Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deal Structuring in Philanthropic Venture Capital Investments: Financing Instrument, Valuation and Covenants

Philanthropic venture capital (PhVC) is a financing option available for social enterprises that, like traditional venture capital, provides capital and value-added services to portfolio organizations. Differently from venture capital, PhVC has an ethical dimension as it aims at maximizing the social return on the investment. This article examines the deal structuring phase of PhVC investments in terms of instrument used (from equity to grant), valuation, and covenants included in the contractual agreement. By content analyzing a set of semi-structured interviews and thereafter surveying the entire population of PhVC funds that are active in Europe and in the United States, findings indicate that the non-distribution constraint holding for non-profit social enterprises is an effective tool to align the interests of both investor and investee. This makes the investor behaving as a steward rather than as a principal. Conversely, while backing non-profit social ventures, philanthropic venture capitalists structure their deal similarly as traditional venture capital, as the absence of the non-distribution constraint makes such investments subject to moral hazard risk both in terms of perks and stealing and social impact focus.
Development of hepatocellular carcinoma in chronic hepatitis B patients with advanced fibrosis is independent of viral genotype

Hepatitis B is leading cause of liver related morbidity in Asia with predominant genotypes B and C in East‐Asia. Data on Serum, intrahepatic viral‐markers, and long‐term follow‐up of prevalent genotypes (GT) B and C in patients with biopsy proven advanced fibrosis are sparse. To compare serum, intrahepatic viral‐markers and development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in GT‐B and C in patients with advanced fibrosis (Ishak ≥ 4). Sixty‐three treatment‐naïve patients identified with advanced fibrosis on liver‐biopsy performed between 1998 and 2000 at Singapore General Hospital. FFPE tissue was available for 59 patients and serum for 42 patients. HBV‐DNA was quantified in serum and liver while qHBsAg quantified in serum. Patients were followed‐up till December 2015. The median age was 47 ± 16 years, with 77.7% males. About 19 were GT‐B, 43 patients were GT‐C, and 1 had both GT‐B and C. Mean follow‐up was 13.5 years. The median serum HBV‐DNA was 6.25 ± 2.17 and 6.58 ± 1.85 log IU/ml, serum HBsAg was 3.29 ± 0.80 and 3.45 ± 1.85 log IU/ml, and intrahepatic HBV‐DNA was 0.52 ± 3.73 copies/cell and 0.4 ± 1.37 copies/cell in the GT‐B and C, respectively (P > 0.1 in all). Complete cirrhosis (Ishak‐6) was present in 47.6%, Ishak‐5 fibrosis in 33.3%, and Ishak‐4 fibrosis in 19% at recruitment. On follow‐up HCC developed in 8/43 in GT‐C and in 3/19 GT‐B (P = 0.86). Advanced age and cirrhosis were significant factors for development of HCC. No difference in serum HBV‐DNA, qHBsAg or intrahepatic HBV‐DNA was seen in the two genotypes. HCC development seen over long‐term follow‐up was independent of genotypes in patients with advanced fibrosis. J. Med. Virol. 89:845–848, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Conformational dynamics of a membrane protein chaperone enables spatially regulated substrate capture and release

Significance Molecular chaperones play key roles in maintaining protein homeostasis within cells. Membrane protein chaperones face particular challenges, as they not only protect highly aggregation-prone membrane protein substrates, but also need to achieve tight spatiotemporal coordination of their chaperone cycle. In this work, biochemical and NMR analyses address these questions and for the first time, to our knowledge, define the complete chaperone cycle for cpSRP43, an ATP-independent chaperone dedicated to integral membrane proteins. The study reveals that cpSRP43’s substrate binding domain samples at least three distinct conformations. This property enables it to be readily switched on by positive regulators in the soluble phase to ensure tight substrate binding and be switched off by the translocase at the membrane to ensure facile and productive substrate release. Membrane protein biogenesis poses enormous challenges to cellular protein homeostasis and requires effective molecular chaperones. Compared with chaperones that promote soluble protein folding, membrane protein chaperones require tight spatiotemporal coordination of their substrate binding and release cycles. Here we define the chaperone cycle for cpSRP43, which protects the largest family of membrane proteins, the light harvesting chlorophyll a/b-binding proteins (LHCPs), during their delivery. Biochemical and NMR analyses demonstrate that cpSRP43 samples three distinct conformations. The stromal factor cpSRP54 drives cpSRP43 to the active state, allowing it to tightly bind substrate in the aqueous compartment. Bidentate interactions with the Alb3 translocase drive cpSRP43 to a partially inactive state, triggering selective release of LHCP’s transmembrane domains in a productive unloading complex at the membrane. Our work demonstrates how the intrinsic conformational dynamics of a chaperone enables spatially coordinated substrate capture and release, which may be general to other ATP-independent chaperone systems.
Social Capital, Collective Action, and Adaptation to Climate Change

Abstract Future changes in climate pose significant challenges for society, not the least of which is how best to adapt to observed and potential future impacts of these changes to which the world is already committed. Adaptation is a dynamic social process: the ability of societies to adapt is determined, in part, by the ability to act collectively. This article reviews emerging perspectives on collective action and social capital and argues that insights from these areas inform the nature of adaptive capacity and normative prescriptions of policies of adaptation. Specifically, social capital is increasingly understood within economics to have public and private elements, both of which are based on trust, reputation, and reciprocal action. The public-good aspects of particular forms of social capital are pertinent elements of adaptive capacity in interacting with natural capital and in relation to the performance of institutions that cope with the risks of changes in climate. Case studies are presented of present-day collective action for coping with extremes in weather in coastal areas in Southeast Asia and of community-based coastal management in the Caribbean. These cases demonstrate the importance of social capital framing both the public and private institutions of resource management that build resilience in the face of the risks of changes in climate. These cases illustrate, by analogy, the nature of adaptation processes and collective action in adapting to future changes in climate.
Retroviral analysis of cardiac morphogenesis: discontinuous formation of coronary vessels.

Cellular progenitors of the coronary vasculature are believed to enter the chicken heart during epicardial morphogenesis between stages 17 and 27 (days 3-5) of egg incubation. To trace cells which give rise to the coronary arteries in vivo, we applied retroviral cell tagging procedures and analyzed clonal populations of vascular smooth muscle, endothelium, and connective tissue in the hearts of post-hatch chickens. Our data provide direct proof that (i) vascular smooth muscle progenitors begin to enter the heart at stage 17, substantially after the heart begins propulsive contractions; (ii) cardiac myocytes, vascular smooth muscle, perivascular fibroblasts, and coronary endothelial cells all derive from independent precursors when these cells migrate into the heart; (iii) endothelial cells of the coronary vessels have a different clonal origin than endothelial cells of the endocardium; (iv) coronary arteries form by the coalescence of discontinuous colonies (i.e., in situ vasculogenesis), each derived from a founder cell tagged at the time of retroviral injection (stages 17-18); and (v) coronary arteries contain discrete segments composed of "polyclones. " These studies indicate the feasibility of gene targeting to coronary progenitors through the use of recombinant retroviruses.
Devising appropriate service strategies for customers of different value: an integrated assessment model for the banking industry

Customer relationship management seeks to nurture relationships with customers by providing appropriate services for particular customers. Previous studies in this area have tended to examine either: (i) the improvement of service quality or (ii) the identification of customers who will bring the most value (and thus greatest profit). Few studies have attempted to integrate the two aspects of the problem. The present study addresses this deficiency by proposing a comprehensive assessment model that integrates a novel categorization of customers (using a customer pyramid) with a detailed analysis of particular service-quality attributes (using a performance control matrix) to provide more accurate guidance for practitioners in designing specific service-improvement strategies for particular quality attributes and particular customer categories. This integrated assessment model promises to be of particular benefit to service providers whose business resources are limited because it facilitates the design of appropriate service-improvement strategies that are tailored to specific customer groups and the service-quality attributes that are of importance to them.
Trading Out of the Global Food Crisis? The World Trade Organization and the Geopolitics of Food Security

The geopolitics of the Global Food Crisis and international trade has received limited scholarly attention, a significant omission given the major roles of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in structuring world food production and trade flows and as a principal inter-state governing mechanism of the global agro-food system. Analysing recent international policy actions framing the WTO as a ‘fix’ to the Global Food Crisis, this article points to the value of a critical geopolitics of agro-power sensitive to the spatial reconfiguration of production and power in the global agro-food system, problematising geospatial categories such as ‘North’ and ‘South’, and that takes seriously contests for control of geopolitical agents such as the WTO.
Board Compensation Practices and Agency Costs of Debt

Extant theory and empirical evidence indicate that equity-based compensation can align the interests of managers with those of shareholders, but it has a side effect of aggravating bondholder-shareholder conflicts by increasing managers' risk-shifting incentives. Recent evidence confirms that extending equity-based compensation to outside directors also is effective in aligning their interests with those of shareholders, but its adverse effects on the debt-related agency problems are unknown. In this paper, we examine how stock and stock option compensation for outside directors affects corporate bond yields in the secondary market. Our results show that the greater the ratio of outside directors' stock and option compensation to total compensation, the lower the average yield spreads on the firms' outstanding bonds, with stock compensation having a larger impact than option compensation. Further, the effect of equity-based compensation on yield spreads is stronger for firms with lower-rated debt.
A Scott-Type Regression Test of the Dividend Ratio Model

Tests of a representation of the efficient markets model (the dividend-rtaio model of Campbell and Shiller (1988a)) of the stock market can be made by regressing (transformed) ex-post values on (transformed) actual values and testing whether the slope coefficient is one. Such tests are run here with some improvements. The results of the tests are that the efficient markets model is strongly rejected with U.S. data 1901-1987 in favor of an alternative that stock prices should have been much less volatile. Copyright 1990 by MIT Press.
A High Step Up Hybrid Switch Converter Connected With PV Array For High Voltage Applications

This paper presents a step up DC-to-DC converter with hybrid switch capacitor technique having high voltage conversion ratio with small switch voltage stress . The converter is suitable for the applications where high voltage conversion is required. The proposed DC-DC converter has low voltage ratted MOSFET switch and is connected to PV array to get high output voltage at small duty ratios. Hence it has high efficiency. The principles of operations and the theoretical analysis are presented in this paper. All the simulations are done in MATLABSIMULINK Environment and results were obtained with voltage conversion ratio of 4.9.
The Development of Military Industrial Relations in Australia

Military industrial relations issues in Australia have recently taken a higher profile with theformation of a specialist pay tribunal and the emergence of a representative personnel association. In traditional military settings, industrial relations matters usually receive little prominence because of the coercive and normative compliance structures associated with military employment. However, since the early 1960s studies of military organizations have raised the question of convergence between the military and other large organizations. These scholars have argued that post-war technological and social changes have largely removed the historical isolation of military systems. Applied to an industrial relations context, this thesis raises issues about Service personnel having greater access to civilian employee practices. A developmental analysis of changes in Australian military industrial relations since 1945 identified a progression from a traditional setting to one that, in some respects, resembles established civilian industrial systems. The analysis suggests that the convergence tendency is likely to continue.
Polymerase chain reaction and sequencing for typing rhinovirus RNA

Primers were designed and tested for their ability to distinguish rhinoviruses from enterovi‐ruses. A primer set derived from the 5′‐UTR/VP coding region junction was able to amplify all the rhinovirus serotypes tested. Enteroviruses were either not amplified by these primer pairs or produced a band of larger size that could easily be discriminated from the rhinovirus‐specific product. In contrast, primers embedded in the 5′‐UTR region alone were able to amplify both rhinovirus and enterovirus RNA. It is shown that rhino‐viruses could be specifically typed by sequencing the amplicon derived from this 5′‐UTR set. The sequences of the 5′‐UTR region often previously unsequenced rhinoviruses were derived. The sequences obtained cluster into two groups: 18,41, 15, 30, 63, 31,56, and 44; and 17, 69, and 70. Ampliconsfrom serotypes 17, 69, and 70 also group by sequence with the equivalent region of HRV14 from the genetic database, while the others group with 2 and 89. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, inc.
Stochastic Unit Commitment in Isolated Systems With Renewable Penetration Under CVaR Assessment

Isolated regions and islands are facing imported fossil-fuel dependency, higher electricity prices, and vulnerability to climate change. At the same time, they are increasing their renewable penetration and, therefore, risk for electric utilities. Integrating stochastic energy resources in noninterconnected systems may take advantage of an intelligent and optimized risk-averse unit commitment (UC) model. This paper presents a two-stage stochastic UC model with high renewable penetration including reserve requirements for the efficient management of uncertainty. In order to account for the uncertainty around the true outcomes of load, wind, and photovoltaic (PV) generation, a minimum conditional value at risk term has been included in the model formulation. A stochastic measure of the value of the stochastic solution is used to evaluate the benefits of using stochastic programming. The model considers the need for reserves dependent on the forecasting horizon and the amount of renewable generation. Active power demand, and wind and PV generations are considered as probability distribution functions. The model is applied to the Lanzarote-Fuerteventura system in the Canary Islands, Spain, and Crete, Greece.
Industrial energy policy: a case study of demand in Kuwait

The purpose of building the industrial energy demand model was to assess the impact of possible policy options and forecast future energy demand under various assumptions including the impact of the possible removal of energy subsidies in accordance with the WTO agreement. The forecasting results of the three scenarios raise several important issues. With nominal energy prices staying the same (the status quo) and inflation and economic growth continuing to expand (i.e., baseline scenario), all industries are expected to have growing demand for energy. The consumption of energy in the industrial sector is projected to grow at an annual growth rate of about 3.5% throughout the forecast period. In the case of the moderate scenario, the consumption of energy in the industrial sector is projected to grow by only 1.9% annually throughout the forecast period. If all the energy subsidies are removed, as in the extreme scenario, the consumption of energy in the industrial sector is projected to grow by only 1.5% annually throughout the forecast period. Moreover, as for inter-fuel substitution, the model forecast indicates that the consumption of electricity and natural gas will decline while the consumption of oil products will increase in all scenarios. The results indicate that changing the price structure of energy resources should be done in a comprehensive manner. In other words, electricity prices should be adjusted upwards instantly with the adjustment of oil products and natural gas prices, otherwise, a massive inter-fuel substitution will occur within the various industries.
Increasing the Discovery Power and Confidence Levels of Disease Association Studies: A Survey

The majority of common diseases are influenced by multiple genetic and environmental factors such as Cancer. Even though uncovering the main causes of disease is deemed difficult due to the complexity of gene-gene and gene-environment interactions, major research efforts aim at identifying disease risk factors, especially genetic ones. Over the past decade, disease association studies have been used to uncover the susceptibility, aetiology and mechanisms of action pertaining to common diseases. In disease association studies, genetic data is analyzed in order to reveal the relationship between different types of variants, and a disease of interest. The ultimate goal of association studies is to facilitate susceptibility testing for disease prediction, early diagnosis and enhanced prognosis . Susceptibility testing and disease prediction are particularly important for diseases that can be prevented by diet, drugs or change in lifestyle. The discovered associations assist in understanding the molecular mechanisms influenced by the reported variants, and in identifying important risk factors. Current association studies suffer from several shortcomings. This report surveys the literature that addresses the shortcomings of current methods the identify genetic disease associations. In addition, it reviews the suggested solutions that either enhance some aspect of the methodologies, or complement them.
Model Checking Safety Properties through Simulation and Heuristic Search

—This paper presents an efﬁcient procedure to perform model checking of a concurrent process against a temporal logic formula, through the checking of a simulation between the description of the system and of the formula in the same formalism. The approach is applied, as an example, to processes deﬁned through a speciﬁcation language very compact, the well-know Calculus of Communicating Systems (CCS) deﬁned by Milner, but it can be applied also to different languages as Lotos and CSP. The algorithm to explore the search space for the simulation problem is based on a greedy technique. The experiments show that a considerable reduction of both state space size and time can be achieved with respect to traditional model checking algorithms.
The risk of oesophageal adenocarcinoma in a prospectively recruited Barrett’s oesophagus cohort

Background Varying rates of oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) complicating Barrett’s oesophagus (BO) have been reported. Recent studies and meta-analyses suggest a lower incidence, questioning the value of endoscopic surveillance. Aim We aimed to retrospectively examine the rate of OAC, risk factors and causes of death in a prospectively recruited BO cohort. Methods Data from patients with BO from a cohort from 1982–2007 were studied. Patients were subdivided into surveyed, failed to attend surveillance and unfit for surveillance. Standardised mortality ratios (SMR) were calculated for common causes of death. Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine which factors were associated with progression to OAC. Results In total, 671 BO patients (61% male) were studied; 37 (76% male) were diagnosed with OAC. OAC incidence was 0.47% per annum and stable across three decades (1982–1991 0.56%, 1992–2001 0.46%, 2002–2012 0.41% (p = 0.8)). All-cause mortality was increased for the whole cohort (SMR 163(95% CI 145–183)). Mortality from OAC appeared higher in patients who failed to attend surveillance (SMR 3216(95% CI 1543–5916)) compared with surveyed (SMR 1753(95% CI 933–2998)) and those unfit for surveillance due to co-morbidity (SMR 440(95% CI 143–1025)). Multivariable analysis identified low-grade dysplasia (HR 4.4(95% CI 1.56–12.43), p = 0.005) and length of BO (HR 1.2(95% (1.1–1.3)), p < 0.001)) as associated with OAC. Conclusions Progression to OAC appeared stable over three decades at 0.47% per annum. Patients with BO had a modest increase in all-cause mortality and a large increase in OAC mortality, particularly if fit for surveillance. Low-grade dysplasia and the length of the BO segment were associated with developing OAC.
Women's efforts to prevent pregnancy: consistency of oral contraceptive use.

CONTEXT An understanding of determinants of inconsistent pill-taking could be useful to service providers who are trying to help women prevent unwanted pregnancy. This article explores the predictors of inconsistent use in a nationally representative sample of U.S. women aged 15-44. METHODS Data on 1,485 pill users participating in the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth are used to describe users' characteristics, and logistic regression analyses are conducted to identify factors that predict inconsistent use (defined as missing two or more pills in a three-month period) among both users of the pill only and dual method users. RESULTS While 85% of pill users rely solely on the pill, 15% also use another method. Overall, 16% of users are inconsistent in their pill-taking (16% of those using the pill alone and 20% of dual method users). Among users of the pill only, Hispanic and non-Hispanic black women have a significantly increased likelihood of inconsistent use (odds ratios, 2.5 and 2.1, respectively), as do those who recently began use (2.7) and those who have had an unintended pregnancy (1.6). For dual method users, the odds are significantly elevated among women whose income is less than 250% of the federal poverty level (4.3) and among new users (4.5). CONCLUSION Service providers may need to better address consistency of pill-taking among women who have characteristics associated with inconsistent use.