Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association between job characteristics and plasma fibrinogen in a normal working population: a cross sectional analysis in referents of the SHEEP Study. Stockholm Heart Epidemiology Program.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To explore the association between job characteristics and plasma fibrinogen concentrations. DESIGN: Cross sectional design. SETTING: The Greater Stockholm area. SUBJECTS: A total of 1018 men and 490 women aged 45-70 who were randomly selected from the general population during 1992-1994. They were all employed and had no history of myocardial infarction. MAIN RESULTS: The self reported job characteristics were measured by a Swedish version of the Karasek demand-control questionnaire. For inferred scoring of job characteristics, psychosocial exposure categories (job control and psychological demands) were assigned by linking each subject's occupational history with a work organisation exposure matrix. Job strain was defined as the ratio between demands and control. In univariate analyses, expected linear trends were found in three of four tests of association between high plasma fibrinogen and low control (the self reported score for women and the inferred score for both sexes), in one of four tests of association between high plasma fibrinogen and high demands (the inferred score for women) and in two of four tests of association between high plasma fibrinogen and job strain (the inferred score for both sexes). Multiple logistic regression analyses showed that men in the inferred job strain group have an increased risk of falling into the increased plasma fibrinogen concentration group (above median level of the distribution) (odds ratio (OR) 1.2; 95% CI 1.0, 1.5) after adjustment for the variables that were associated with plasma fibrinogen in the univariate analyses. In women, low self reported control, high inferred demand, and inferred job strain were significantly associated with increased plasma fibrinogen concentration (OR 1.3; 95% CI 1.0, 1.8, OR 1.5; 95% CI 1.0, 2.2, OR 1.5; 95% CI 1.1, 2.2, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that adverse job characteristics may be related to plasma fibrinogen concentrations and this relation is more relevant in female workers. The clearest evidence for psychosocial effects on plasma fibrinogen seems to be with job control and the associations are clearer for the objective than for the self report variables.
A Note on Causal Relationship Between FDI and Savings in Bangladesh

This paper aims to investigate the causal relationship between foreign direct investment and gross domestic savings in Bangladesh over a period of 1985-2007. In doing so, Johansen cointegration technique and error correction methods are employed to examine the long run and short run relationship between foreign direct investment and gross domestic savings. To determine the direction of causality, we used innovation accounting approach. Results suggest that there exist bi-directional causal relationship between foreign direct investment and gross domestic savings but the movement is stronger from domestic savings to foreign direct investment. The result also implies complimentary relationship between them and as such, policy makers in Bangladesh need to focus on the determinants of both FDI and domestic savings in order to accelerate its growth.
Lower cranial height vs craniofacial dimensions in Angle Class II malocclusion.

From the serial sample of the Burlington Growth Centre, 68 children with Angle Class II malocclusion were contrasted with 148 children with Class I occlusion. Body height, cranial height, cranial base flexure and jaw position relative to the cranium were compared at ages 8, 12 and 16 years. In the Class II groups, the cranial base angle was significantly (P less than .05) larger, upper cranial height was slightly larger, lower cranial height was slightly smaller, the maxilla was slightly more posterior to Sella, and the mandible was significantly more posterior. Between ages 8 and 16 years, lower cranial height increased and cranial base angle decreased, with a strong negative correlation. Lower cranial height and the anterior position of the maxilla and mandible from Sella correlated significantly (P less than .01) with body height in Class I children, but in Class II only in boys 8 and 12 years of age. This lower correlation in Class II children was accounted for by those with a moderate to tall stature but disproportionately small lower cranial height. In Class II children the jaws, especially the mandible, had a more posterior position under the cranium, and there was a more open flexure of the cranial base and shorter lower cranial height. Correlation of stature with lower cranial height and with the anterior position of the jaws relative to the cranium was much lower in Class II children, especially in girls.
The crossed leg sign indicates a favorable outcome after severe stroke

Objective: We investigated whether crossed legs are a prognostic marker in patients with severe stroke. Methods: In this controlled prospective observational study, we observed patients with severe stroke who crossed their legs during their hospital stay and matched them with randomly selected severe stroke patients who did not cross their legs. The patients were evaluated upon admission, on the day of leg crossing, upon discharge, and at 1 year after discharge. The Glasgow Coma Scale, the NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS), the modified Rankin Scale (mRS), and the Barthel Index (BI) were obtained. Results: Patients who crossed their legs (n = 34) and matched controls (n = 34) did not differ in any scale upon admission. At the time of discharge, the GCS did not differ, but the NIHSS was better in crossed legs patients (6.5 vs 10.6; p = 0.0026), as was the mRS (3.4 vs 5.1, p < 0.001), and the BI (34.0 vs 21.1; p = 0.0073). At 1-year follow-up, mRS (2.9 vs 5.1, p < 0.001) and the BI (71.3 vs 49.2; p = 0.045) were also better in the crossed leg group. The mortality between the groups differed grossly; only 1 patient died in the crossing group compared to 18 in the noncrossing group (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Leg crossing is an easily obtained clinical sign and is independent of additional technical examinations. Leg crossing within the first 15 days after severe stroke indicates a favorable outcome which includes less neurologic deficits, better independence in daily life, and lower rates of death.
Performance Changes Following Top Management Dismissals

The authors document that forced resignations of top managers are preceded by large and significant declines in operating performance and followed by large improvements in performance. However, forced resignations are rare and are due more often to external factors (e.g., blockholder pressure, takeover attempts, etc.) than to normal board monitoring. Following the management change, these firms significantly downsize their operations and are subject to a high rate of corporate control activity. Normal retirements are followed by small increases in operating income and are also subject to a slightly higher than normal incidence of postturnover corporate control activity. Copyright 1995 by American Finance Association.
Re-imagining the environment: using an environmental art festival to encourage pro-environmental behaviour and a sense of place

Environmental art can be used by government as an engaging medium to encourage pro-environmental behaviour and a sense of place at a grassroots level. By stimulating discussion and reflection, environmental art offers an imaginative format to promote environmental engagement. In this case, by placing artworks in nature, a community's focus was drawn to the beauty of their everyday environment and the ideas communicated by the works, in an effort to encourage environmental awareness and stewardship. This study explores audience responses to Floating Land – a local-government-initiated environmental art festival held in the Noosa Biosphere in Australia. A multi-layered perspective of the festival's impact on pro-environmental behaviours and sense of place was investigated via questionnaires administered to the audience, workshop participants and local residents. Data offered insights into attitude differences between those who intended to change their behaviour and those who did not; understandings about the influence of workshop facilitators; and revelations about a community finding opportunities to re-imagine their place through environmental art. Recommendations are offered as a way for governments to incorporate environmental art into their role of educating for the environment. This study contributes to the under-researched area of audience responses to environmental art by providing qualitative and quantitative analysis that draws out understandings of the impact of art that promotes environmental awareness and a sense of place. The study reveals that Floating Land contributed to reinforcing the essential role of local people in engendering positive change, thus manifesting the aims of the Biosphere Reserve and Agenda 21.
Cistrome-based Cooperation between Airway Epithelial Glucocorticoid Receptor and NF-κB Orchestrates Anti-inflammatory Effects*

Antagonism of pro-inflammatory transcription factors by monomeric glucocorticoid receptor (GR) has long been viewed as central to glucocorticoid (GC) efficacy. However, the mechanisms and targets through which GCs exert therapeutic effects in diseases such as asthma remain incompletely understood. We previously defined a surprising cooperative interaction between GR and NF-κB that enhanced expression of A20 (TNFAIP3), a potent inhibitor of NF-κB. Here we extend this observation to establish that A20 is required for maximal cytokine repression by GCs. To ascertain the global extent of GR and NF-κB cooperation, we determined genome-wide occupancy of GR, the p65 subunit of NF-κB, and RNA polymerase II in airway epithelial cells treated with dexamethasone, TNF, or both using chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by deep sequencing. We found that GR recruits p65 to dimeric GR binding sites across the genome and discovered additional regulatory elements in which GR-p65 cooperation augments gene expression. GR targets regulated by this mechanism include key anti-inflammatory and injury response genes such as SERPINA1, which encodes α1 antitrypsin, and FOXP4, an inhibitor of mucus production. Although dexamethasone treatment reduced RNA polymerase II occupancy of TNF targets such as IL8 and TNFAIP2, we were unable to correlate specific binding sequences for GR or occupancy patterns with repressive effects on transcription. Our results suggest that cooperative anti-inflammatory gene regulation by GR and p65 contributes to GC efficacy, whereas tethering interactions between GR and p65 are not universally required for GC-based gene repression.
The New Bail-In Regime and the Need for Stronger Market Discipline. What Can we Learn from the Greek Case?

Effective Market Discipline (MD) puzzles financial economists and regulators for decades, while the recent bail-in legislation for European banks extremely raises the need for even stronger MD. It may not be exaggeration to say that a new regime for the European banking market is born after the aforementioned decision. This paper’s objective is the broader MD examination, using variables that are not usually included in MD studies, but concern the European Union (EU) and the European Monetary Union (EMU) in the last years. In particular, apart from banking, deposit insurance and pure macroeconomic indicators, we also include governance and sovereign debt indices. The new regime may need a new MD approach. We choose Greece to implement our assumptions, because it is the country with the most severe economic, sovereign and governance problems in the EU. We employ data for the period 2002-10. The empirical evidence supports that market discipline is superficial, while there is ample evidence that MD is directly influenced by the poor governance performance and the excessive government debt. Greek authorities have to make major structural reforms in order to create the conditions for long-term stability, while our analysis points out some EMU’s shortfalls.
Motivational Preferences of Caribbean Hotel Workers: An Exploratory Study

Examines the motivational preferences of Caribbean hotel workers and the impact of individual differences on these preferences by questionnaire. Two‐hundred‐and‐twenty‐five workers from seven hotels in the Bahamas ranked ten factors according to how they motivated them on the job. In general, the hotel workers in this study were motivated most by higher wages. However, differences in age, organizational level and number of years in the same position also influenced workers′ motivational preferences. Suggests that Caribbean hotel managers need to implement creative monetary incentive programmes for their employees while, at the same time, developing different motivational strategies for different groups of workers.
Development of the assessment for collaborative environments (ACE-15): A tool to measure perceptions of interprofessional “teamness”

ABSTRACT As interprofessional education moves from classroom to clinical settings, assessing clinical training sites for a high level of “teamness” to ensure optimal learning environments is critical but often problematic ahead of student placement. We developed a tool (Assessment for Collaborative Environments, or ACE), suitable for a range of clinical settings and health professionals, that allows rapid assessment of a clinical practice’s teamwork qualities. We collected evidence of tool validity including content, response process, internal structure, and convergent validity. Expert review and cognitive interviews allowed reduction of the initial 30-item tool to 15 items (the ACE-15). Data from 192 respondents from 17 clinical professions and varied clinical settings (inpatient, ambulatory, urban, and rural) were used for factor analysis, which resulted in a single factor solution. Internal consistency reliability Cronbach’s alpha was high at 0.91. Subgroup analysis of 121 respondents grouped by their clinical teams (n = 16 teams) showed a wide range of intra-team agreement. Data from a subsequent sample of 54 clinicians who completed the ACE-15 and a measure of team cohesion indicated convergent validity, with a correlation of the tools at r = 0.81. We conclude that the ACE-15 has acceptable psychometric properties and promising utility for assessing interprofessional teamness in clinical training sites that are settings for learners, and, in addition may be useful for team development.
SEASONAL UNIT ROOT TESTS FOR TRENDING AND BREAKING SERIES WITH APPLICATION TO INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION

Some unit root testing situations are more difficult than others. In the case of quarterly industrial production there is not only the seasonal variation that needs to be considered but also the occasionally breaking linear trend. In the current paper we take this as our starting point to develop three new seasonal unit root tests that allow for a break in both the seasonal mean and linear trend of a quarterly time series. The asymptotic properties of the tests are derived and investigated in small-samples using simulations. In the empirical part of the paper we consider as an example the industrial production of 13 European countries. The results suggest that for most of the series there is evidence of stationary seasonality around an otherwise nonseasonal unit root.
Tapping Ink , Tattooing Identities : Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Kalinga Society , Northern Luzon , Philippines

BATEK, BATOK, AND WHATOK are various local words that denote a traditional tattooing practice among the peoples in the Cordillera Region, particularly in the province of Kalinga. Their bodies are inked with figurative designs of snake, centipede, frog, rice grain, and fern plant, among others, and interspersed with geometric motifs and patterns. These traditional tattoos speak strongly about the culture and landscape of the region: signifying rites of passage, or indicating their religious and political status, and sometimes, simply serving as physical adornment. Various meanings and significance of their tattoos are created and produced as the tattooed men and women of Kalinga articulate their own definition and meanings. Such is the foremost concern of the book, Tapping Ink, Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Kalinga Society, Northern Luzon, Philippines by Analyn V. Salvador-Amores. The constructed meanings attached to their tattoos are explored as Salvador-Amores grounds these meanings within the theoretical contexts of tradition and modernity.
IC valuation and measurement: classifying the state of the art

The intellectual capital (IC) community has entered a phase of consolidation. This article contributes to this consolidation process by clarifying existing motives (why) and proposed methods (how) for valuing or measuring IC. In general, the field of IC performance measurement has paid little attention to organizational diagnosis and the “why” question. It is often unclear what the organizational problem is the methods intent to solve. Many methods for the valuation or measurement of Intellectual Capital can be characterized as “solutions in search of a cause”. Another area that requires clarification is the “how” question. There seems to be confusion about the distinction between valuation and measurement. The distinction is fundamental yet not recognized in the field. Based on a literature review this article presents a classification of motives and solutions and plots ten existing methods in a “why” by “how” matrix.
Forest Transitions in Mosaic Landscapes: Smallholder's Flexibility in Land-Resource Use Decisions and Livelihood Strategies From World War II to the Present in the Amazon Estuary

The question of how smallholders of the Amazon estuary, locally known as cabolcos, have adapted their land use systems to produce resources during booms and busts is analyzed in this article. We draw upon more than 50 years of census data and more than 30 years of remotely sensed land-cover data to reconstruct these dynamics from World War II to the present. We found that smallholders are highly flexible in their land use decisions and livelihood strategies and that such flexibility has helped them to adapt their land-use systems to produce resources in demand during market booms and conserve forests. Smallholder mosaic landscapes contain forest fragments that enhance socioecological resilience to floods and other events produced by changes in the local hydro-climatic regimes due to sea-level rise and other climate-related changes. We argue that flexibility is a tool to reduce livelihood vulnerability by facilitating adaptation to global market and climate driven changes over the long term.
Mental Accounts, Selective Attention, and the Mutability of Altruism: An Experiment with Online Workers

The theory of mental accounts holds that we classify income by source and link sources to appropriates use (Thaler, 1999). When deciding whether to share money with another, we consider our resources. I conduct a framed field experiment in which participants accrue 1) earned income from a real-effort task and 2) windfall income, then make a sharing choice. I find that participants pay selective attention to the income sources at hand in a self-interested way. Their marginal willingness to give is positive only for a token accruing to the account with the largest balance. They ignore the smaller account and the total. This behavior is consistent with a self-signaling model in which multiple mental accounts reduce the strength of the bad signal sent by being selfish (Benabou and Tirole, 2011).
The peer learning community: a contextual design for learning?

The term “learning community” is in common usage but appears to mask significant variation in practice. This article begins with a description of the “peer learning community” model within the MSc in Change Agent Skills and Strategies at the University of Surrey, UK. Tosey and Gregory have proposed five criteria as distinguishing this specific, designed model from more general usage of the term “learning community”. From this basis, it is argued that the effectiveness of learning programmes (such as action learning) will be greatly influenced by the framework and context within which they take place. The peer learning community is an example of a contextual design that could be applied within both business and higher education. As such it has relevance to the concept of the “learning organisation”. The presence or absence of conditions such as the five proposed may crucially impact on the effectiveness of programmes of learning. The article concludes by raising critical questions about the peer learning c.
Mechanical Properties of Composite Hydrogels of Alginate and Cellulose Nanofibrils

Alginate and cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) are attractive materials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. CNF gels are generally weaker and more brittle than alginate gels, while alginate gels are elastic and have high rupture strength. Alginate properties depend on their guluronan and mannuronan content and their sequence pattern and molecular weight. Likewise, CNF exists in various qualities with properties depending on, e.g., morphology and charge density. In this study combinations of three types of alginate with different composition and two types of CNF with different charge and degree of fibrillation have been studied. Assessments of the composite gels revealed that attractive properties like high rupture strength, high compressibility, high gel rigidity at small deformations (Young’s modulus), and low syneresis was obtained compared to the pure gels. The effects varied with relative amounts of CNF and alginate, alginate type, and CNF quality. The largest effects were obtained by combining oxidized CNF with the alginates. Hence, by combining the two biopolymers in composite gels, it is possible to tune the rupture strength, Young’s modulus, syneresis, as well as stability in physiological saline solution, which are all important properties for the use as scaffolds in tissue engineering.
The Public Service Offering and its Influence on Marketing Priorities in Local Government Organizations

Abstract This article employs a comparative case study methodology to critically examine the types of marketing activity undertaken by two local government organizations that are involved in providing discretionary and non-discretionary services, respectively. Achievement of income targets and user satisfaction standards were found to be central to the success of marketing efforts in discretionary public services, while these were not priority objectives in non-discretionary public services. This key difference influenced the range and intensity of marketing activity undertaken and resource commitments provided by public service organizations. Three propositions for future theory development and practice in marketing for public services are offered.