Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influence of exercise on vitamin B-6 metabolism

approved: _ ,,. ,„. {J James E. Leklem The present study was designed to investigate the effects of exercise on vitamin B-6 metabolism. Four groups of subjects (intermittent, college, untrained, and high school) consisting of nineteen male and two female individuals, participated in the study. The subjects exercised either on a bicycle ergometer, by running three 1500 meter intervals, or both. Blood samples drawn prior to exercise (pre), after exercise (post), and 30 minutes after exercise (30 minute post), were analyzed for plasma pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP), plasma B-6 (PB6), glucose, hemoglobin and hematocrit. A 24-hr urine collection the day before and the day of exercise was analyzed for urinary B-6 (UB6), 4-pyridoxic acid (4PA), creatinine, and
A Dosimetric Characterization of an Electronic Brachytherapy Source in Terms of Absorbed Dose to Water

Miniature x-ray sources developed by Xoft Inc. are used for clinical high dose rate brachytherapy treatments. The characterization of these Xoft Axxent electronic brachytherapy sources follows a modification of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine's Task Group 43 formalism (TG43U1). These sources were characterized in terms of air-kerma strength at the University of Wisconsin Medical Radiation Research Center. This thesis investigates the absorbed dose to water parameters as described in TG-43U1 for the Axxent sources. In particular, the dose-rate constant was determined, which is the necessary parameter to obtain absorbed dose to water from the TG-43U1 formalism.
The impact of working capital management on cash holdings of large and small firms: evidence from Jordan

Liquidity is a firm’s ability to pay its current obligations as they come due and thus remain in business in the short run, which reflects the ease with which assets can be converted to cash. The objective of working capital management (WCM) is to minimize the cost of maintaining liquidity while guarding against the risk of insolvency, working capital policy applies to short-term decisions, and capital structure finance applies to long-term decisions.Several studies have been conducted on the impact of WCM on cash holding levels. The impact of WCM on liquidity and cash holding levels is analyzed in this study. The study also makes a comparison between large- and small-scale firms. Panel data for 62 Jordanian industrial firms covering an eleven-year period (2006–2016) have been analyzed. The descriptive analysis indicates that large firms hold more cash than small firms, as well as more debt, cash flow and growth.The findings of the data set indicate that WCM, as a variable (working capital net of cash), is a strong predictor of firm cash holding levels. When a firm has several cash substitutes, it will maintain low cash levels. The separate analysis shows that there are significant differences between small- and large-scale firms for determinates related to cash holding levels. Firm size and cash flow ratios were strong predictors of cash holding levels for both samples.
Analyzing Relationship between Innovation Strategies and Performance of Newspaper Firms in North and Central India

Globally, very distinct circumstances are faced by newspaper firms in different countries. While newspaper firms in developed countries are facing the downtrend, there is a sustained robust growth seen in India. This study seeks to determine if a relationship exists between Indian newspaper firms healthy performance vis-àvis various innovation strategies employed, as innovation strategies are supposed to be a positive influence in today’s economy. The innovation strategies analyzed here are product innovation, marketing innovation, and societal marketing innovation. The firm’s performance is measured by market and financial performance. The study outcome identifies the positive relationship between various innovation strategies and newspaper firm’s market and financial performance. Additionally, the best regression model is also given for the association between innovation strategies and firm’s performance. The conclusions of this study may be significant for the survival of the newsprint media market when a global slowdown is happening in newspaper firms of developed countries.
Do Vesting Requirements Increase the Incentive Effects of Stock Compensation for Rank-and-File Employees?

My dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter's primary purpose is to introduce readers to my dissertation. In it, I note the importance of research on motivating employees to provide effort. I also introduce my specific topic, how vesting requirements moderate the effectiveness of stock-based compensation in motivating employee effort, and discuss challenges that research confront when studying employee effort. In the second chapter, my co-authors, Willie Choi and Adam Presslee, and I identify seven factors researchers should consider when designing a real-effort task to ensure a strong, positive, and consistent link between participants' effort intensity and their performance. With these factors in mind, we design an experiment to test for incentive effects on effort and performance using three effort-intensive tasks: the decode task, the letter search task, and the slider task. Contrary to our expectation, we find significant variation across tasks in our ability to detect incentive effects and limit the effects of the seven factors, with the strongest evidence coming from the slider task. Our list of factors helps researchers design effort-intensive tasks that allow them to conduct a more effective test of theory. Following this conclusion, I use the slider task to effectively test the theories I use in the third chapter of this dissertation. In the third chapter, I provide evidence that firms commonly compensation rank-and-file employees with restricted stock that has vesting requirements, despite economic arguments that it is a less effective incentive than cash. Using an experiment, I investigate whether restricted stock compensation can motivate greater employee effort than other economically equivalent contracts. First, I demonstrate individuals view restricted stock compensation as a penalty contract. Second, I leverage research on framing and the endowment effect to predict a penalty-framed stock contract (representing restricted stock) will be valued more highly and motivate greater effort than an economically equivalent penalty-framed cash contract or an economically equivalent bonus-framed stock or cash contract. The results of my experiment are consistent with this prediction. That is, I find effort is greatest under a contract with the features of restricted stock with vesting requirements, which helps explain the prevalence of such compensation arrangements for rank-and-file employees.
Validating a Neonatal Risk Index to Predict Necrotizing Enterocolitis

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a costly and deadly disease in neonates. Composite risk for NEC is poorly understood and consensus has not been established on the relevance of risk factors. This two-phase study attempted to validate and test a neonatal NEC risk index, GutCheck NEC . Phase I used an E-Delphi methodology in which experts (n=35) rated the relevance of 64 potential NEC risk factors. Items were retained if they achieved predefined levels of expert consensus or stability. After three rounds, 43 items were retained (CVI=.77). Qualitative analysis revealed two broad themes: individual characteristics of vulnerability and the impact of contextual variation within the NICU on NEC risk. In Phase II, the predictive validity of GutCheck NEC was evaluated using a sample from the Pediatrix BabySteps Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW). The sample included infants born <1500 grams, before 36 weeks, and without congenital anomalies or spontaneous intestinal perforation (N=58,818, of which n=35,005 for empiric derivation and n=23,813 for empiric validation). Backward stepwise likelihood-ratio method regression was used to reduce the number of predictive factors in GutCheck NEC to 11 and derive empiric weights. Items in the final GutCheck NEC were gestational age, history of a transfusion, NICU-specific NEC risk, late onset sepsis, multiple infections, hypotension treated with Inotropic medications, Black or Hispanic race, outborn status, metabolic acidosis, human milk feeding on both day 7 and day 14 (reduces risk) and probiotics (reduces risk). Discrimination was fair in the case-control sample (AUC=.67, 95% CI .61-.73) but better in the validation set (AUC=.76, 95% CI .75-.78) and best for surgical NEC (AUC=.84, 95% CI .82-.84) and infants who died from NEC (AUC=.83, 95% CI .81-.85). A GutCheck NEC score of
The Next Step in Green Bond Financing

In recent years, green bonds have gained popularity as the investment industry is looking for environmentally friendly instruments. Yet, green bonds fragment bond issues, which reduces liquidity and thereby increases financing costs. Moreover, most green bonds are used to refinance existing activities. As a result, the growth in environmentally-friendly initiatives is limited. Finally, the product and market design of green bonds is such that prices are unlikely to reflect environmental performance accurately. This makes it hard for investors to differentiate among green bonds and allows firms to get away with window-dressing (greenwashing). We propose to split green bonds into regular bonds and green certificates. We show that this design 1. makes market prices more informative about environmental performance, 2. leads to more liquid securities and therefore lower financing costs, and 3. provides incentives to start new environmentally friendly projects rather than refinance existing ones.
Developmental refinements in temporally precise auditory brainstem circuits

Neurons of the medial superior olive (MSO) in the auditory brainstem encode interaural time differences in the order of microseconds. MSO neurons undergo key structural and functional refinements around hearing onset (postnatal day (P) 12 13) which depend on normal acoustic experience. Given the role of calcium in activity-dependent refinements, we assessed whether calcium is developmentally regulated in MSO neurons. We performed in vitro electrophysiological recordings on Mongolian gerbils from P10 P60. The whole-cell calcium current decreased progressively during development, and a low voltage-activated component was rapidly downregulated shortly after hearing onset. While action potentials elicited large, global dendritic signals before hearing onset, they decreased markedly in amplitude shortly after hearing onset. Masking binaural cues by raising gerbils in omnidirectional white noise accelerated the maturation of voltage-dependent calcium signalling, without altering other response properties. These findings suggest the presence of a short time window after hearing onset for calcium-dependent circuit refinements, which closes earlier upon high levels of acoustic activity.
An examination of the role of internal brand management: impact of contractual models

ABSTRACT Despite extensive evidence investigating the critical role of internal brand management on employees’ behavior, there is limited empirical evidence investigating the causality between internal brand management and trust/intention to stay in the hotel sector. This study examined employees’ brand commitment formation in the hotel industry and how it affects employees’ intention to stay, while considering the role of internal brand management, trust, and contractual models. An online survey method was performed to collect data in this study. A theoretical framework was tested using structural equation modeling. Results showed that internal brand management, trust, brand commitment, and intention to stay has a significant association, and these variables explained brand commitment and intention to stay. In addition, trust was a significant mediator in the relationship between internal brand management and brand commitment/intention to stay. Moreover, the relationships were moderated by contractual models. Overall, our findings contributed to the understanding of employees’ brand commitment processes in the hotel industry.
Drug consumption rooms Evidence and practice

For the past 10 to 20 years, drug consumption rooms (DCRs) have become an integrated part of the drug treatment and harm reduction strategy in a variety of countries in Western Europe, North America and Australia. However, they have not yet been established in the majority of countries worldwide. This briefing paper provides a short summary of the background, history and objectives of DCRs, and analyses available evidence regarding their impact. The second part of the briefing paper consists of an overview of the various DCRs in different countries, with a particular focus on the concepts used to develop these facilities with regard to the local political, cultural and social situation of each country.
Analyzing the Constructs of Stakeholder Engagement towards Renewable Energy Projects Success in Malaysia: A PLS Approach

Stakeholder engagement is increasingly becoming a part of practice in delivering successful project outcomes. However, there is a limitation of studies on how the stakeholder engagement approaches are being implemented primarily towards mega-scale projects such as renewable energy projects. This paper intends to fill the gap by analyzing the relationship between ten identified constructs of stakeholder engagement and renewable energy project success. Data was collected through survey questionnaires applied to the Renewable Energy Power Providers (REPPs) in Malaysia, using stratified random sampling. SPSS ver.23 and SmartPLS 3.0 was applied to test measurement and structural models of this study. The findings revealed that effective communication, continuous consultation, understand intention and behavior, implement plans, build good relationships, analyze changes, risk mitigation, compromise conflicts, understand project success and good project governance were significant critical constructs of stakeholder engagement that were confirmed as drivers that influenced the renewable energy project successfully. It is apparent that this study allows the contribution to the body of knowledge of project management and offers some important insights into limited literature on stakeholder engagement. This study also shed light on the key stakeholders’ groups in developing successful renewable energy projects.
Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders in a Southern Baffin Island Eskimo Settlement *

The only evidence we have that mental disorders occurred in the Eskimo population prior to Euro-Canadian contact is the reports by the early explorers of the “pibloktoq” syndrome and the reminiscences of the older surviving Eskimos (13). This study shows not only that most of the major mental disorders do exist in contemporary Eskimo settlements but also that their prevalence is high when compared to the rates found in southern communities. Furthermore, etiological implications would appear to revolve around changes in the social organization which are the result of the modernization process now taking place in the Arctic.
Financial literacy and student debt

ABSTRACT Using a large sample of over 1000 students from a major, land-grant, public university in Massachusetts, we examine the financial literacy level of college students, and its implications on the repayment of student debt. We find low levels of financial literacy (39.5%), particularly among female (26%), minority (24%) and first-generation (33%) students. Based on survey responses, we show that students with a deficit in financial literacy are more likely to underestimate future student loan payments; 38.2% of low-literacy students underestimate future payments by more than $1000 annually, while high financial literacy reduces the probability of significant payment underestimation by 17–18 percentage points. Furthermore, we find evidence of a financial literacy wage gap as students with low financial literacy expect significantly lower starting salaries than their high-literacy peers. As a result, low-literacy students are more vulnerable to unexpected, adverse shocks on their payment-to-income ratios that can impair their future creditworthiness and undermine their ability to service debt post-graduation.
Capacity of Endoscopic Ultrasound in the Preoperative Staging of Gastric Cancer

Objectives: To assess prospects of endoscopic ultrasonography in the diagnostic methods of gastric cancer in our study and to determine the impact of this technique on the later use of therapy. Material and methods: This is a retrospective study which was conducted on the patients with histopathologic diagnosis of gastric adenocarcinoma being sent to examination with endoscopic ultrasound. We compared the initial decision concerning the therapy being based on the conventional diagnostic techniques with the application of the final therapy, which is based on the results of endoscopic ultrasound. Results: The study included 92 patients in the period from 2005 to 2010. The diagnostic precision was 71% in stage T, while in stages T1, T2, T3 and T4 the diagnostic precision was 100, 42, 78, and 100%. The sensitivity and accuracy for differentiation of T1-2 from T3- 4 was 95 and 82%. We could not identify factors associated with obtaining a correct diagnosis in staging T. The diagnostic accuracy was 74% for N stage (N0: 55% Nx 81%). The presence of the free perigastric fluid was found in 5 cases while the presence of peritoneal carcinomatosis was subsequently confirmed in 2 cases. The result of endoscopic US has led to some changes in subsequent therapeutic management in 26 patients (28%). Conclusion: Endoscopic ultrasonography is a useful technique for loco-regional staging in gastric adenocarcinoma, which can have significant implications for the therapeutic treatment of these patients.
Competition in the Indian Banking Sector: A Panel Data Approach

The paper aims to assess the level of competition in the Indian banking sector overall as well as within the three groups of banks: foreign owned, state owned (public sector), and privately owned. We use panel data for the period from 2005–2018. We found that the overall competition in the Indian banking sector is strong, although there are differences by type of bank ownership. The Indian banking market continues to be characterized by monopolistic competition. The various policy measures taken by the Indian government in recent years appear to have helped boost competition. A policy suggestion would be to further liberalize the banking sector for foreign investment.
Revitalisasi Pendistribusian Zakat Produktif Sebagai Upaya Pengentasan Kemiskinan di Era Modern

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to determine the distribution of productive zakat in the form of venture capital carried out by BAZNAS (National Zakat Agency) as an effort to alleviate poverty in the city of Yogyakarta. The type of research is field research. The research method is qualitative descriptive. The results of the study revealed that the implementation of productive zakat capital had a positive impact on alleviating poverty, increasing income and bring forth new entrepreneurs. Therefore, the program of distributing productive zakat by BAZNAS in the city of Yogyakarta needs to be carried out continuously while improving the quality of the management and the resources.AbstrakTujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui distribusi zakat produktif dalam bentuk modal usaha yang dilakukan oleh BAZNAS (Badan Amil Zakat Nasional) dalam upaya pengentasan kemiskinan di kota Yogyakarta. Jenis penelitian yang dilakukan ini adalah penelitian lapangan. Adapun metode penelitian ini bersifat kualitatif deskriptif. Hasil penelitian mengungkapkan bahwa pengimplementasian modal zakat produktif berdampak positif dalam pengentasan kemiskinan, peningkatan pendapatan serta melahirkan wirausahawan baru. Oleh sebab itu, program penyaluran zakat produktif oleh BAZNAS kota Yogyakarta perlu terus dilakukan sembari meningkatkan kualitas pengelolaanya serta sumber dayanya.
Comparison of Body Fat Percentages in Nigerian Obese Females Using Field Methods

Objective: Assessment of correlation and agreement among three different field methods of determining Percent Body Fat (PBF) in obese University females. Methods: Convenience and snowball sampling technique were used to recruit 30 obese females for the study. PBF were obtained from each participant using three field methods of bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA), skinfold calliper (SC) and body adiposity index (BAI) respectively. Data were analysed using Pearson correlation, independent t-test and Bland-Altman plot. Alpha level was set at 0.05. Results: There was no significant relationship (r=0.376; p=0.30) between methods of assessing percentage body fat using SC and BIA. There was significant relationship (r=0.196; p=0.041) between BAI and BIA methods of assessing percentage body fat. There was no significant relationship in the results obtained between each of the other methods and skinfold calliper. Conclusions: There was a poor level of agreement amongst the methods despite the evidence or lack of relationships.
Controlling 3D Geovisualizations on Touch Screen – The Role of Users Age and Gestures Intuitiveness

The use of touch displays and 3D visualization are both increasing. Devices with touch displays are used daily, especially by the younger generation, who are also known as digital natives. This paper examines a comparison between digital natives and adults (so-called digital immigrants). We created a pilot user experiment (within-subject design, two tasks, Acer LCD touch monitor and digital terrain models textured with satellite images as stimuli) testing the ability of participants to solve simple spatial tasks by manipulating a 3D environment on a touch screen. The tasks required a hidden object to be found in the terrain. Our own testing tool, called 3DtouchR, was used for this purpose. Response time, gestures used, and virtual movements were recorded and analysed. Results revealed that digital natives were quicker with interaction (shorter response times and average speed of virtual movements). The success of solving each task was evaluated by determining the distance between the searched object and the virtual camera’s final position. An analysis of gestures used revealed a higher frequency of pan gesture usage in all test participants.