Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blood and milk prolactin and the rate of milk synthesis in women

In women, the concentration of prolactin in the plasma increases in response to nipple stimulation. This response has led to the assumption that prolactin influences the rate of milk synthesis. To investigate this hypothesis we have measured 24 h milk production, the short‐term (between breastfeeds) rates of milk synthesis and the concentration of prolactin in the blood and breastmilk, from 1 to 6 months of lactation in eleven women. Over the long term, the 24 h milk production remained constant (means +/− S.E.M.): 708 +/− 54.7 g/24 h (n = 11) and 742 +/− 79.4 g/24 h (n = 9) at 1 and 6 months, respectively. The average short‐term rate of milk synthesis (calculated from the increase in breast volume between breastfeeds; means +/− S.E.M.) did not change: 23 +/− 3.5 ml/h (n = 23) and 23 +/− 3.4 ml/h (n = 21) at 1 and 6 months, respectively. However, significant variation in the short‐term rate of milk synthesis (from < 5.8 to 90 ml/h) was found both between breasts, measured concurrently (coefficient of variation, c.v. = 72%), and within the same breast, measured over consecutive breastfeeds (c.v. = 85%). The basal and suckling‐stimulated concentrations of prolactin in the plasma (means +/− S.E.M.) declined from 1 to 6 months (basal, from 119 +/− 93 to 59 +/− 29 micrograms/1; peak, from 286 +/− 109 to 91 +/− 44 micrograms/l). In contrast, the concentration of prolactin in milk was much lower than in plasma, and decreased only slightly from 1 to 6 months of lactation (fore‐milk, from 26.4 +/− 10 to 23.3 +/− 9.8 micrograms/l; hind‐milk, from 18.9 +/− 5.1 to 13.2 +/− 6.3 micrograms/l). The concentration of prolactin in the milk was related to the degree of fullness of the breast, such that the concentration was highest when the breast was full. We found no relationship between the concentration of prolactin in the plasma and the rate of milk synthesis in either the short or long term. However, the relationship between the concentration of prolactin in milk and the degree of fullness of the breast suggests that the internalization of prolactin, after binding to its receptor, may be restricted when the alveolus is distended with milk.
Economic growth in India: the role of physical and social infrastructure

We investigate the role of physical and social infrastructure in economic growth in India after controlling for other important variables such as investment, labour force, and trade, using the Two‐Stage Least Squares (TSLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) techniques, for the period 1970 to 2006. In this context we develop a composite index of physical infrastructure stocks and examine its impact on output. We find that physical and social infrastructures have a significant positive impact on output apart from gross domestic capital formation and international trade. Further, the causality analysis supports the results, revealing unidirectional causality from infrastructure development and human capital to output growth in India.
Internal Audit, Alternative Internal Audit Structures and the Level of Misappropriation of Assets Fraud

In recent years, the importance of good corporate governance has received significant public and regulatory attention. A crucial part of an entity's corporate governance is its internal audit function. At the same time, there has been significant public concern about the level of fraud within organizations. The purpose of this study is to assess whether organizations with an internal audit function are more likely to detect and self-report fraud than those without. In this study, we use a unique self-reported measure of misappropriation of assets fraud for the first time. The fraud data are from the 2004 KPMG Fraud Survey, which reported fraud from 491 organizations in the private and public sector across Australia and New Zealand. The internal audit data are from a separate mail survey sent to the respondents of the KPMG Fraud Survey. We find that organizations with an internal audit function are more likely than those without such a function to detect and self-report fraud. Furthermore, organizations that rely solely on outsourcing for their internal audit function are less likely to detect and self-report fraud than those that undertake at least part of their internal audit function themselves. These findings suggest that internal audit adds value through improving the control and monitoring environment within organizations to detect and self-report fraud. These results also suggest that keeping the internal audit function within the organization is more effective than completely outsourcing that function.
Standard or Smokescreen? Implementation of a Voluntary Environmental Code

According to classical free market doctrine, no more should be expected of a business, even a large business, than that it operate within the law, and the law should protect the autonomy and rationality of the enterprise. After all, it is argued, a firm is the very model of instrumental rationality. However, the social costs of moral indifference—distorted priorities, defrauded consumers, degraded environments, deformed babies—have created an irrepressible demand for enhanced accountability, more external regulation, and a stronger sense of social responsibility.
Improving market access opportunities for urban small, medium and micro‑enterprises in South Africa

Since the democratic transition of 1994, the promotion of the small, medium and micro-e nterprise (SMME) economy has been a core focus of South African government policy. With high levels of unemployment and poverty in urban areas, the impact of this policy intervention is most critical for city development. Given South Africa’s chequered history, the national government’s focus is on transforming the prospects for enterprises owned by black South Africans, who were disadvantaged under apartheid. This article examines the range of contempo rary policy initiatives to address business constraints on market access and catalyse new market opportunities for black-o wned enterprises in urban South Africa. The ar ticle concentrates on two themes: 1) building links into private sector supply chains, especially through supplier diversity, and 2) building links into public sector markets through public procurement. It is shown that current policy directions recognise that the national government has a limited capacity to implement SMME improvement and build competitive black-o wned SMMEs by itself, which has prompted support for private sector initiatives. In addition, the government is struggling to practice what it preaches and use its own procurement capacity to assist
Force enhancement in single skeletal muscle fibres on the ascending limb of the force–length relationship

SUMMARY It has been assumed that force enhancement in single fibres of skeletal muscles only occurs on the descending, and not the ascending or plateau region, of the force–length relationship. This assumption has been based, however, on theoretical considerations or isolated experiments, in which neither stretch conditions nor fibre lengths were optimized for force enhancement. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the residual, steady-state force enhancement following active stretch in single muscle fibres of frog on the ascending limb of the force–length relationship. Twenty-nine stretch experiments on ten single fibres from the lumbrical muscle of the frog Rana pipiens were carried out on the ascending limb of the force–length relationship. Force enhancement was observed in 28 out of the 29 tests. Moreover, the force produced for stretch experiments finishing at optimal fibre length always exceeded the force obtained for an isometric contraction at optimal length. We conclude from these results that steady-state force enhancement occurs systematically on the ascending limb of the force–length relationship, and that the steady-state force in the enhanced state can easily exceed the maximal isometric force of the fibre.
Revising ideas about environmental determinism: Human–environment relations in the Pacific Islands

Rapid cooling and sea–level fall around AD 1300, perhaps accompanied by increased storminess, had major impacts on Pacific Island environments including water–table fall, reef–surface death, increased lagoonal turbidity, and the conversion of seawater embayments to brackish–water wetlands. These environmental changes had severe and lasting impacts on Pacific Island societies, largely associated with a massive (perhaps 80 per cent) reduction in the food resource base on some islands. Conflict ensued, coastal villages were abandoned on high islands in favour of fortified inland sites, settlements on large atoll islands were dispersed. It is clear that environmental change a the major cause of last–millennium cultural transformation in the Pacific Islands, a conclusion which is likely to apply elsewhere.
The Effectiveness of Grievance Processes in New Zealand: A Fair Way to Go?

Grievances are a contentious facet of contemporary employment relations and yet the amount of in-depth research evidence is limited. This study uses a real-time approach, following a set of New Zealand grievance cases as they proceeded through mediation. The public debate has focused on allegations of opportunist employees exploiting the system. Our findings, however, identify a group of employees who were seeking to remain with their employer, but who lacked influence and lost their jobs. In these situations the law was unable to provide employment protection, while employers had the dominant influence on these outcomes. These findings contribute to the international debate regarding the justice offered through newer grievance resolution systems.
Dihydroceramide-based Response to Hypoxia*

Background: The role of the oxygen-dependent dihydroceramide desaturases during hypoxia is unknown. Results: Desaturases are rapidly, directly, and reversibly inhibited by hypoxia, independently of hypoxia-inducible factor, markedly increasing dihydroceramides that in turn inhibit cell proliferation. Conclusion: Desaturase activity alters the balance of dihydroceramides/ceramides, regulating cell proliferation in hypoxia/reoxygenation. Significance: Dihydroceramide desaturases are oxygen biosensors generating dihydroceramides that may be useful as hypoxia biomarkers. To understand the mechanisms of ceramide-based responses to hypoxia, we performed a mass spectrometry-based survey of ceramide species elicited by a wide range of hypoxic conditions (0.2–5% oxygen). We describe a rapid, time-dependent, marked up-regulation of dihydroceramides (DHCs) in mammalian cells and in the lungs of hypoxic rats. The increase affected all DHC species and was proportional with the depth and duration of hypoxia, ranging from 2- (1 h) to 10-fold (24 h), with complete return to normal after 1 h of reoxygenation at the expense of increased ceramides. We demonstrate that a DHC-based response to hypoxia occurs in a hypoxia-inducible factor-independent fashion and is catalyzed by the DHC desaturase (DEGS) in the de novo ceramide pathway. Both the impact of hypoxia on DHC molecular species and its inhibitory effect on cell proliferation were reproduced by knockdown of DEGS1 or DEGS2 by siRNA during normoxia. Conversely, overexpression of DEGS1 or DEGS2 attenuated the DHC accumulation and increased cell proliferation during hypoxia. Based on the amplitude and kinetics of DHC accumulation, the enzymatic desaturation of DHCs fulfills the criteria of an oxygen sensor across physiological hypoxic conditions, regulating the balance between biologically active components of ceramide metabolism.
Re‐aligning the Stakeholders in Management Research: Lessons from Industrial, Work and Organizational Psychology

The publication of the Starkey and Madan (2001) report represents a timely and valuable contribution to an ongoing debate across a range of applied disciplines, concerning the nature and purpose of social research. The call for stakeholder alignment, culminating in the production of new knowledge that is both theoretically and methodologically rigorous on the one hand, and socially relevant on the other, is, in our view, to be greatly welcomed. However, the Mode 2 approach advocated by Starkey and Madan will not satisfy these fundamental requirements. Drawing on recent analyses of the nature, causes and consequences of the academic-practitioner divide in the subfield of industrial, work and organizational psychology, we offer an alternative, four-fold taxonomy of the varieties of managerial knowledge. Within our alternative framework, research that is low on rigour but high on relevance (a likely consequence of the wholesale adoption of a Mode 2 approach) is characterized as ‘Popularist Science’. ‘Pedantic Science’, by contrast, is high on rigour but low on relevance, while ‘Puerile Science’ meets neither requirement. Only ‘Pragmatic Science’ will meet the twin imperatives of rigour and relevance. Whilst it is highly desirable that Pragmatic Science should dominate the management field, there are considerable barriers that impede its widespread adoption at the present time, not least the limited availability of researchers who possess the requisite sociopolitical and methodological competencies. The immediate imperative that has to be addressed, therefore, is the question of how best to close this competency gap, a fundamental precondition of stakeholder realignment.
Diffusion tensor imaging as potential biomarker of white matter injury in diffuse axonal injury.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Multiple biomarkers are used to quantify the severity of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to predict outcome. Few are satisfactory. CT and conventional MR imaging underestimate injury and correlate poorly with outcome. New MR imaging techniques, including diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), can provide information about brain ultrastructure by quantifying isotropic and anisotropic water diffusion. Our objective was to determine if changes in anisotropic diffusion in TBI correlate with acute Glasgow coma scale (GCS) and/or Rankin scores at discharge. METHODS Twenty patients (15 male, five Female; mean age, 31 years) were evaluated. Apparent diffusion coefficients (ADCs) and fractional anisotropy (FA) values were measured at multiple locations and correlated with clinical scores. Results were compared with those of 15 healthy control subjects. RESULTS ADC values were significantly reduced within the splenium (Delta18%, P =.001). FA values were significantly reduced in the internal capsule (Delta14%; P <.001) and splenium (Delta16%; P =.002). FA values were significantly correlated with GCS (r = 0.65-0.74; P <.001) and Rankin (r = 0.68-0.71; P <.001) scores for the internal capsule and splenium. The correlation between FA and clinical markers was better than for the corresponding ADC values. No correlation was found between ADC of the internal capsule and GCS/Rankin scores. CONCLUSION DTI reveals changes in the white matter that are correlated with both acute GCS and Rankin scores at discharge. DTI may be a valuable biomarker for the severity of tissue injury and a predictor for outcome.
Investment Styles and Performance in the Australian Unlisted Wholesale Property Fund Market

Abstract Unlisted wholesale property funds are an established property investment product which offers institutional investors an attractive approach for exposure to the Australian commercial property market. This research benchmarks the investment styles of the property funds covered by the Mercers unlisted property fund index with reference to IPD/PCA Property Investor Digest indices over the 2001–2009 period. Based primarily on tracking error analysis, this research identified a range of structured and active investment styles in the selected property funds. This appears to be linked to debt levels and to be sector specific with the relatively highly geared office property funds being the most affected by changes in property market conditions. Further research is recommended as to the impact of debt funding on investment performance measures. However, this research shows how investment evaluation techniques can be a valuable decision making tool for an astute investment into unlisted wholesale property funds.
How Second Order Are Local Elections? Voting Motives and Party Preferences in Belgian Municipal Elections

Abstract A defining characteristic of second-order elections is that voters base their decision on considerations that were developed for a different policy level. Therefore, this kind of elections does not contribute to the quality of democratic representation. Municipal elections are often considered as second-order elections. In this article, we use data from an exit poll (n = 4,591) held during the 2012 municipal elections in Belgium. Results suggest that although voters predominantly invoke local aspects as determining their vote choice, still three-quarters votes for the same party locally as for federal elections. Among voters who deviate from their federal party preference, knowing local candidates and concern about local policy issues are the main sources of deviation. The conclusion therefore is that local candidates do make a difference and contribute strongly to the salience of electoral decisions on the local level.
Conditional Asset Pricing and Stock Market Anomalies in Europe

This study provides European evidence on the ability of static and dynamic specifications of the Fama-French (1993) three-factor model to price 25 size-B/M portfolios. In contrast to US evidence, we detect a small-growth premium and find that the size effect is still present in Europe. Furthermore, we document strong time variation in factor risk loadings. Incorporating these risk fluctuations in conditional specifications of the three-factor model clearly improves its ability to explain time variation in expected returns. However, the model still fails to completely capture cross-sectional variation in returns as it is unable to explain the momentum effect.
Immigration, Conflict, and Redistribution

We study how the possibility of a conflict between natives and immigrants shapes income redistribution in democracies. Conflict erupts when immigrants are given less than what they could obtain by resorting to confrontation. That in turn can make natives vote for lower tax rates and lower public spending. We show that income redistribution, both vertical (from the rich to the poor) and horizontal (from natives to migrants), decreases with the level of immigration. This is because the threat of conflict intensifies as the migrant population becomes bigger. Inequality softens the effect of immigration on tax rates but reduces horizontal redistribution. Despite the threat of conflict, the welfare of the native population unambiguously increases with the stock of migrants.
Use of nude mouse xenografts as preclinical drug screens: Further studies on in vitro growth of xenograft tumor colony‐forming cells

Previous studies suggested tumor colony‐forming cells (CFC) grown from xenografts might be useful as a preclinical, in vitro drug screen. To further evaluate this possibility, eight melanoma and six ovarian carcinoma xenografts were established from untreated patients and tested for in vitro CFC growth. For each tumor, linear relationships between cells plated and colony (30 cells or > 75 μm diameter) and cluster (10–30 cells or 50–75 μm) growth were observed. All eight melanomas grew sufficient colonies (≥30) for in vitro drug assessment, although four required hypoxic (pO2 = 40) incubation to reliably attain this level of growth. Only one in six of the ovary xenografts consistently grew enough colonies, and growth was not significantly improved by hypoxic incubation, or addition of luteinizing hormone, follicle‐stimulating hormone, or steroid hormones. Cloning efficiencies (colonies + clusters/cells plated) for tumors demonstrating adequate growth ranged from 0.01% to 03%. For most tumors, no direct relationship was observed between characteristics of xenograft tumors (size) or their resulting cell suspensions (viabilities, cell yield) and CFC growth. Cell suspensions were incubated with a 3 log concentration of nine established chemotherapeutic agents. Resulting dose‐effect curves were linear and showed no plateaus of drug effect. Analyzing 447 in vitro drug trials on six melanomas and one ovarian carcinoma, interexperiment variability was high. Cell lines were established from three xenografts using a low concentration of fetal bovine serum (1%), and also examined for in vitro drug sensitivity. Using both liquid culture isotope incorporation and a colony‐forming assay, drug sensitivity profiles for the cell lines were nearly identical to those for parent xenograft CFC. However, assays performed using the cell lines were more reproducible than those using xenograft tissue. The authors conclude that tumor CFC can be reliably grown from melanoma xenografts, but in vitro drug assays using these xenografts are poorly reproducible. The xenografts are a resource for establishing cell lines, and drug assays performed using these lines are highly reproducible. Similarities in drug sensitivity profiles for parent xenograft CFC and derived cell lines suggest that, despite poor reproducibility, repetitive assays using melanoma CFC accurately reflect some properties of cells which sustain tumor cell growth.
Reaping the benefits of two worlds: An explanatory study of the cash and the accrual accounting information roles in local governments

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to explore the coexistence of cash accounting and accrual accounting systems through an investigation of the roles they fulfill in Greek municipalities. Design/methodology/approach - – The survey results are based on the answers of the financial department principals of 106 municipalities to a structured questionnaire. The roles of accounting investigated are informed by Ansari and Euske's model. Findings - – It appears that cash accounting information prevails in the major function of decision making, with accrual accounting information playing a secondary role. Larger municipalities seem to use accounting data more extensively than smaller ones for negotiations, both in accrual and cash terms. Originality/value - – The study sheds light on the actual use of accrual accounting information in a public sector setting, where customarily decisions were based on cash accounting considerations.
Risk Aversion under Profit Maximization

Beginning initially with the work of Friedman and Savage and later with the work of Markowitz, and Tobin, risk aversion became a subject of wide interest in economics.1 The fundamental justification of risk aversion has since been firmly linked with utilitarian economics. The purpose of this paper, however, is to explore an alternative explanation of risk averse behavior for the firm based not on
Poor but Happy: Volunteer Tourists’ Encounters with Poverty

Abstract This article explores how young volunteer tourists encounter and negotiate poverty in rural Kenya. Using a longitudinal psychosocial methodology, I demonstrate how poverty can be conceptualized as a threatening ‘object’ to volunteer tourists, inducing unconscious anxiety by challenging Western materialistic lifestyles and identities. Volunteer tourists negotiate this anxiety in three ways: by transforming poverty into a source of moral redemption; by allowing poverty to become subsumed into a seductive, exotic landscape so that it can be admired and consumed; and by constructing impoverished communities as ‘poor but happy’. It is argued that these neutralizing constructions act as barriers, preventing the intimate engagement with communities that volunteer tourism promises and lessening the potential of poverty to shock, move and even change those who come into contact with it.