Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Formal and informal care arrangements for the disabled elderly in France

In a context of population ageing, the demand for long-term care is rising. While relatives remain the major source of care provision for disabled elderly, most OECD countries tend to foster the use of professional care, also called formal care, when individuals live at home. This thesis studies the determinants of home care arrangements for the disabled elderly in the context of France. What are the determinants of formal care consumption, at both the extensive and intensive margins? How do formal and informal care providers adjust to their provision constraints? The four chapters present original empirical evidence on these questions in the French context. They build on micro-econometric frameworks and use national survey data, administrative data or management ﬁles from a professional provider. The first Chapter studies the care provided by children to a disabled elderly parent. The second Chapter estimates the price-elasticity of the demand for formal care. The third Chapter analyzes how the decision to consume formal care is affected by the generosity of the public financing and the regulation of home care providers. The fourth Chapter focuses on the travel costs borne by home-care providers and their effect on the home care provision. The demand for formal care is found to be fairly little sensitive to its price, while the regulation of the supply is more likely to affect care arrangements.
Cointegration and Regime-Switching Risk Premia in the U.S. Term Structure of Interest Rates

To date the cointegrating properties and the regime-switching behavior of the term structure are two separate strands of the literature. This paper integrates these lines of research and introduces regime shifts into a cointegrated VAR model. We argue that the short-run dynamics of the cointegrated model are likely to shift across regimes while the equilibrium relation implied by the expectations hypothesis of the term structure is robust to regime shifts. A Markov-switching VECM approach for U.S. data outperforms a linear VECM. We find significant shifts in risk premia and interest rate volatility. These regime shifts reflect changing inflation expectations and shifts in monetary policy, respectively
Profiting from Innovation: Firm Level Evidence on Markups

While innovation is argued to create value, private incentives of firms to innovate are driven by what part of the value created firms can appropriate. In this paper we explore the relation between innovation and the markups a firm is able to extract after innovating. We estimate firm-specific price-cost margins from production data and find that both product and process innovations are positively related to these markups. Product innovations increase markups on average by 5.1% points by shifting out demand and increasing prices. Process innovation increases markups by 3.8% points due to incomplete pass-through of the cost reductions associated with process innovation. The ability of the firm to appropriate returns from innovation through higher markups is affected by the actual type of product and process innovation, the firm's patenting and promotion behavior, the age of the firm and the competition it faces. Moreover, we show that sustained product innovation has a cumulative effect on the firm's markup.
Antidiabetic Effect of Cleome droserifolia (Cleomaceae)

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Cleome droserifolia is used in egyptien traditional medicine for treatment of diabetes mellitus. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the possible protective effects of Cleome droserifolia methanolic extract (CDE) against pancreas β-cells' damage and antioxidant defense systems in alloxan induced diabetic rats. Materials and methods: Experimental diabetes was induced by a single dose of alloxan (150 mg/kg) administered by intraperitoneal way. The oxidative stress was measured by tissue MDA levels, reduced glutathione (GSH) content and by enzymatic activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) in pancreas. Biochemical observations were further substantiated with histological examination of pancreas. Results: The increase in blood glucose and MDA levels with the decrease in GSH content and in enzymatic activities were the salient features observed in diabetic rats. Administration of CDE (0.31g/kg bw/day, orally) for 30 days caused a significant reduction in blood glucose and MDA levels in alloxan treated rats when compared with diabetic rats. Furthermore, diabetic rats treated with CDE showed a significant increase in the activities of both enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants when compared to those of diabetic rats. Degenerative changes of pancreatic β-cells in alloxan treated rats were minimized to near normal morphology by administration of CDE as evidenced by histopathological examination. Conclusion: Results clearly indicate that Cleome droserifolia treatment exerts a therapeutic protective nature in diabetes by decreasing oxidative stress and pancreatic β-cells' damage which may be attributed to its antioxidative potential.
Variation in Chitosan and Salicylic Acid Efficacy Towards Soil-borne and Air-borne Fungi and Their Suppressive Effect of Tomato Wilt Severity

Two resistance inducers (RIs), chitosan and salicylic acid (SA), were assessed in vitro for their antifungal activity against ten tomato phytopathogenic fungi i.e. Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici, F. oxysporum f. sp. radicis-lycopersici, F. solani, Verticillium dahliae, Rhizoctonia solani, Colletotrichum coccodes, Pythium aphanidermatum, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Botrytis cinerea, and Alternaria solani. The impact of these RIs, applied as soil drench, on Verticillium wilt, Fusarium wilt, and Fusarium Crown and Root Rot severity and on growth parameters of tomato cv. Rio Grande plants were also investigated. Chitosan (0.5-4 mg/ml) and SA (1-25 mM) inhibited mycelial growth of all pathogens in Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) medium in a concentration-dependent manner, with the greatest inhibition achieved using the highest chitosan and SA concentrations. Inter specific variations in sensitivity to chitosan and SA were detected. P. aphanidermatum and S. Sclerotiorum were the most sensitive to both RIs. Single treatments with chitosan (4 mg/ml) and SA (10 mM) resulted in varied degree of protection against wilt diseases. Chitosan-and SA-based treatments resulted in 42.1-73.68, 60.86-78.26 and 45- 50% reductions in wilt severity, as compared to VD-, FOL- and FORL-inoculated and untreated controls, respectively. All growth parameters noted were enhanced using RIs compared to pathogen-inoculated controls. In fact, SA-based treatment had significantly increased plant height, root and aerial part fresh weights by 17.94, 52.17 and 33.33%, by 23.01, 55.40 and 29.72%, and by 17.72, 50 and 46.84%,respectively, while compared to VD-, FOL- and FORL-inoculated and untreated plants. Chitosan-treated plants showed increment in their height, root and aerial part fresh weights by 13.81, 62.16 and 38.97%, respectively, compared to FORL-inoculated and untreated control. Results from this investigation showed that SA and chitosan may be used as potential inducers of systemic acquired resistance for successfully controlling fungal tomato diseases in Tunisia.
Statistical study of high-latitude plasma flow during magnetospheric substorms

Abstract. We have utilised the near-global imaging capabilities of the Northern Hemisphere SuperDARN radars, to perform a statistical superposed epoch analysis of high-latitude plasma flows during magnetospheric substorms. The study involved 67 substorms, identified using the IMAGE FUV space-borne auroral imager. A substorm co-ordinate system was developed, centred on the magnetic local time and magnetic latitude of substorm onset determined from the auroral images. The plasma flow vectors from all 67 intervals were combined, creating global statistical plasma flow patterns and backscatter occurrence statistics during the substorm growth and expansion phases. The commencement of the substorm growth phase was clearly observed in the radar data 18-20min before substorm onset, with an increase in the anti-sunward component of the plasma velocity flowing across dawn sector of the polar cap and a peak in the dawn-to-dusk transpolar voltage. Nightside backscatter moved to lower latitudes as the growth phase progressed. At substorm onset a flow suppression region was observed on the nightside, with fast flows surrounding the suppressed flow region. The dawn-to-dusk transpolar voltage increased from ~40kV just before substorm onset to ~75kV 12min after onset. The low-latitude return flow started to increase at substorm onset and continued to increase until 8min after onset. The velocity flowing across the polar-cap peaked 12-14min after onset. This increase in the flux of the polar cap and the excitation of large-scale plasma flow occurred even though the IMF Bz component was increasing (becoming less negative) during most of this time. This study is the first to statistically prove that nightside reconnection creates magnetic flux and excites high-latitude plasma flow in a similar way to dayside reconnection and that dayside and nightside reconnection, are two separate time-dependent processes.
Frequency Content Signatures for Letter Writing: Normal and Dyslexic Children

Dyslexia severely impedes specific learning disabilities, reading and writing in particular, owing to impairment of the language processing area located in the left hemisphere of the human brain. It poses a stumbling block to development of an educated competent and competitive society, besides consequences from feeling incompetent. Most previous research examined deficit in reading. Our work attempt to extract signatures of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals to feature writing deficit in dyslexic children. The approach will constitute an objective method to identify children with writing deficits early for intervention programs, if successful. Six children, two normal and four dyslexic, were recruited for our study. EEG signals along the neurological pathway (C3, C4, P3 and P4) for writing are acquired. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is applied to transform the EEG in time domain into frequency domain so that signature features in frequency content during letter writing task can be extracted. Results showed that the frequency spectrum of EEG for the normal HighIQ and dyslexic Capable group is trapezoidal and crown shaped. This infers only one major frequency component of neural activity during writing for the former while two for the latter. The frequency spectrum of EEG for both groups is found to exhibit one peak in the alpha-subband and another in the beta-subband. The frequency of peak in the alpha-subband is less than 13Hz, while that in the beta-subband is 13-30Hz, which agrees with previous findings. However, the peak frequency within the beta-subband is found to be 13-20 Hz for the normal HighIQ group while 13-27 Hz for the dyslexic Capable group. This implies that the latter commands higher neural activity in letter writing task.
Influence of variations in thickness of buccal cortical bone on stress distribution around immediately loaded mandibular implants: A non-linear finite element study

Objective: To investigative the influence of immediate loading on the stress distribution around dental implants with reductions in buccal cortical bone thickness. Materials and Methods: Three bone level dental implants (3.8mm, 4.5mm and 5.0mm diameters and a standard length of 10mm) were modeled and each placed in three mandibular bone segments having variations in buccal cortical bone thickness (2.0mm, 1.5mm and 1.0mm). A total of 9 such models were created and discretized with tetrahedral elements of parabolic displacement function. Implant-bone interface was simulated with non-linear contacts zone with friction. Implants were assumed to be placed at an insertion torque of 40Ncm and the fixation force was mathematically calculated for each of the three implants. A uniformly distributed vertical static load of a 150N was applied to the horizontal surfaces of the abutments. The overall stress distribution of von Mises criteria and micro-strain were recorded along the contact areas of implant and surrounding bone and statistically analyzed. Results: At an insertion torque of 40Ncm the pre-load calculations indicate a reduction in the compressive stresses as the diameters of the implants increase with fixation forces of 93.14N, 83.49N and 75.49N for the 3.8mm, 4.5mm and 5.0mm diameter implants. The maximum stresses were seen in the upper one third of the buccal cortical bony plates which tends to reduce as the diameter of the implant increases. The peak von Mises stresses were 173MPa, 126MPa and 98MPa for the 3.8mm, 4.5mm and 5.0mm implants. The total maximum mesh displacement seen for the 3.8mm, 4.5mm and 5.0mm models was 55
Lifestyle and Rheumatoid Arthritis: Prevention and Non-Pharmacological Treatment

Background: In rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the immune system, which usually fights infections, attacks the joints by error, making them swollen, stiff and aching: over time it can cause severe disability. In order to contrast this illness, Medicine focused on early diagnosis in the belief that early care is important for prognosis. As it often happens, pharmacological treatments have overshadowed behavioural factors which importantly affect frequency and severity of RA, with underuse of their preventive and curative potential.Materials and methods: Our review focuses on the main known risk and protective factors for RA as they emerge from the available literature. The reference period considered in our bibliographic research starts from 1991 to 2015.Results and conclusion: Many preventive factors contribute to reduce the frequency and severity of RA as well as changing some risk behaviours. We have detailed all the available evidences for each of the relevant aspects in the prevention of RA. Clinicians should first consider suggesting changes in lifestyle, before prescribing pharmacological therapies in order to prevent insurgence of RA, reduce burden of disease and improve quality of patients' life.
The Discovery of a Very Massive Star in W49

Very massive stars (M>100 M$_{\odot}$) are very rare objects, but have a strong influence on their environment. The formation of this kind of objects is of prime importance in star formation, but observationally still poorly constrained. We report on the identification of a very massive star in the central cluster of the star-forming region W49. We investigate near-infrared K-band spectroscopic observations of W49 from VLT/ISAAC together with JHK images obtained with NTT/SOFI and LBT/LUCI. We derive a spectral type of W49nr1, the brightest star in the dense core of the central cluster of W49. On the basis of its K-band spectrum, W49nr1 is classified as an O2-3.5If* star with a K-band absolute magnitude of -6.27$\pm$0.10 mag. The effective temperature and bolometric correction are estimated from stars of similar spectral type. After comparison to the Geneva evolutionary models, we find an initial mass between 100 M$_{\odot}$ and 180 M$_{\odot}$. Varying the extinction law results in a larger initial mass range of 90 - 250 M$_{\odot}$.
Determinants of Nonprofit Board Size and Composition

Recently, many empirical studies have examined the determinants of corporate boards of directors. Using an agency theory framework, the authors explain how nonprofit boards are structured. Although nonprofits cannot disburse profits to their contributors, the role played by their boards of trustees in monitoring and advising managers is analogous to that of corporate boards of directors. Using a sample of Spanish foundations, the authors show that nonprofit board determinants, such as organizational complexity and financing structure, are similar in many ways to those of corporate boards. However, nonprofit age illustrates the different natures of these organizations and their voluntary boards.
Impact of Organizational Culture on Employee Job Performance in a Large Scale Apparel Company (BASL-Finishing)

This study is focused to identify the impact of organisational culture on employee job performance in a large scale apparel company (BASL – Finishing). This research attempts to fill the gap of literature related to this topic by studying the situation of the Sri Lankan apparel industry and to provide more empirical evidence on the impact of organizational culture on employee job performance by investigating and measuring the possible relationships between organizational culture and job performance in BASL – Finishing. The data were collected from a random sample consisted of 100 individuals from BASL – Finishing representing managerial level, staff level and operational level employees. The data were obtained by a questionnaire consisted of 65 statements with five point Likert scale. The data were analysed using SPSS (version 16.0) including univariate and bivariate analyses. According to the research findings, organizational culture had a positive relationship with job performance of employees. Then, it is accepted that organizational culture had a moderate impact on employee job performance. According to the results of regression analysis, it can be concluded that 27% of variation in job performance is accountable for organizational culture. It is vital to make organizational culture strong in order to enhance the job performance of employees by improving adaptability, mission, involvement, and consistency of culture. Keywords: Organizational Culture, Job Performance, Apparel Industry
Using Australian Sheep Breeding Values to increase lean meat yield percentage

This study describes the impact of Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBV) for post-weaning weight (PWWT), C-site fatness (PFAT) and eye muscle depth (PEMD) on lamb carcasses within the Australian Sheep Industry CRC Information Nucleus Flock. These results are taken from the 2007 drop progeny, consisting of ~2000 lambs slaughtered at a target weight of 21.5 kg. These lambs were the progeny of sires selected to ensure genetic diversity across various production traits. As expected, the PWWT ASBV increased weight at slaughter, and hot standard carcass weight. Dressing percentage was markedly improved by increasing PEMD ASBV, thus prime lamb producers will be maintaining an animal of similar weight on farm, but delivering a markedly larger carcass at slaughter. Lean meat yield % (LMY%) was highest in the progeny of sires with low PFAT ASBV, which decreased whole carcass fatness and increased muscularity. PWWT ASBV affected carcass composition but had little impact on LMY%, as the decreased fatness was largely offset by increased bone, with relatively little change in muscle content. Lastly, PEMD ASBV had little impact on whole carcass LMY%, but did appear to cause some level of muscle redistribution to the higher value loin cuts, in turn increasing the value of the carcass lean.
Edutainment with Videos and its Positive Effect on Long Term Memory

Purpose of the Study: Millennials, like many college students, watch more content, academic or not, on the Internet than on any other media source. The authors investigate how online content such as the videos on YouTube.com can be used as a tool to reach today’s student, capture their attention and interest, and thereby increase the retention of academic content. The study is to extend the existing research on the use of video content in the classroom and introduces the concept of long-term retention of material.
STRESS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Taking into account the changes that are currently taking place in our country, it is clear that these changes, which occur in almost all companies, lead to new stress factors for both employees and the organization. Occupational stress is a major problem for employees and managers, but also for the whole society. The issue of stress in organizations has given birth to many debates and studies. It is a common theme that is addressed by managers, employees and consultants from different perspectives. According to a study by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, in the European Union, work-related stress is the second work-related health issue after dorsal disorders. It affects 28% of EU employees. The European Parliament is fully involved in addressing issues related to the psychological support of the staff. Preventing work-related stress is one of the objectives set out in the Communique of the European Commission for Employment and Social Affairs regarding their new health and safety at work strategy. Manifestations of stress in organizations are easily observable, being manifested by behaviors such as: difficulties in adapting to the changes required to work or the dramatic drop in labor productivity. Also a double action is met: both the person who passes through the stressful situation and at the organization level on which it is reflected the existence of a stressful environment. This paper aims to address the implications of workplace stress, symptoms of stress in the workplace and strategies to eliminate and prevent stress at work This paper represents an exploratory research based on qualitative methods, being consulted various sources of information: the literature, case studies, media articles, reports of relevant organizations, etc.
Suitability of brachiaria grass as a trap crop for management of Chilo partellus

The cereal stemborer Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) is a major insect pest of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) and maize (Zea mays L.) in Africa. Trap cropping systems have been shown to be a valuable tool in management of this pest. To optimize trap cropping strategies, an understanding of host‐plant preference for moth oviposition and host suitability for larval survival on potential trap plants is a prerequisite. Therefore, we assessed seven brachiaria accessions (Poaceae) for preference by C. partellus moths and subsequent larval performance. In two‐choice tests with a local open‐pollinated maize variety (cv. Nyamula), significantly higher numbers of eggs were deposited on brachiaria accessions Marandu, Piata, and Xaraes than on maize, whereas fewer eggs were recorded on plants of Mulato II, Mulato I, and Cayman. There was a significant and negative correlation between the trichome density on plant leaves and C. partellus oviposition preference for brachiaria. In addition to poor larval performance on brachiaria, there was no clear ranking in the accessions regarding larval orientation, settling, arrest, and food ingestion and assimilation. First instars did not consume leaf tissues of brachiaria plants but consumed those of maize, which also suffered more stem damage than brachiaria plants. No larvae survived on brachiaria plant tissue for longer than 5 days, whereas 79.2% of the larvae survived on maize. This study highlights the preferential oviposition of C. partellus on brachiaria plants over maize and the negative effects that these accessions have on subsequent larval survival and development. Our findings support the use of brachiaria as a trap crop for management of C. partellus through a push‐pull technology.
Ranging behaviour of a juvenile Bearded Vulture (Gypaetus barbatus meridionalis) in South Africa revealed by GPS satellite telemetry

A second-year Bearded Vulture was equipped with a GPS transmitter and located on average 10 times a day from 6 September 2007 to 22 June 2008. During this period, the individual ranged in an area of ca. 38,500 km2 across the mountainous regions of Lesotho and the north-eastern Cape province of South Africa, thus covering on average 66 km/day, mainly in areas covered by scrubland and herbaceous vegetation. Three different activity areas with a temporal overlap of locations within them were observed. The ranging behaviour could be explained by two non-exclusive alternative hypotheses: food searching and territory exploration. The information provided here may serve to identify potential threats for the species, such as poisoning, collision with power lines, food scarcity and persecution.