Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Convertible Bonds as "Back Door" Equity Financing

This paper argues that corporations may use convertible bonds as an indirect (albeit possibly risky) method for getting equity into their capital structures in situations where adverse selection problems make a conventional stock issue unattractive. Unlike other theories of convertible bond issuance, the model of this paper highlights: 1) the importance of call provisions on convertibles; and 2) the significance of costs of financial distress to the Information content of a convertible issue.
Sexual Functioning and Partner Relationships in Women with Turner Syndrome: Some Empirical Data and Theoretical Considerations Regarding Sexual Desire

The aim of this study was to describe marital status, sexual history, and sexual functioning in a group of women with Turner syndrome, and to compare the results with general Swedish population data. The sample consists of 57 women over 18 years of age. Data were collected from an interview, and using two self-report questionnaires: the McCoy Sexual Rating Scale and the Relationship Rating Scale (RS). Compared to population data, the women with Turner syndrome were less likely to have a partner and had had their sexual debut later. Single women differed more from the general population than did women with a partner, regarding sexual desire and sexual activity. Several women with a partner reported sexual problems, but unanimously reported being satisfied with their sex life and partner relationship. The level of sexual desire in women with Turner syndrome is discussed in relation to Levine's model of human sexual desire, where psychological and social motivational factors are considered in addition to a biologically based sexual drive (Levine, 1992).
Biodiversity conservation problems and their implication on rangeland and ecotourism management in Gashaka-Gumti National Park, Nigeria

The study investigates the prevalence of conservation and management problems affecting biodiversity and their implications on rangeland productivity and ecotourism activities in Gashaka-Gumti National Park, Taraba State, Nigeria. Data were collected from villagers in support zone communities and staff of the park through questionnaires. The study revealed that farming on parkland, logging, Livestock grazing and poaching are the major problems affecting biodiversity in the park. More so, lack of manpower, insufficient funding and insecurity are the major management problems identified. Implication of these on rangeland productivity and ecotourism activities of the park was downward trend in range condition, low level of tourist inflow and revenue generated by the park as well as low benefit accruable to the local economy. To reduce the spate of illegal activities and its effects, it was suggested that, community participation, conservation awareness aimed at changing local people’s attitude and provision of incentives should be embarked upon by the management of the park and government. Keywords: Biodiversity, Ecotourism, Gashaka-Gumti National Park, Rangeland Problems, Nigeria
Data and evidence challenges facing place-based policing

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use an evaluation of a micro-place-based hot-spot policing implementation to highlight the potential issues raised by data quality standards in the recording and measurement of crime data and police officer movements. Design/methodology/approach The study focusses on an area of London (UK) which used a predictive algorithm to designate micro-place patrol zones for each police shift over a two-month period. Police officer movements are measured using GPS data from officer-worn radios. Descriptive statistics regarding the crime data commonly used to evaluate this type of implementation are presented, and simple analyses are presented to examine the effects of officer patrol duration (dosage) on crime in micro-place hot-spots. Findings The results suggest that patrols of 10-20 minutes in a given police shift have a significant impact on reducing crime; however, patrols of less than about 10 minutes and more than about 20 minutes are ineffective at deterring crime. Research limitations/implications Due to the sparseness of officer GPS data, their paths have to be interpolated which could introduce error to the estimated patrol dosages. Similarly, errors and uncertainty in recorded crime data could have substantial impact on the designation of micro-place interventions and evaluations of their effectiveness. Originality/value This study is one of the first to use officer GPS data to estimate patrol dosage and places particular emphasis on the issue of data quality when evaluating micro-place interventions.
The Effect of Organizational Structure on Employees' Job Performance in Private Hospitals of Ahvaz

The success of any organization depends on its performance. Any organization, office, section, group, system, or institute has a responsibility andeach organization can be said that has been created to conduct the particular task. Performance is also an activity, which is both conducted to do that task and also the result of the activity, in fact performance is pure result of person’s attempt, affected and changed by his abilities and characteristics as well as his perception of the responsibility and other factors.This study aims to determine the effect of organizational structure (structural aspects) on employees’ job performance of a private hospital in Ahvaz. This research is applied in terms of goal, and based on the manner of collecting data; it is descriptive of correlation-survey type. Statistical population includes all employees in the mentioned hospital in June, 2016 as 589 people, in which sample volume was calculated as 239 employees using Cochran formula. Research tool is the Stefan Robbins questionnaire of 24 questions to measure organizational structure and Patterson questionnaire of 15 questions to evaluate job performance. To check the reliability of questionnaires, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient test was used, the value of which for organizational structure was obtained as 0.86 and for job performance as 0.81. To determine the validity, content validity was used. To analyze data, Pearson correlation coefficient, multi-variable regression and single-sample T, given data normalization, were used. The results indicate that organizational structure (structural aspects) has a significant negative effect on job performance of employees in a private hospital of Ahvaz. That means, as regulations and complexity in the level (vertical, horizontal, geographical), formality and organizational concentration is more, employees’ job performance reduces.
Impact of Board Gender Diversity on Firm Value: International Evidence

This paper focuses on the impact of board gender diversity on firm performance. Using a sample of 880 listed firms in 10 developed countries covering a nine year period, we find that gender diversity has a negative effect on firm market performance. The result is consistent when different robustness checks are employed. A negative correlation can be explained by the fact that the presence of women on boards increases monitoring function. When the investors’ rights are well protected by the legal system, this extra monitoring may be costly for firms. This finding suggests that a quota for the exact anticipation of female directors on boards should be carefully considered.
Anaerobic Microbial Dissolution of Transition and Heavy Metal Oxides

Anaerobic microbial dissolution of several crystalline, water-insoluble forms of metal oxides commonly associated with the waste from energy production was investigated. An anaerobic N-fixing Clostridium sp. with an acetic, butyric, and lactic acid fermentation pattern, isolated from coal-cleaning waste, solubilized Fe2O3 and MnO2 by direct enzymatic reduction; CdO, CuO, PbO, and ZnO were solubilized by indirect action due to the production of metabolites and the lowering of the pH of the growth medium. Extracellular heat-labile components of the cell-free spent medium obtained from cultures without oxide solubilized a significant amount of Fe2O3 (1.7 μmol); however, direct contact with the bacterial cells resulted in the complete dissolution (4.8 μmol) of the oxide. Under identical conditions, the cell-free spent medium solubilized only a small amount of MnO2 (0.07 μmol), whereas 2.3 μmol of the oxide was solubilized by direct bacterial contact. Reduction of Fe2O3 and MnO2 by Clostridium sp. proceeds at different rates and, possibly, by different enzymatic systems. Fe(III) and Mn(IV) oxides appear to be used as sinks for excess electrons generated from glucose fermentation, since there is no apparent increase in growth of the bacterium concomitant with the reduction of the oxides. Dialysis bag experiments with Co2O3 indicate that there is a slight dissolution of Co (0.16 μmol) followed by precipitation or biosorption. Although Mn2O3, Ni2O3, and PbO2 may undergo reductive dissolution from a higher to a lower oxidation state, dissolution by direct or indirect action was not observed. Also, Cr2O3 and NiO were not solubilized by direct or indirect action. Significant amounts of solubilized Cd, Cu, and Pb were immobilized by the bacterial biomass, and the addition of Cu2+ inhibited the growth of the bacterium.
Generating livelihoods: a study of urban squatter settlements in Solomon Islands

This article reports the results of a survey of the livelihoods of 208 households in squatter settlements in Solomon Islands. The main sources of household income are selling betel-nuts and cigarettes and working in full-time and casual unskilled jobs. Those individuals generating incomes make up 28 per cent of total household members. Of those household members generating incomes, 46.6 per cent are females. Some 50.5 per cent of the respondents did not have existing savings to start their income-generating activities. The average income from informal activities is two times more than the average fortnightly income from casual and full-time employment and 1.5 times more than the national minimum wage. This analysis draws a number of implications from the findings. These include building a traditional marketplace for selling betel-nut, the need for the government to fast track the implementation of development projects in the larger provinces, the need for research to investigate if low-income earners are paid at the minimum wage rate or lower, the need for relevant government departments and non-governmental organisations to conduct community-based short courses in the settlements that focus on appropriate income-generating enterprises, and the need for in-depth study into employment regulations and conditions in Solomon Islands.
Contribution of Selected Gene Mutations to Resistance in Clinical Isolates of Vancomycin-Intermediate Staphylococcus aureus

ABSTRACT Infections with vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (VISA) have been associated with vancomycin treatment failures and poor clinical outcomes. Routine identification of clinical isolates with increased vancomycin MICs remains challenging, and no molecular marker exists to aid in diagnosis of VISA strains. We tested vancomycin susceptibilities by using microscan, Etest, and population analyses in a collection of putative VISA, methicillin-resistant S. aureus, and methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (VSSA) infectious isolates from community- or hospital-associated S. aureus infections (n = 77) and identified 22 VISA and 9 heterogeneous VISA (hVISA) isolates. Sequencing of VISA candidate loci vraS, vraR, yvqF, graR, graS, walR, walK, and rpoB revealed a high diversity of nonsynonymous single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). For vraS, vraR, yvqF, walK, and rpoB, SNPs were more frequently present in VISA and hVISA than in VSSA isolates, whereas mutations in graR, graS, and walR were exclusively detected in VISA isolates. For each of the individual loci, SNPs were only detected in about half of the VISA isolates. All but one VISA isolate had at least one SNP in any of the genes sequenced, and isolates with an MIC of 6 or 8 μg/ml harbored at least 2 SNPs. Overall, increasing vancomycin MICs were paralleled by a higher proportion of isolates with SNPs. Depending on the clonal background, SNPs appeared to preferentially accumulate in vraS and vraR for sequence type 8 (ST8) and in walK and walR for ST5 isolates. Taken together, by comparing VISA, hVISA, and VSSA controls, we observed preferential clustering of SNPs in VISA candidate genes, with an unexpectedly high diversity across these loci. Our results support a polygenetic etiology of VISA.
Region of Yeast TAF 130 Required for TFIID To Associate with Promoters

ABSTRACT TFIID, a multiprotein complex comprising the TATA-binding protein (TBP) and TBP-associated factors (TAFs), associates specifically with core promoters and nucleates the assembly the RNA polymerase II transcription machinery. In yeast cells, TFIID is not generally required for transcription, although it plays an important role at many promoters. Understanding of the specific functions and physiological roles of individual TAFs within TFIID has been hampered by the fact that depletion or thermal inactivation of individual TAFs generally results in dissociation of the TFIID complex. We describe here C-terminally deleted derivatives of yeast TAF130 that assemble into normal TFIID complexes but are transcriptionally inactive in vivo. In vivo, these mutant TFIID complexes are dramatically reduced in their ability to associate with all promoters tested. In vitro, a TFIID complex containing a deleted form of TAF130 associates poorly with DNA, but it is unaffected for interacting with transcriptional activation domains. These results suggest that the C-terminal region of TAF130 is required for TFIID to associate with promoters.
The Canada-France deep fields survey-II: Lyman-break galaxies and galaxy clustering at z 3 ?

We present a large sample of z � 3 U band dropout galaxies extracted from the Canada-France deep fields survey (CFDF). Our catalogue covers an effective area of � 1700 arcmin 2 divided between three large, contiguous fields separated widely on the sky. To IAB = 24.5, the survey contains 1294 Lyman-break candidates, in agreement with previous measurements by other authors, after appropriate incompleteness corrections have been applied to our data. Based on comparisons with spectroscopic observations and simulations, we estimate that our sample of Lyman-break galaxies is contaminated by stars and interlopers (lower-redshift galaxies) at no more than � 30%. We find that ! (�) is well fitted by a power-law of fixed slope, = 1.8, even at small (� < 10 '' ) angular separations. In two of our three fields, we are able to fit simultaneously for both the slope and amplitude and find = 1.8 ± 0.2 and r0 = (5.3 +6.8 −2.2)h −1 Mpc, and = 1.8 ± 0.3 and r 0 = (6.3 +17.9 −2.8 )h −1 Mpc (all spatially dependent quantities are quoted for a �-flat cosmology). Our data marginally indicates in one field (at a 3� level) that the Lyman-break correlation length r0 depends on sample limiting magnitude: brighter Lyman-break galaxies are more clustered than fainter ones. For the entire CFDF sample, assuming a fixed slope = 1.8 we find r0 = (5.9 ± 0.5)h −1 Mpc. Using these clustering measurements and prediction for the dark matter density field computed assuming cluster-normalised linear theory, we derive a linear bias of b = 3.5±0.3. Finally we show that the dependence of the correlation length with the surface density of Lyman-break galaxies is in good agreement with a simple picture where more luminous galaxies are hosted by more massive dark matter halos with a simple one-to-one correspondence.
How do Investors in the Korean Stock Market React to Nuclear Threats from North Korea

This article examines how investors react to nuclear threats from North Korea on the South Korean stock market. To investigate the differences in investor groups’ responses, we divide investors into three groups: domestic individual, domestic institution and foreign investors. In addition, we classify the nuclear threats into the one actual threat and the seven verbal threats and compare trading activities of investors against those in the peaceful period of 2004. The net-buying and LSV(1992) herding measures are applied to examine investors’ trading behavior. Our results show that it was only for the case of the actual threat that investors’ trades significantly differed with the peaceful period. In addition, our results show that the three investor groups reacted to the actual nuclear threat differently. When the actual nuclear threat occurred, individuals sold, institutes and foreigners bought stocks. Like in the peaceful period, institutes showed a positive slope for lagged returns whereas individuals displayed a negative slope. Foreigners, however, bought regardless of previous returns. Moreover, LSV herding measure increased in all investor groups.
Patterning of Pain and Power With Guided Imagery

Using Martha Rogers’ science of unitary human beings, changes in pain and power among 42 patients were examined in relation to the use of a guided imagery modality. Participants were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups and repeated measures MANCOVA was used to detect differences in pain and power over a 4-day period of time. The treatment group’s pain decreased during the last 2 days of the study. No differences in power emerged. Guided imagery appeared to have potential as a useful nursing modality for chronic pain sufferers.
Sexual Health Information Seeking Online Among Runaway and Homeless Youth

Research shows runaway and homeless youth are reluctant to seek help from traditional health providers. The Internet can be useful in engaging this population and meeting their needs for sexual health information, including information about HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Using a sample of homeless youth living in Los Angeles, California in June 2009, this study assesses the frequency with which runaway and homeless youth seek sexual health information via the Internet, and assesses which youth are more likely to engage in seeking health information from online sources. Drawing from Andersen’s (1968) health behavior model and Pescosolido’s (1992) network episode model, we develop and refine a model for seeking online sexual health information among homeless youth. Rather than testing the predicative strength of a given model, our aim is to identify and explore conceptually driven correlates that may shed light on the characteristics associated with these help seeking behaviors among homeless youth. Analyses using multivariate logistic regression models reveal that among the sample of youth, females and gay males most frequently seek sexual health information online. We demonstrate the structure of social network ties (e.g., connection with parents) and the content of interactions (e.g., e-mail forwards of health information) across ties are critical correlates of online sexual health information seeking. Results show a continued connection with parents via the Internet is significantly associated with youth seeking HIV or STI information. Similarly for content of interactions, more youth who were sent health information online also reported seeking HIV information and HIV-testing information. We discuss implications for intervention and practice, focusing on how the Internet may be used for dissemination of sexual health information and as a resource for social workers to link transient, runaway, and homeless youth to care.
Priorities of occupational health, safety, and environment issues based on national programs and regulations from the perspective of occupational health experts in Kashan city in 2017

Background: Safety, health, environment is one of the most important issues of human societies in the current and future. Prioritization is one of the important issues affecting the prevention of diseases and occupational accidents and environmental hazards; therefore, the aim of this study, prioritize current programs and regulations entrust to occupational health experts. Methods: The present study is a cross-sectional study of the descriptive type that was conducted on 151 occupational health experts of Kashan City in 2017. The data collection tool was a questionnaire that made by the researcher. Data analysis was conducted with (SPSS 16) and descriptive and analytical statistics. Results: The results showed that there is a statistically significant difference between items in the executive and supervisory sectors and the highest priorities are based on the mean and standard deviation of the scores assigned by occupational health experts: controlling mechanical factors and ergonomics within the context of occupational health controls in the executive sector. Priorities are based on the average and standard deviation of total scores allocated by occupational health experts: the most important priorities are safety in the protection of machines shield and fire safety, chemical safety, and electrical safety. Conclusion: The most important priority for all those present in the research, safety in the protection machine gears shield (transmission parts for gear belt buckles, etc.) should be considered as an important priority for officials and observers of the executive and supervisory sectors, and to maintain and to enhance safety at the workplace machine safeguarding is very important.
Identification of genes associated with resilience/vulnerability to sleep deprivation and starvation in Drosophila.

BACKGROUND AND STUDY OBJECTIVES Flies mutant for the canonical clock protein cycle (cyc(01)) exhibit a sleep rebound that is ∼10 times larger than wild-type flies and die after only 10 h of sleep deprivation. Surprisingly, when starved, cyc(01) mutants can remain awake for 28 h without demonstrating negative outcomes. Thus, we hypothesized that identifying transcripts that are differentially regulated between waking induced by sleep deprivation and waking induced by starvation would identify genes that underlie the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation and/or protect flies from the negative consequences of waking. DESIGN We used partial complementary DNA microarrays to identify transcripts that are differentially expressed between cyc(01) mutants that had been sleep deprived or starved for 7 h. We then used genetics to determine whether disrupting genes involved in lipid metabolism would exhibit alterations in their response to sleep deprivation. SETTING Laboratory. PATIENTS OR PARTICIPANTS Drosophila melanogaster. INTERVENTIONS Sleep deprivation and starvation. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS We identified 84 genes with transcript levels that were differentially modulated by 7 h of sleep deprivation and starvation in cyc(01) mutants and were confirmed in independent samples using quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Several of these genes were predicted to be lipid metabolism genes, including bubblegum, cueball, and CG4500, which based on our data we have renamed heimdall (hll). Using lipidomics we confirmed that knockdown of hll using RNA interference significantly decreased lipid stores. Importantly, genetically modifying bubblegum, cueball, or hll resulted in sleep rebound alterations following sleep deprivation compared to genetic background controls. CONCLUSIONS We have identified a set of genes that may confer resilience/vulnerability to sleep deprivation and demonstrate that genes involved in lipid metabolism modulate sleep homeostasis.