, and firm performance both directly and indirectly at Manufacturing Industry in Makassar. Company as unit of analysis in this research. There are 114 companies as sample, where company manager as respondent. Method of Analysis used in testing hypothesis is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Then, qualitative information used to find the addition explanation to support the result of hypothesis examination. The results shows that TQM practices have significant effect on quality culture, competitiveness, and company performance directly. Quality culture has significant effect on competitiveness directly. Competitiveness has direct effect on firm performance. Quality culture hasn’t significant effect on firm performance directly, but quality culture can be able to improve the firm performance by competitiveness. TQM practices can be able to improve the firm performance by competitiveness. While, the indirect effect of TQM practices on firm performance by quality culture aren’t significant. Keywords: TQM practices, quality culture, competitiveness, firm performance
Quintuple Deglycosylation Mutant of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus SIVmac239 in Rhesus Macaques: Robust Primary Replication, Tightly Contained Chronic Infection, and Elicitation of Potent Immunity against the Parental Wild-Type Strain

ABSTRACT We previously generated a mutant of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) lacking 5 of a total of 22 N-glycans in its external envelope protein gp120 with no impairment in viral replication capability and infectivity in tissue culture cells. Here, we infected rhesus macaques with this mutant and found that it also replicated robustly in the acute phase but was tightly, though not completely, contained in the chronic phase. Thus, a critical requirement for the N-glycans for the full extent of chronic infection was demonstrated. No evidence indicating reversion to a wild type was obtained during the observation period of more than 40 weeks. Monkeys infected with the mutant were found to tolerate a challenge infection with wild-type SIV very well. Analyses of host responses following challenge revealed no neutralizing antibodies against the challenge virus but strong secondary responses of cytotoxic T lymphocytes against multiple antigens, including Gag-Pol, Nef, and Env. Thus, the quintuple deglycosylation mutant appeared to represent a novel class of SIV live attenuated vaccine.
Vitamin D fortification and seasonality of birth in type 1 diabetic cases: D-tect study - ERRATUM.

We earlier reported that there was no seasonality of birth among Danish boys with type 1 diabetes (T1D), born before the cancellation of margarine vitamin D fortification programme in Denmark in 1985, opposed to the seasonality of birth found among boys with T1D born after the programme cancellation. As boys born before the fortification cancelation were exposed prenatally to extra vitamin D coming from fortified margarine, whereas boys born after the cancelation were not, we concluded that the vitamin D in fortified foods was sufficient to overcome the effects of natural seasonal variations in vitamin D levels, and in such a way affect the later T1D risk. We later found that the higher maternal exposure to sunshine during pregnancy was associated with the lower risk of T1D in the same sample of Danish boys. We then re-ran the seasonality of birth models with additional adjustment for pregnancy sunshine hours, as well as compared these hours between the boys born before (i.e. exposed) and after (i.e. unexposed) the cancelation of vitamin D fortification programme. We found that after the adjustment for pregnancy sunshine hours, the seasonality of birth in T1D cases was now absent in both groups. Indeed, when comparing boys born in spring vs. boys born in autumn in the exposed group (i.e. born during a two-year-period before the fortification cancellation) the Hazard ratio (HR; 95% CI) for developing T1D before age 15 years was 0.78 (0.39–1.59). Similarly, HR; 95% CI in the unexposed group (i.e. born during a two-year-period after the fortification cancelation) was 0.93 (0.49–1.77). For boys who developed T1D at age 5–9 years, the respective results were: 2.10 (0.56–7.87) for the exposed and 2.80 (0.81–9.60) for unexposed. We also found that there were more sunshine hours during the pregnancy of the mothers to boys exposed to fortification compared to the mothers of unexposed boys: mean difference (SD) being 38 (0.8) hours. These findings suggest that pregnancy sunshine was an omitted relevant factor in assessing the association between the prenatal exposure to vitamin D fortification and the seasonality of birth patterns. While vitamin D fortification may still have some relevance in the analysis, most probably it was the larger amount of pregnancy sunshine hours among mothers giving birth before the fortification cancelation in 1985, compared to mothers giving birth afterwards that primary stood behind the reduction of T1D risk in boys born in spring compared to those born in autumn, i.e. seasonality of birth observed. Sunshine may have had its effect on T1D risk by both vitamin D-related and vitamin D-unrelated (e.g. via infections or lifestyle) pathways.
Real-time vehicle detection and tracking based on perspective and non-perspective space cooperation

In recent years advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) have received increasing interest to confront car accidents. In particular, video processing based vehicle detection methods are emerging as an efficient way to address accident prevention. Many video-based approaches are proposed in the literature for vehicle detection, involving sophisticated and costly computer vision techniques. Most of these methods require ad hoc hardware implementations to attain real-time operation. Alternatively, other approaches perform a domain change --via transforms like FFT, inverse perspective mapping (IPM) or Hough transform-- that simplifies otherwise complex feature detection. In this work, a cooperative strategy between two domains, the original perspective space and the transformed non-perspective space computed trough IPM, is proposed in order to alleviate the processing load in each domain by maximizing the information exchange between the two domains. A system is designed upon this framework that computes the location and dimension of the vehicles in a video sequence. Additionally, the system is made scalable to the complexity imposed by the scenario. As a result, real-time vehicle detection and tracking is accomplished in a general purpose platform. The system has been tested for sequences comprising a wide variety of scenarios, showing robust and accurate performance.
Preventing Medical Errors: Communicating a Role for Medicare Beneficiaries

This study used a focus group methodology to examine how Medicare beneficiaries reacted to messages on specific kinds of preventive action, including those adopted by public and private section health organizations. Beneficiaries were asked to rank the messages on their own, and then to discuss their rankings in focus groups. The best-received messages advocated a collaborative patient-provider relationship. They also specified which actions to take, and how to implement them. The authors conclude that public health campaigns to reduce errors need not undermine trust in providers.
Boundary Homogenization for Periodic Arrays of Absorbers

We introduce a homogenization procedure for reaction-diffusion equations in domains whose boundary consists of small alternating regions with prescribed Dirichlet and Neumann data of comparable areas. The homogenized problem is shown to satisfy an effective Dirichlet boundary condition which depends on the geometry of the small-scale boundary structure. This problem is also related to finding the effective trapping rate for a Brownian particle next to a surface with a periodic array of perfect absorbers. We use the method of optimal geometric grids to numerically solve the unit cell problem of homogenization. The geometric homogenization factor is obtained for a number of cell geometries (stripes, square and hexagonal arrays of disk-shaped absorbers or emitters) as a function of the surface area fraction occupied by the absorbers. Empirical analytical expressions that give excellent fits to data for the entire range of area fractions and correct asymptotic behaviors in the limits of small and large absorb.
Manifold Regularized Local Sparse Representation for Face Recognition

Sparse representation-(or sparse coding)-based classification has been successfully applied to face recognition. However, it can become problematic in the presence of illumination variations or occlusions. In this paper, we propose a Manifold Regularized Local Sparse Representation (MRLSR) model to address such difficulties. The key idea behind the MRLSR method is that all coding vectors in sparse representation should be group sparse, which means holding the two properties of both individual sparsity and local similarity. As a consequence, the face recognition rate can be considerably improved. The MRLSR model is optimized by the modified homotopy algorithm, which keeps stable under different choices of the weighting parameter. Extensive experiments are performed on various face databases, which contain illumination variations and occlusions. We show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches and provides the highest recognition rate.
Runting syndrome in rats inoculated with Friend virus.

Summary The runting syndrome was observed in rats inoculated with a low dose of Friend virus (10 1.0 50% minimal infective doses/rat) at birth and in rats inoculated with a high dose of Friend virus (10 4.0 to 10 5.0 50% minimal infective doses/rat) on the 4th to 5th day after birth. Histopathological examination of runting rats showed degenerative and destructive changes in the lymphatic organs (thymus, spleen, and lymph nodes), which consisted mostly of atrophy of the thymus and enlargement of the spleen. The mechanism of the above runting syndrome due to Friend virus in the rats is discussed.
Piezoelectric performance of piezoceramic-polymer composites with 2-2 connectivity-a combined theoretical and experimental study

The piezoelectric performance of piezoceramic-polymer composites with 2-2 connectivity at low frequency has been analyzed theoretically. Due to the elastic coupling between the ceramic and polymer phases, the strain components in directions perpendicular and parallel to the ceramic-polymer interface are not uniform in either phase. As a result, most of the stress transfer between the two phases occurs at the region near the surface of the composite. In order to improve the piezoelectric performance of a composite, the polymer matrix should have a small Young's modulus and a large shear modulus, and a large aspect ratio. It may be also desirable to have the polymer matrix made of two different polymers with the stiffer one near the surface and the softer one in the interior of the composite. To compare with the theoretical calculations, surface profiles of a series of 2-2 composites with different aspect ratios were measured, and the experimental results show excellent agreement with the theoretical calculations. The nonuniform strain and stress in the direction parallel to the ceramic-polymer interface of a composite were also confirmed by experiments. <<ETX>>
Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and rate of hip bone loss in older men.

CONTEXT Vitamin D deficiency is common among older adults, but the association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels and rates of bone loss is uncertain. OBJECTIVE Our aim was to test the hypothesis that lower 25(OH)D levels are associated with higher rates of hip bone loss in older men. DESIGN AND SETTING We conducted a prospective cohort study in six U.S. centers. PARTICIPANTS A total of 1279 community-dwelling men aged 65 yr or older with 25(OH)D levels (liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectroscopy) and hip bone mineral density (BMD) (dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry) at baseline and repeat hip BMD an average of 4.4 yr later participated in the study. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S) We measured the annualized percentage rate of change in hip BMD. RESULTS After adjustment for multiple potential confounders, the average rate of decline in total hip BMD was -0.59%/yr among men with 25(OH)D levels below 15.0 ng/ml, -0.54%/yr among men with 25(OH)D levels 15.0-19.9 ng/ml, -0.35%/yr among men with 25(OH)D levels 20.0-29.9 ng/ml, and -0.37%/yr among men with 25(OH)D levels of at least 30 ng/ml (P trend = 0.008 for multivariable model). Evidence was strong to support an association among men aged 75 yr and older (P trend <0.001), but not among younger men (P trend = 0.55). Findings were similar when 25(OH)D level was expressed in quintiles and when BMD at hip subregions was substituted for total hip BMD. CONCLUSIONS In this cohort of community-dwelling older men, men with 25(OH)D levels below 20 ng/ml had greater subsequent rates of hip bone loss, but rates of loss were similar among men with higher levels. These results lend support to the view that low 25(OH)D levels are detrimental to BMD in older men.
Sweet but dangerous – the role of immunoglobulin G glycosylation in autoimmunity and inflammation

Glycosylation is well-known to modulate the functional capabilities of immunoglobulin G (IgG)-mediated cellular and humoral responses. Indeed, highly sialylated and desialylated IgG is endowed with anti- and pro-inflammatory activities, respectively, whereas fully deglycosylated IgG is a rather lame duck, with no effector function besides toxin neutralization. Recently, several studies revealed the impact of different glycosylation patterns on the Fc part and Fab fragment of IgG in several autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Here, we provide a synoptic update summarizing the most important aspects of antibody glycosylation, and the current progress in this field. We also discuss the therapeutic options generated by the modification of the glycosylation of IgG in a potential treatment for chronic inflammatory diseases.
Uncertainty in the relationship between climate forcing and hydrological response in UK catchments

Abstract. This paper assesses the relationship between amount of climate forcing – as indexed by global mean temperature change – and hydrological response in a sample of UK catchments. It constructs climate scenarios representing different changes in global mean temperature from an ensemble of 21 climate models assessed in the IPCC AR4. The results show a considerable range in impact between the 21 climate models, with – for example – change in summer runoff at a 2 °C increase in global mean temperature varying between −40% and +20%. There is evidence of clustering in the results, particularly in projected changes in summer runoff and indicators of low flows, implying that the ensemble mean is not an appropriate generalised indicator of impact, and that the standard deviation of responses does not adequately characterise uncertainty. The uncertainty in hydrological impact is therefore best characterised by considering the shape of the distribution of responses across multiple climate scenarios. For some climate model patterns, and some catchments, there is also evidence that linear climate change forcings produce non-linear hydrological impacts. For most variables and catchments, the effects of climate change are apparent above the effects of natural multi-decadal variability with an increase in global mean temperature above 1 °C, but there are differences between catchments. Based on the scenarios represented in the ensemble, the effect of climate change in northern upland catchments will be seen soonest in indicators of high flows, but in southern catchments effects will be apparent soonest in measures of summer and low flows. The uncertainty in response between different climate model patterns is considerably greater than the range due to uncertainty in hydrological model parameterisation.