Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Audit Market Regulation and Supplier Concentration around the World : Empirical Evidence

In the ongoing discussions on audit regulation, the key issues of auditor independence and a high level of audit market concentration have become apparent. However, there is the concern that regulations intended to improve auditor independence (i.e., restrictions regarding the joint supply of audit and non-audit services, audit firm rotation, joint audits, etc.) might further increase audit market concentration. We address this issue with an empirical analysis. Based on a cross-country study for the years 2001–2010, we investigate whether a country's audit regulation is connected to the combined market share of the four largest audit firms (Concentration Ratio, CR 4 ), the inequality in the market share distribution (Hirschmann-Herfindahl-Index, HHI), and the number of audit firms per client active in that country's audit market (Auditor Client Ratio). Our final sample consists of 141,190 firm-year observations of listed companies with a total of 2,439 audit firms, taken from 29 countries. The results of our country-fixed-effects models indicate that regulators should take the connections between potentially conflicting goals into account: Whereas the existence of a proportionate liability system and the prohibition of the joint supply of audit and non-audit services significantly decrease supplier concentration, joint audits and the mandatory audit firm rotation significantly increase audit market concentration. Thus, this study points to the need to take into account clients' and audit firms' adaptive strategies to new regulations.
Frequency of the hypervariable DNA loci D18S849, D3S1744, D12S1090 and D1S80 in a mixed ancestry population of Chilean blood donors.

Blood donors (N = 150) at San José Hospital (Santiago, Chile) were typed for one VNTR locus (D1S80) and three STR loci (D18S849, D3S1744, D12S1090). A questionnaire was used to determine the socioeconomic level of the donors, because it is known that some genetic markers (e.g., the ABO and Rh groups) are differentially distributed between different socioeconomic strata. This methodology revealed that two of the three socioeconomic strata distinguishable in Santiago were present in our sample of blood donors, with stratum II representing the middle strata and stratum III the low strata. Allele frequency was determined for each locus and socioeconomic stratum, and it was found that the allele distributions of each locus in socioeconomic strata II and III were statistically similar. All loci conformed to the Hardy-Weinberg law and there was no evidence for association between the alleles of the four loci, allelic frequencies being similar to those found in North American Hispanic populations. The results support the view that the analysis of these loci may have useful applications in population genetics as well as in identity tests.
Challenging the Collegiate Rite of Passage: A Campus-Wide Social Marketing Media Campaign to Reduce Binge Drinking

A social marketing media campaign, based on a normative social influence model and focused on normative messages regarding binge drinking, on a large, southwestern university campus has yielded positive preliminary results of an overall 29.2 percent decrease in binge drinking rates over a three-year period. The Core Alcohol and Drug Survey and the Health Enhancement Survey provided information on student knowledge, perceptions, and behaviors regarding alcohol and binge drinking. This study represents the first in-depth research on the impact of a media approach, based on a normative social influence model, to reduce binge drinking on a large university campus and has yielded promising initial results.
Financial Sector Inefficiencies and Coordination Failures: Implications for Crisis Management

The authors analyze the implications for crisis management of inefficient financial intermediation in a country (such as Indonesia or the Republic of Korea) where firms are highly indebted. They base their analysis on a model in which firms rely on bank credit to finance their working capital needs and loan contracts entail high state verification and enforcement costs for lenders. They find that higher volatility of output, lower productivity, or higher costs for contract enforcement and verification may shift the economy to the inefficient portion of the debt Laffer curve - with potentially sizable losses in employment and output. What implications does this have for the policy debate on crisis management in East Asia? Debt reduction, in addition to debt rescheduling, may be required to reduce employment and output losses in the presence of inefficiencies in the financial sector. In practice this may be difficult to coordinate among a large group of creditors because of the free-riding problem: Each creditor has an incentive to refrain from offering debt relief on its own claims and wait for others to do so, thereby raising the expected value of its own claims.
Chilling-Enhanced Photooxidation : The Peroxidative Destruction of Lipids during Chilling Injury to Photosynthesis and Ultrastructure.

Chilling-induced photooxidation was studied in detached leaves of chilling-sensitive (CS) cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) and chilling resistant (CR) pea (Pisum sativum L.). The rates of photosynthesis and respiration, measured as O(2) exchange, were found to be comparable in the two species over a temperature range of 5 to 35 degrees C. Chilling at 5 degrees C for 12 hours in high light (1000 microeinsteins per square meter per second) decreased CO(2) uptake 75% in detached pea leaves whereas CO(2) uptake by cucumber was reduced to zero within 2 hours. Respiration was unaffected in either species by the chilling and light treatment. Although ultrastructural alterations were apparent in chloroplasts of both species, cucumber's were affected sooner and more severely. The mechanism of photooxidative lipid peroxidation was investigated by following the production of ethane gas under a variety of conditions. Maximum ethane production occurred in the CS cucumber at low temperature (5 degrees C) and high light (1000 microeinsteins per square meter per second). Atrazine, an inhibitor of photosynthetic electron transport, almost completely halted this chilling- and light-induced ethane production. These data, taken with those reported in an accompanying article (RR Wise, AW Naylor 1986 Plant Physiol 83: 278-282) suggest that the superoxide anion radical is generated in cucumber chloroplasts (probably via a Mehler-type reaction) during chilling-enhanced photooxidation. Parallel experiments were conducted on pea, a CR species. Detached pea leaves could only be made to generate ethane in the cold and light if they were pretreated with the herbicide parquat, a known effector of O(2) (-) production. Even so, pea showed no lipid peroxidation for 6 hours, at which time ethane production began and was at a rate equal to that for the chilled and irradiated cucumber leaves. The results indicate that pea has an endogenous mechanism(s) for the removal of toxic oxygen species prior to lipid peroxidation. This mechanism breaks down in pea after 6 hours in the cold, light, and the presence of paraquat.
Bicycle and motorcycle spoke injuries in children as passengers.

OBJECTIVE To determine the spectrum and severity of injuries seen in children passengers, who get their feet entangled in the spokes of bicycle and motorcycle wheels, and to study the mechanism of this injury to find a pattern. DESIGN Descriptive and prospective study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY Combined Military Hospital, Quetta, between July 2001 and June 2003. SUBJECTS AND METHODS This study included 92 consecutive patients referred to the Paediatric Surgical Department. According to the severity of injury, the patients were divided into three groups. The parents were asked a detailed history about the exact mechanism of injury, and such situations were analysed. RESULTS The average age was 3.9 years. Seventy-one were males and 21 females. A total of 80 children had their injury while riding a bicycle, the rest had their feet entangled in motorcycle spokes. Majority had type I injury. Motorcycle injuries mostly belonged to type III. There were only 2 fractures. Study of the mechanism of injury showed an obvious pattern. Front wheel injury mainly caused inversion, with laceration over dorsum and medial aspect of the foot and medial malleolus. Rear wheel injury mostly caused eversion, with skin damage to the lateral and posterior aspect of foot and ankle, with lateral malleolus at risk. CONCLUSION Bicycle/motorcycle is an important means of transport for the whole family in most of the third world countries. Without proper footrests and unguarded spokes severe injury to the feet of young passengers can occur. By ascertaining in which wheel (front or rear) the foot was entangled, injuries can be predicted, and hence not missed.
Prevention of high-fat diet-induced muscular lipid accumulation in rats by α lipoic acid is not mediated by AMPK activation[S]

Skeletal muscle triglyceride accumulation is associated with insulin resistance in obesity. Recently, it has been suggested that α lipoic acid (ALA) improves insulin sensitivity by lowering triglyceride accumulation in nonadipose tissues via activation of skeletal muscle AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). We examined whether chronic ALA supplementation prevents muscular lipid accumulation that is associated with high-fat diets via activation of AMPK. In addition, we tested if ALA supplementation was able to improve insulin sensitivity in rats fed low- and high-fat diets (LFD, HFD). Supplementing male Wistar rats with 0.5% ALA for 8 weeks significantly reduced body weight, both on LFD and HFD (−24% LFD+ALA vs. LFD, P < 0.01, and −29% HFD+ALA vs. HFD, P < 0.001). Oil red O lipid staining revealed a 3-fold higher lipid content in skeletal muscle after HFD compared with LFD and ALA-supplemented groups (P < 0.05). ALA improved whole body glucose tolerance (∼20% lower total area under the curve (AUC) in ALA supplemented groups vs. controls, P < 0.05). These effects were not mediated by increased muscular AMPK activation or ALA-induced improvement of muscular insulin sensitivity. To conclude, the prevention of HFD-induced muscular lipid accumulation and the improved whole body glucose tolerance are likely secondary effects due to the anorexic nature of ALA.
Enantioselectivity of thalidomide serum and tissue concentrations in a rat glioma model and effects of combination treatment with cisplatin and BCNU

Thalidomide is currently under evaluation as an anti‐angiogenic agent in cancer treatment, alone and in combination with cytotoxic agents. Thalidomide is a racemate with known pharmacologic and pharmacokinetic enantioselectivity. In a previous study with thalidomide combination chemotherapy, we found evidence of anti‐tumour synergy. In this study, we examined whether the synergy involved altered pharmacokinetics of thalidomide enantiomers. Adult female F344 rats were implanted with 9L gliosarcoma tumours intracranially, subcutaneously (flank), or both. Effectiveness of oral thalidomide alone, and with intraperitoneal BCNU or cisplatin combination chemotherapy, was assessed after several weeks treatment. Presumed pseudo steady‐state serum, tumour and other tissues, collected after treatment, were assayed for R‐ and S‐thalidomide by chiral HPLC. Both serum and tissue concentrations of R‐thalidomide were 40–50% greater than those of S‐thalidomide. Co‐administration of BCNU or cisplatin with thalidomide did not alter the concentration enantioselectivity. Poor correlation of concentration with subcutaneous anti‐tumour effect was found for individual treatments, and with all treatments for intracranial tumours. The consistency of the enantiomer concentration ratios across treatments strongly suggests that the favourable anti‐tumour outcomes from interactions between thalidomide and the cytotoxic agents BCNU and cisplatin did not have altered enantioselectivity of thalidomide pharmacokinetics as their basis.
Profiles of energy metabolites and haptoglobin in dairy cows under organic management in Alberta farms.

Profiles of energy metabolites and haptoglobin (Hp) in dairy cows that are transitioned from conventional to organic management in various Alberta farms were compared with those of dairy cows managed conventionally at the University of Alberta dairy farm. Blood samples were collected during the following periods: Dry, 0 - 30, 30 - 60, and 60 - 90 days in milk (DIM, n = 7 cows). Concentrations of metabolites were evaluated by enzymatic colorimetric methods. Concentrations of Hp were determined by bovine ELISA kits. Data were analyzed by the mixed procedures of SAS. Concentrations of NEFA and BHBA in blood were elevated (P < 0.001) 0 to 30 d, intermediate 30 to 60, and 60 to 90 d, and lower in the dry period. In addition, BHBA was higher (P < 0.0001) at all stages of lactation in conventional than organic cows (e.g. 1289.4 ± 88.6 vs. 883.6 ± 47.5 µmol/L in conventional and organic cows at 0 - 30 d, respectively). Serum concentrations of cholesterol increased with increasing DIM and returned to nadir levels during dry period and was higher (P < 0.0001) in conventional than organic cows. Low glucose concentrations were observed 0 to 30 d, levels were intermediate 30 to 60 and 60 to 90 d, and peaked during the dry period (P < 0.0001). However, glucose concentrations did not differ (P < 0.54) between conventional and organic cows. Lactate did not (P < 0.24) vary with DIM or day × farm type but was higher (P < 0.0001) in organic cows than in conventional cows. Serum concentrations of Hp were elevated during dry period; reached peak levels 0 to 30 d and decreased gradually with increasing days postpartum and were much higher at all periods in conventional than organic cows. Overall, concentrations of Hp were 528.1 ± 45.2 µg/mL in conventional cows vs. 261.1 ± 16.9 µg/mL in organic cows (P < 0.0001). Taken together, these data indicate that metabolic changes associated with initiation of lactation are preceded by an acute phase response in dairy cows, and that cows in organic systems seem to be healthier than cows under conventional systems. These differences might be due to differences in nutritional management in the two systems.
Design optimization for an 8-bit microcontroller in wireless biomédical sensors

This paper focuses on the design of an ultra low power 8-bit microcontroller for wireless biomédical sensors using advanced low power techniques such as Operand Isolation, Clock-Gating, Multi-Threshold Voltage and Power Gating. In addition, we have conducted a study based on the area, timing performances and power consumptions by benchmarking different low power design techniques. These statistical data allow us to have a thorough understanding of the various low power techniques. Finally, the fully implemented low power design shows that a total core power reduction of about 67.43% was achieved with a small area overhead of 0.3% compared to the original design while maintaining an operating clock frequency of 100 MHz at 900mV supply voltage These designs are implemented using Chartered Advantage High Speed 65nm Generic Multi-threshold Technology Libraries.
Fast track open ileo‐colic resections for Crohn's disease

Objective Introduction of multimodal rehabilitation programmes after open colonic surgery for noninflammatory bowel disease has reduced hospital stay to about 2–3 days, but no data are available from open ileo‐colic surgery for Crohn's disease with multimodal rehabilitation regimens. Therefore, the aim of study was to assess outcome after ileo‐colic resections for Crohn's disease with multimodal rehabilitation.
Analyzing Social Roles using Enriched Social Network on On-Line Sub-Communities

Analyzing the social roles inside on-line communities became a big challenge nowadays. The on-line communities formed around exchange platforms (e.g., forums) create an increasing source of data for analyzing user’s behavior. This paper proposes an exploratory analysis of communities in news website based on its sub-communities. Actually, we assume that people who participate in forum debate in news websites focus their participation in one or a very few topics (also called context), i.e., they formed the sub-communities. These subcommunities, will help us to find the contextual celebrity: the pertinent users in the sub-communities. We based our analysis on a dataset composed by 11,143 users writing more than 35,000 posts on 57 different forums grouped in 3 topics, and on social networks enriched with relations extracted from the content of the users’ posts. Keywords-Social role; Social network; On-line community.
Interlocking Factor Markets and Agrarian Development: A Review of Issues

IT is being increasingly appreciated in the literature on agrarian development that many of the key issues cannot be, analyzed without an understanding of the nature of interlinkage of factor markets (particularly those of land, labor and credit) in the specific institutional context of a poor agrarian economy. To take a simple but important example, land reforms in the form of land redistribution and intervention in the land market alone cannot be effective if the existing links between land and credit contracts are ignored and a viable alternative to landlords as the major source of credit for small tenants and other peasants is not found. Quite often a landlord and his tenant enter into several transactions at the same time: in land renting, in wage labor hiring, in production and consumption credit, in cost sharing of purchased inputs. in marketing of output, etc., all as part of a comprehensive, interlinked contract encompassing several markets. Generalizing from his experience with the hill peasants of Orissa, Bailey (1966) notes: "The watershed between traditional and modern society is exactly this distinction between single-interest and multiplex relationships". (He goes on to comment that in the cognitive map of the peasant single-interest functionallyspecialized relationships are to be made-with due caution-only with outsiders, those who are outside his moral community.) In the general-equilibrium framework of economic theory or some of the. computable planning models markets, of course, are inter-related by assumption, but they do not usually explore (a) how the interlinkage of markets reinforces the impact of imperfections in each market, (b) how different transactions are sometimes personalized in an inter-locking system of (unequal) exchange among the same participants in order to get around the problem of non-existence of a complete set of markets and (c) how differential adjustment mechanisms operate in different factor markets (like price mechanism in one market and quantity rationing in a related market). Yet without posing and analyzing these issues it is difficult to understand the functioning of allocation and accumulation (and hence income and wealth distribution) processes in agriculture. The literature on these issues is still
The Sarbanes Oxley Act, Auditor Independence and Accounting Accruals: An Empirical Analysis

We provide evidence on the relation between office-level client importance and abnormal accruals in a pre-SOX period and a post-SOX period. We find that in the pre-SOX period the relation is not significant for the overall sample. However, it is significantly positive for the sub-sample of firms with relatively weak governance mechanisms. More importantly, we find that for this sub-sample the positive relation between client importance and abnormal accruals remains statistically significant even in the post SOX period. Our results suggest that (i) auditor independence was not widely compromised in pre-SOX periods as presumed by the proponents of SOX, (ii) strong governance mechanisms mitigate the potentially adverse effects of client importance on auditor independence, and (iii) SOX has not been successful in mitigating the adverse effects of client importance on auditor independence for firms with weak governance.
Determinants of E-Commerce Adoption by Franchisors: Insights from the U.S. Market

E-commerce has grown tremendously over the past decade. This paper focuses on E-commerce adoption within the franchising sector. We formulate various hypotheses on the factors that influence the adoption of an E-commerce strategy by franchisors, namely the percentage of company-owned stores in the network, network size and age, franchisor resources (franchising fees and franchising royalties), and the allocation of exclusive territories to franchisees. The empirical study relies on a sample of 486 franchise networks in the U.S. market. Our findings suggest that the percentage of company-owned stores and the brand image, as represented by network size, both exert a significant and positive impact on the adoption of an E-commerce strategy, whereas network age and franchising royalties exert a significant and negative impact on the adoption of such a strategy. These findings are discussed with respect to previous research results.
Activation of Orphan Receptors by the Hormone Relaxin

Relaxin is a hormone important for the growth and remodeling of reproductive and other tissues during pregnancy. Although binding sites for relaxin are widely distributed, the nature of its receptor has been elusive. Here, we demonstrate that two orphan heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide binding protein (G protein)–coupled receptors, LGR7 and LGR8, are capable of mediating the action of relaxin through an adenosine 3′,5′-monophosphate (cAMP)–dependent pathway distinct from that of the structurally related insulin and insulin-like growth factor family ligand. Treatment of antepartum mice with the soluble ligand-binding region of LGR7 caused parturition delay. The wide and divergent distribution of the two relaxin receptors implicates their roles in reproductive, brain, renal, cardiovascular, and other functions.
The Trypanosoma brucei gambiense Secretome Impairs Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Maturation, Cytokine Production, and Allostimulatory Capacity of Dendritic Cells

ABSTRACT Trypanosoma brucei gambiense, a parasitic protozoan belonging to kinetoplastids, is the main etiological agent of human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), or sleeping sickness. One major characteristic of this disease is the dysregulation of the host immune system. The present study demonstrates that the secretome (excreted-secreted proteins) of T. b. gambiense impairs the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced maturation of murine dendritic cells (DCs). The upregulation of major histocompatibility complex class II, CD40, CD80, and CD86 molecules, as well as the secretion of cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-10 (IL-10), and IL-6, which are normally released at high levels by LPS-stimulated DCs, is significantly reduced when these cells are cultured in the presence of the T. b. gambiense secretome. Moreover, the inhibition of DC maturation results in the loss of their allostimulatory capacity, leading to a dramatic decrease in Th1/Th2 cytokine production by cocultured lymphocytes. These results provide new insights into a novel efficient immunosuppressive mechanism directly involving the alteration of DC function which might be used by T. b. gambiense to interfere with the host immune responses in HAT and promote the infectious process.