Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Handbook of sustainability management

Introduction to Sustainable Management Sustainable Development Corporate Social Responsibility and Reporting A Holistic Approach Towards Corporate Responsibility Benchmarking and Process Change for Green Supply Chain Management Developing an Adaptive Framework for Sustainable Supply Networks Sustainable Supply Networks by Design Energy Resource Management Globalization, Technology and Environment Japan for Sustainability: Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies, and Practices Sustainability Integration and Economic Performance Total Environmental Quality Management Sustainable Planning and Decision Making in Multi-Stakeholder Contexts Entrepreneurship and Sustainability System Dynamics and Sustainability Creating Sustainable Supply Chain Systems Sustainable Supply Chain Initiatives in the Korean Automobile Industry Environmental Information System Advanced Environmental Management and Innovation: A Theoretical Framework Business Strategies and Sustainability Environmental Assessment Tools A European Approach of Environmental Costs: A Case Study in the Spanish Road Freight Transport Industry Environmental Auditing and Compliance Sustainable Municipal Solid Waste Management and Recovery Sustainability Indicators and Indices Environmental Management Issues in Services Sustainable Development Through Global Learning and Teaching Energy Planning for Sustainable Development in India Corporate Sustainable Development: A Review and Development of a Research Model Academia-Corporate on Campus Sustainability Collaboration: An Exploration of the Construct.
Genome Sequence of Rhodococcus opacus Strain R7, a Biodegrader of Mono- and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

ABSTRACT Rhodococcus opacus strain R7 (CIP107348) degrades several mono- and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Here, we present the high-quality draft genome sequence of strain R7, consisting of 10,118,052 bp, with a G+C content of 67.0%, 9,602 protein-coding genes, and 62 RNAs genes.
A nonlinear sliding surface for discrete-time uncertain systems

This paper proposes a discretization behavior of nonlinear sliding surface based algorithms. Recently nonlinear surfaces are proposed by the authors to improve transient performance of continuous and discrete-time uncertain systems. The nonlinear surface changes system's closed loop damping ratio as output approaches the setpoint. In this paper we propose a nonlinear surface for the system represented by delta operator approach which unifies our continuous-time and discrete-time results.
Overcoming the Inherent Dependency of DEA Efficiency Scores: A Bootstrap Approach

This chapter summarizes a multi-year research effort to understand the role of process performance in the overall efficiency of banks. By focusing on the process as the unit of analysis, the authors consider how technology, human resources, and most importantly, the interaction between these factors of production contribute to overall performance. The results of this paper lead to a set of recommendations to managers of financial service organizations as to the most effective approaches for designing and managing their key service delivery processes.
The Measurements and Determinants of Budgetary Slack: Empirical Evidence of Listed Companies in Thailand

The new approach of budgetary slack measurement is introduced and used in the empirical investigation of the association between budgetary slack and its determinants. Comparisons of the results with other budgetary slack measurements are provided. Prior survey studies usually measure budgetary slack using management perceptions of the budget achievability. In this study, the ex post measure of firm’s annual budget achievability with the exclusion of earnings management through discretionary accruals has been used in an attempt to objectively measure budgetary slack. Both primary data from mailed survey questionnaires and secondary data from the annual financial statements are utilized in the analysis. The survey data on budget figures of the year 2009, perceived budget achievability, and all determinants are gleaned from 38 respondents working in the corporate level of listed non-financial firms in Thailand to match their firms’ annual financial statements, and the cross-sectional modified Jones (1995) model is employed to estimate discretionary accruals. Various determinants of budgetary slack are combined and classified into three categories: environmental factor, organizational factors, and individual factors. The study further examines those determinants on budgetary slack and compares their association with each budgetary slack measurement. The results show that the suggested measurement and the traditional measurement of budgetary slack are significantly, positively correlated and the association between budgetary slack and its determinants is relatively sensitive to the measurements of budgetary slack. This study contributes to prior literature an objective measure of budgetary slack. The respondents in this study are corporate management who involve extensively in budgeting process and are accountable for firms’ performance. Hence, the results in this study may suggest new evidence of organizational level.
Stable and unstable transformation by microinjection of macronucleoplasm in Paramecium.

Transformation by microinjection of macronucleoplasm in Paramecium caudatum was investigated. Macronucleoplasm with three genetic markers (behavior, trichocyst, and mating type) was injected into the macronucleus. To facilitate microinjection, in most cases, paramecia were immobilized in a gelatin (7.5%) solution. The injected cells began to express a dominant gene (cnrA+ or cnrB+) of the donor 9-24 hr after injection. Expression did not require cell division suggesting injected macronucleoplasm was capable of expressing a phenotype. The amount of injected macronucleoplasm appears to correlate with the frequency of successful expression but not to correlate with the time required for expression. After a number of fissions, the injected cells produced clones which had cells expressing the phenotype of the donor. This suggests that injected macronucleoplasm was replicated and expressed in the recipient cell lines. The transformed clones were classified into two groups. In one group, transformation was stable. All cell lines derived from the injected cells expressed a phenotype similar to the heterozygote of donor and recipient cells. In the other group, transformation was unstable. During the first five to seven fissions after injection, at each division, cells produced one daughter cell which later reverted to the recipient phenotype. After this unstable period, cells no longer produced the recipient phenotype but produced the donor phenotype exclusively. Donor and recipient phenotypes were, thus, segregated in different cell lines. Observation of genetic markers and analysis by computer simulation shed light on the mode of transmission of injected macronucleoplasm. In stable transformation, injected macronucleoplasm appears to be distributed equally to daughter cells. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Longitudinal examination of the skeletal effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and risperidone in boys.

OBJECTIVE In a previous cross-sectional study, we found lower bone mass during treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and risperidone in youths. Here, we evaluate the skeletal effects of these psychotropics at follow-up. METHOD Between April 2005 and July 2011, medically healthy 7- to 17-year-old males treated with risperidone for 6 months or more were enrolled through child psychiatry outpatient clinics and returned for follow-up 1.5 years later. Treatment history was extracted from the medical and pharmacy records. Anthropometric, laboratory, and bone mass measurements were obtained. Multivariable linear regression analyses compared participants who remained on risperidone at follow-up to those who had discontinued risperidone treatment as well as SSRI-treated versus SSRI-unexposed participants. RESULTS The sample consisted of 94 boys with a mean age of 11.8 ± 2.7 years at study entry. The majority had an externalizing disorder and had received risperidone and SSRIs for 2.5 ± 1.7 years and 1.6 ± 1.9 years, respectively, at study entry. By follow-up, 26% (n = 24) had discontinued risperidone. Compared to discontinuing risperidone, continuing it was associated with a decline in participants' age-sex-height-race-specific areal bone mineral density (BMD) z score at the lumbar spine (P < .04) and failure to increase radius trabecular volumetric BMD (P < .03), after accounting for significant covariates. In addition, receiving an SSRI was associated with reduced lumbar spine areal BMD z score and radius trabecular volumetric BMD at both study entry (P < .02 and P < .03, respectively) and follow-up (P < .06 and P < .03, respectively), but without further decline between the 2 visits. CONCLUSIONS Chronic SSRI treatment in children and adolescents is associated with reduced, albeit stable, bone mass for age, while chronic risperidone treatment is associated with failure to accrue bone mass.
The Influence of Kayaking and Rowing Sports Experience on Postural Response to Optic Flow

This study investigated the postural response of kayakers and rowers to imposed optic flow. The athletes, with experience in unstable water environments, should have a specific postural response to optic flow. 12 male participants with kayaking and rowing experience and 12 with no specific sports experience were asked to stand still with and without room motion. This study varied the amplitude and frequency of room motion and evaluated the trajectory of the center of pressure. The kayaking and rowing group were less influenced by imposed optic flow, and body sway was more closely synchronized to the oscillating room compared to the Non-athlete group. These results suggest that postural adaptation occurs in association with experience in kayaking and rowing.
A Simple Weight Initialization Technique and Incremental Learning for Improving Learning Rate of Radial Basis Function ( RBF ) Neural Network

-Weight initialization is one of the most effective techniques for improving the learning speed of Neural Network (NN). A simple weight initialization technique and incremental Learning for Radial Basis function (RBF) Neural Network is proposed in this paper. In this technique instead of assigning random weights to the network the average of initial and final weights are taken. So the number of epochs for training the network is reduced. The incremental Learning is used for new incoming input samples. It accommodates new input samples without retraining the whole network. Thereby the overall learning rate is improved and the accuracy also improved. The simple weight initialization technique and Incremental Learning have been evaluated over a Wisconsin breast cancer data set. The experimental result shows that the proposed method produce better accuracy and training time when compared to other techniques. Keywords--Neural Network (NN), Radial Basis Function (RBF), Weight Initialization, Learning Speed, Accuracy, Training Time
Multi-scale locally low-rank noise reduction for high-resolution dynamic quantitative cardiac MRI

Evaluation of myocardial T1 times is conventionally limited to a single temporal snapshot of the cardiac cycle, leaving the dependence between functional and tissue characterization unexplored. We recently proposed a technique that alleviates this limitation by acquiring dynamic quantitative myocardial T1 maps. However, tradeoffs between temporal resolution, scan duration and SNR limit the spatial resolution. In this work, we propose a multi-scale locally low rank noise reduction approach without parameter-tuning to enable high acceleration rates in the acquisition, facilitating superior spatial and temporal resolutions in dynamic myocardial T1 mapping.
New meta-analysis tools reveal common transcriptional regulatory basis for multiple determinants of behavior

A fundamental problem in meta-analysis is how to systematically combine information from multiple statistical tests to rigorously evaluate a single overarching hypothesis. This problem occurs in systems biology when attempting to map genomic attributes to complex phenotypes such as behavior. Behavior and other complex phenotypes are influenced by intrinsic and environmental determinants that act on the transcriptome, but little is known about how these determinants interact at the molecular level. We developed an informatic technique that identifies statistically significant meta-associations between gene expression patterns and transcription factor combinations. Deploying this technique for brain transcriptome profiles from ca. 400 individual bees, we show that diverse determinants of behavior rely on shared combinations of transcription factors. These relationships were revealed only when we considered complex and variable regulatory rules, suggesting that these shared transcription factors are used in distinct ways by different determinants. This regulatory code would have been missed by traditional gene coexpression or cis-regulatory analytic methods. We expect that our meta-analysis tools will be useful for a broad array of problems in systems biology and other fields.
Synergism of Dimethoxybenzosemiquinone Free Radicals and CD4+ T-Lymphocytes to Suppress Ehrlich Ascites Tumor

Abstract Numerous natural and synthetic quinone compounds possess significant antitumor properties. Various mechanisms have been proposed to account for these properties, including scission and degradation of tumor cell DNA, intracellular “redox cycling” to cogenerate semiquinone free radicals and reactive oxygen intermediates, and the interaction of semiquinone radicals with tumor cell surface flavoenzymes. However, no evidence has been presented to explain adequately the preferential attack on tumor cells by semiquinone radicals, as opposed to normal cells. To address this question, a synergistic interaction was examined. A therapy consisting of a mixture of L-ascorbate and 2,6-dimethoxy-p-benzoquinone, was used for in vivo evaluation. BALB/c mice were depleted of functional T-lymphocytes by xenogeneic monoclonal antibody pretreatment, challenged with Ehrlich ascites tumor, and administered the semiquinone radical-generating therapy. Mice depleted of CD4+ T-lymphocytes responded with rapidly fatal tumor progression, with significantly decreased mean survival times over controls, whereas less severe responses were observed in mice devoid of CD8+ T-lymphocytes. Mice depleted of both T-lymphocyte subpopulations responded with uninhibited tumor growth and rapid mortalities. When tumor challenge occurred after therapy, tumor growth was significantly delayed in mice enriched for CD4+ T-lymphocytes, with demonstrable increases in mean survival time over controls. This reagent combination had no significant effect on T-lymphocyte profiles in secondary lymphoid organs. These data suggest a synergistic phenomenon of semiquinone radical-induced cytostasis coupled with T-lymphocyte helper activity for optimal tumor suppression.
Volatile compounds and lactic acid bacteria in spontaneous fermented sourdough

The aim of this study is to identify the predominating lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in a spontaneous fermented wheat sourdough. At the same time, an investigation towards volatile compounds that were produced was also carried out. Lactobacillus plantarum has been identified as the dominant species of lactobacilli with characters of a facultative heterofermentative strain. The generated volatile compounds that were produced during spontaneous fermentation were isolated by solvent extraction method, analysed by gas chromatography (GC), and identified by mass spectrophotometer (MS). Butyric acid has been found to be the main volatile compound with relative abundance of 6.75% and acetic acid at relative abundance of 3.60%. Esters that were formed at relatively low amount were butyl formate (1.23%) and cis 3 hexenyl propionate (0.05%). Butanol was also found at low amount with relative abundance of 0.60%. The carbohydrate metabolism of Lactobacillus plantarum may contributed to the production of acetic acid in this study via further catabolism activity on lactic acid that was produced. However, butyric acid was not the major product via fermentation by LAB but mostly carried out by the genus Clostridium via carbohydrate metabolism which needs further investigation
The Risk Components of Liquidity

Does liquidity risk differ depending on our choice of liquidity proxy? Unlike literature that considers common liquidity variation, we focus on identifying different components of liquidity, statistically and economically, using more than a decade of US transaction data. We identify three main statistical liquidity factors which are utilized in a linear asset pricing framework. We motivate a correspondence of the statistical factors to traditional dimensions of liquidity as well as the notion of order and trade based liquidity measures. We find evidence of multiple liquidity risk premia, but only a subset of the financial liquidity factors are associated with significant risk premia. These are the factors that we relate to the dimensions of immediacy and resilliency, while the depth dimension does not command a risk premium in any of the models. Our results suggests caution when choosing liquidity variables in asset pricing applications, since liquidity premia may be reflected in only some dimensions of liquidity.
Comparison of Merger Impact on the Profitability Measures of EU Domestic & Cross Border Bank Acquirers

The study compares the M&A effect on the profitability measures of 63 completed EU banks. The cumulative total standardised abnormal return (CTSAR), which is a proxy for M&A and a long window of 60 days, were used to capture the impact and trends in the profitability of both acquirers. The profitability measures were hierarchically regressed against the CTSAR of the cross border and domestic banks acquirers. We found that M&A significantly reduces the profitability of the cross border acquirers but does not have such significant impact on the financial performance of the domestic acquirers. However, increase in the profitability of both acquirers reduces the cost efficiency (CER) of the banks and increases their exposure to risky lending.
Social Media – An Arena for Venting Negative Emotions

Social media is seen as transforming into a global multiplier through which emotional experiences are shared and strengthened. The essential factor in the ongoing transformation is that, although emotions are felt on an individual level, in social media, they can simultaneously be shared with and by others. Many studies have shown that social media is an arena for sharing information that reflects negative emotions. The theme of the paper is important as nowadays people have access to online discussions, blogs and even websites devoted entirely to sharing negative emotional experiences. After reviewing the literature, the paper explores and discusses the implications of negative emotions shared in social media. The main contribution of the paper is the anatomy of the diffusion of collective negative emotion in social media. In addition, the paper discusses the positive consequences of negative emotions from an organisation’s perspective.
Fund Governance, Fees and Performance in Australian Corporate Superannuation Funds: A Non-Parametric Analysis

We investigate the governance structure and practices of Australian corporate superannuation funds and explore the link between a fund’s governance, fees and performance. Overall, it appears that the funds have governance structures that are prone to agency conflicts, lack of transparency and that trail behind overall corporate governance standards. We find that a fund’s governance practices do not affect performance, but they do affect fees. In addition, the international subsidiary and listing status of the sponsoring firms are found to affect fund fees. As a fund’s board size increases, so do the number of asset consultants being hired, and fund fees grow. The relationships between fund governance, management and fees are significantly influenced by fund size and are non-linear. We also found a potential link in the governance practices between the sponsoring firms and their funds. Our study provides important insight into how, although trustee structure does not have a direct impact, their strategic decisions affect how funds operate and agency problems can be controlled. Furthermore, adequate trustee competency that addresses the specific needs and nature of each fund must accompany fund governance structures; a prescriptive governance framework does not fit all.
Higher education staff experiences of using web-based learning technologies

Given the drive in higher education institutions to employ web-based learning (WBL) technologies in their curricula, this article sets out to address the question of how staff experience the incorporation of such technologies into their educational practice. The study focuses on an initiative involving four institutions in South and West England that aimed to encourage the strategic development of WBL resources in health and welfare professional education programmes. Thirty-three higher educational staff from a range of organisational locations took part in a qualitative process study. The findings suggest that while staff were enthusiastic about their engagement with WBL they experienced problems embedding their project work within their organisations, managing their time and obtaining institutional recognition for their work. Such findings represent a challenge to commentaries that emphasise “technological illiteracy” or “technophobia” amongst staff as barriers to WBL implementation. The study favours an analysis that emphasises how WBL initiatives are incorporated into existing higher education managerial, decision-making and reward structures.
Thyroid hormone independent associations between serum TSH levels and indicators of bone turnover in cured patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE It has been proposed that TSH has thyroid hormone-independent effects on bone mineral density (BMD) and bone metabolism. This concept is still controversial and has not been studied in human subjects in detail. We addressed this question by studying relationships between serum TSH concentration and indicators of bone turnover, after controlling for triiodothyronine (T(3)), free thyroxine (FT(4)), and non-thyroid factors relevant to BMD and bone metabolism. We also studied the contribution of the TSH receptor (TSHR)-Asp727Glu polymorphism to these relationships. DESIGN We performed a cross-sectional study with 148 patients, who had been thyroidectomized for differentiated thyroid carcinoma. METHODS We measured BMD of the femoral neck and lumbar spine. FT(4), T(3), TSH, bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, procollagen type 1 aminoterminal propeptide levels, C-cross-linking terminal telopeptide of type I collagen, and urinary N-telopeptide of collagen cross-links were measured. Genotypes of the TSHR-Asp727Glu polymorphism were determined by Taqman assay. RESULTS We found a significant, inverse correlation between serum TSH levels and indicators of bone turnover, which was independent of serum FT(4) and T(3) levels as well as other parameters influencing bone metabolism. We found that carriers of the TSHR-Asp727Glu polymorphism had an 8.1% higher femoral neck BMD, which was, however, no longer significant after adjusting for body mass index. CONCLUSION We conclude that in this group of patients, serum TSH was related to indicators of bone remodeling independently of thyroid hormone levels. This may point to a functional role of the TSHR in bone in humans. Further research into this mechanism needs to be performed.