Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and Validation of the CPO Scale, a New Instrument for Evaluation of Health Care Improvement Efforts

Objective: To develop and validate an instrument for guidance and evaluation of quality and safety improvement efforts in health care. Context: The instrument is based on the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle and the 3 fundamental improvement questions regarding aims, measurement, and change-making. Methods: An interdisciplinary team of improvement experts developed the Change Process and Outcome (CPO) scale. After studying the improvement literature, the scale was tested and refined on a sample of 5 projects. The CPO evaluation process and classification system was developed when evaluating 189 of the quality improvement projects of the Norwegian Medical Association by their final reports. The scale was validated by applying statistical testing to the evaluation results. Results: The final CPO scale consists of 13 process items and 7 outcome items. Interrater reliability ranged from 0.53 to 0.79, and test-retest reliability was 0.82. Factor analyses with Varimax rotation identified 2 significant process domains: Aims/change-making and Measurement/reporting, with Cronbach &agr; values 0.88 and 0.95, respectively. The classification system produced 3 performance levels: successful, promising, and uncertain. Conclusion: The CPO scale shows good internal consistency, reliability, and validity for evaluating the success of quality improvement initiatives.
Early and late components of EEG delay activity correlate differently with scene working memory performance

Sustained and elevated activity during the working memory delay period has long been considered the primary neural correlate for maintaining information over short time intervals. This idea has recently been reinterpreted in light of findings generated from multiple neural recording modalities and levels of analysis. To further investigate the sustained or transient nature of activity, the temporal-spectral evolution (TSE) of delay period activity was examined in humans with high density EEG during performance of a Sternberg working memory paradigm with a relatively long six second delay and with novel scenes as stimuli. Multiple analyses were conducted using different trial window durations and different baseline periods for TSE computation. Sensor level analyses revealed transient rather than sustained activity during delay periods. Specifically, the consistent finding among the analyses was that high amplitude activity encompassing the theta range was found early in the first three seconds of the delay period. These increases in activity early in the delay period correlated positively with subsequent ability to distinguish new from old probe scenes. Source level signal estimation implicated a right parietal region of transient early delay activity that correlated positively with working memory ability. This pattern of results adds to recent evidence that transient rather than sustained delay period activity supports visual working memory performance. The findings are discussed in relation to synchronous and desynchronous intra- and inter-regional neural transmission, and choosing an optimal baseline for expressing temporal-spectral delay activity change.
Women’s Entrepreneurship, Barriers and Culture: Insights from the United Arab Emirates

This article explores the interplay of gender, cultural factors, Islamic teachings and agency in explaining the barriers faced by women entrepreneurs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Adopting social constructionist and interpretative approaches, this article draws on in-depth interviews with 20 women entrepreneurs in the UAE to explore the interplay between macro socio-cultural values using Hofstede’s (2001) typology of cultural values and the barriers faced during their entrepreneurial careers. The findings suggest a considerable socio-cultural impact: one that starts with family support and extends to the huge spill-over effect on the business venture itself and on women’s access to capital and business networks. They also highlight the role that women’s agency, self-confidence and persistence are playing in fostering the appetite of local women for entrepreneurship and overcoming the toll of barriers. Overall, the findings suggest that the winds of change, although mild, are nevertheless blowing through the UAE and the Arab Middle East by extension. The significance of the impact of culture on women entrepreneurs in the UAE and Middle East should not be underestimated or ignored by policymakers seeking a better understanding of women’s entrepreneurship in the Arab world.
A microstrip-fed circularly-polarized loop-like antenna

A microstrip-fed loop-like antenna designs with circular polarization (CP) is presented in this paper. The proposed loop-like antenna comprised of a monopole antenna, a sleeve strip connected with the ground plane and an L-shaped slit embedded in the ground plane. The C-like monopole generates a resonant mode for wideband impedance-bandwidth at the GPS and DCS bands, and the sleeve and the slit are capable of exciting two orthogonal electric fields with equal amplitude and phase difference of 90 degree for radiating circular polarization at 1.575 GHz. Both simulated and measured results are provided to validate the CP performance of the proposed antenna.
Coherent Swing Instability of power systems and cascading failures

We describe short-term swing dynamics leading to cascading failure in an interconnected power system. The notion of Coherent Swing Instability (CSI) was recently proposed in which most of synchronous machines in a power system coherently lose synchronism with the rest of the system after being subjected to a local and finite disturbance. CSI is an escape phenomenon from resonance in the nonlinear mode that governs the collective motion of machines. For a network of weakly interconnected power systems, we show that CSI happens for all of the systems in a cascade manner and gives the mechanism of cascading failure in the network, that is, the sequence of escape phenomena that can occur in a class of high-dimensional dynamical systems.
Mailing Decisions in the Catalog Sales Industry

Catalog sales are among the fastest growing businesses in the U.S. The most important asset a company in this industry has is its list of customers, called the house list. Building a house list is expensive, since the response rate of names from rental lists is low. Cash management therefore plays a central role in this capital intensive business. This paper studies optimal mailing policies in the catalog sales industry when there is limited access to capital. We consider a stochastic environment given by the random responses of customers and a dynamic evolution of the house list. Given the size of real problems, it is impossible to compute the optimal solutions. We therefore develop a heuristic based on the optimal solutions of simplified versions of the problem. The performance of this heuristic is evaluated by comparing its outcome with an upper bound derived for the original problem. Computational experiments show that it behaves satisfactorily. The methodology presented permits the evaluation of potential catalog ventures thus proving useful to entrepreneurs in this industry.
Toward an Assessment of Software Development Risk

Despite the introduction and use of a wide variety of system development methods and tools, software projects are still plagued by time and cost overruns, and unmet user requirements. To avoid these problems, it is frequently recommended that the risk associated with a software project be managed. A task that is critical to the proper management of software development risk is the assessment of the risks facing the project. Based on previous research, this paper proposes a definition and a measure of software development risk. Subsequently, data collected in a survey of 120 projects is used to assess the reliability and validity of the instrument.
Mechanisms of memory impairment in epilepsy depend on age at disease onset

Objective: In this study, we aimed to uncover distinct antecedents of autobiographic memory dysfunction in patients with epilepsy with early (childhood/adolescence) vs late (adulthood) disease onset. Methods: One hundred sixty-six adults participated: 92 patients with focal epilepsy, whose cognitive and psychiatric functioning were compared to that of 74 healthy controls. Predictors of autobiographic memory deficit were contrasted between patients with early-onset (n = 47) vs late-onset (n = 45) epilepsy. Results: Overall, people with epilepsy performed significantly worse on measures of both semantic and episodic autobiographic memory and showed markedly high rates of depressive symptoms and disorders (p < 0.001). Reduced autobiographic memory in patients with early-onset epilepsy was associated with young age at onset, more frequent seizures, and reduced working memory. In contrast, the difficulty that patients with late-onset epilepsy had in recalling autobiographic information was linked to depression and the presence of an MRI-identified lesion. Conclusions: This study reveals that memory deficits in people with focal epilepsy have differing antecedents depending on the timing of the disease onset. While neurobiological factors strongly underpin reduced autobiographic function in patients with early-onset epilepsy, psychological maladjustment gives rise to the impairments seen in patients with late-onset epilepsy. More broadly, these findings support the practice of subtyping patients according to distinct clinical characteristics to find individualized predictors of cognitive dysfunction.
The Family Economy in the Development of Welfare Regimes: A Case Study

Comparative welfare state research has developed an interest in the role of the family in welfare regimes and in agrarian social classes as influences on the formation of welfare states. This paper seeks to bring together and extend these perspectives by exploring the role of state support for family-based economic production, especially family farming, in the evolution of welfare regimes. Family employment is a de-commodified alternative to wage labour. As such, it received extensive support in many of today's advanced welfare states at various points over the past century, giving rise to a form of social protection which differed from that offered by welfare provisions in the usual sense. The paper illustrates this contention by reference to Ireland from around 1870 until the Second World War, where massive state intervention in social and economic life designed to promote small-scale family farming was a core element of 'social policy' broadly defined. The paper also points to other emerging welfare states where broadly similar processes could be found. Though the details and outcomes of those processes varied widely, they point to ways in which both the familial and agrarian dimensions of social policy have a greater significance in welfare regimes than has yet been adequately recognized
Does Automobile Style Change Payoff

In the postwar period, styling has seemed an important influence on consumer sales in many industries. Its apparent success through planned obsolescence in the U.S. automobile industry may even have led firms in other consumer products industries to adopt it. To date, however, no one has tested the effect of style change on demand to show whether it satisfies consumer preferences. Careful studies of the effects of quality change1 have been carried out, but style change has been harder to measure. Yet a test of the effect of style change is important, not only to the firms, but also because there are alternative explanations for style change quite apart from the influence of consumer preferences. Style change might be used as a market weapon, and carried beyond the level consumers would prefer. Fisher, Griliches, and Kaysen have studied the costs of automobile style changes and concluded that they are very large.2 They estimated as model change costs any costs that could have been avoided had cars with 1949 specifications been continued in production through the 1950's. According to their estimates, consumer savings in the absence of model changes would have been $700 per car in the late 1950's. Whether consumers placed such a value on the changes remained only a presumption: ' All in all, save for the understatement of costs involved and the possibility that such costs were not fully understood by car-buyers, the model changes of the last decade seem to have been largely those desired by the consuming public . There are thus grounds for believing that car owners (at the time of purchase) thought model changes worth most of the cost. The general presumption of consumer sovereignty thus implies that these model changes were worth their cost '. 3 MENGE (1962) has shown, however, that style change might be used as a market weapon by large manufacturers because they would have a relative cost advantage over smaller independent firms. Though studi~s of automobile production have shown few economies of scale beyond 300,000 units annuaily, there are economies in larger scale production if styling
Occupational allergy and asthma among salt water fish processing workers.

BACKGROUND Fish processing is a common economic activity in Southern Africa. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and host determinants of allergic symptoms, allergic sensitization, bronchial hyper-responsiveness and asthma among workers processing saltwater fish. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted on 594 currently employed workers in two processing plants involved in pilchard canning and fishmeal processing. A modified European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS) questionnaire was used. Skin prick tests (SPT) used extracts of common airborne allergens, fresh fish (pilchard, anchovy, maasbanker, mackerel, red eye) and fishmeal. Spirometry and methacholine challenge tests (MCTs; tidal breathing method) used ATS guidelines. RESULTS Work-related ocular-nasal symptoms (26%) were more common than asthma symptoms (16%). The prevalence of atopy was 36%, while 7% were sensitized to fish species and 26% had NSBH (PC(20) < or = 8 mg/ml or > or =12% increase in FEV(1) post-bronchodilator). The prevalence of probable occupational asthma was 1.8% and fish allergic rhino-conjunctivitis 2.6%. Women were more likely to report work-related asthma symptoms (OR = 1.94) and have NSBH (OR = 3.09), while men were more likely to be sensitized to fish (OR = 2.06) and have airway obstruction (OR = 4.17). Atopy (OR = 3.16) and current smoking (OR = 2.37), but not habitual seafood consumption were associated with sensitization to fish. CONCLUSIONS Based on comparison with previous published studies, the prevalence of occupational asthma to salt water fish is lower than due to shellfish. The gendered distribution of work and exposures in fish processing operations together with atopy and cigarette smoking are important determinants of occupational allergy and asthma.
Nonself recognition is mediated by HET‐C heterocomplex formation during vegetative incompatibility

Nonself recognition during vegetative growth in filamentous fungi is mediated by heterokaryon incompatibility (het) loci. In Neurospora crassa, het‐c is one of 11 het loci. Three allelic specificity groups, termed het‐cOR, het‐cPA and het‐cGR, exist in natural populations. Heterokaryons or partial diploids that contain het‐c alleles of alternative specificity show severe growth inhibition, repression of conidiation and hyphal compartmentation and death (HCD). Using epitope‐tagged HET‐C, we show that nonself recognition is mediated by the presence of a heterocomplex composed of polypeptides encoded by het‐c alleles of alternative specificity. The HET‐C heterocomplex localized to the plasma membrane (PM); PM‐bound HET‐C heterocomplexes occurred in all three het‐c incompatible allelic interactions. Strains containing het‐c constructs deleted for a predicted signal peptide sequence formed HET‐C heterocomplexes in the cytoplasm and showed a growth arrest phenotype. Our finding is a step towards understanding nonself recognition mechanisms that operate during vegetative growth in filamentous fungi, and provides a model for investigating relationships between recognition mechanisms and cell death.
Image-space illumination for augmented reality in dynamic environments

We present an efficient approach for probeless light estimation and coherent rendering of Augmented Reality in dynamic scenes. This approach can handle dynamically changing scene geometry and dynamically changing light sources in real time with a single mobile RGB-D sensor and without relying on an invasive lightprobe. We jointly filter both in-view dynamic geometry and outside-view static geometry. The resulting reconstruction provides the input for efficient global illumination computation in image-space. We demonstrate that our approach can deliver state-of-the-art Augmented Reality rendering effects for scenes that are more scalable and more dynamic than previous work.
Zea mays, Stigma maydis prevents and extenuates acetaminophen-perturbed oxidative onslaughts in rat hepatocytes

Abstract Context: Zea mays L. (Poaceae) Stigma maydis is an underutilized product of corn cultivation finding therapeutic applications in oxidative stress-related disorders. Objectives: This study investigated its aqueous extract against acetaminophen (APAP)-perturbed oxidative insults in rat hepatocytes. Materials and methods: Hepatotoxic rats were orally pre- and post-treated with the extract (at 200 and 400 mg/kg body weight) and vitamin C (200 mg/kg body weight), respectively, for 14 days. Liver function, antioxidative and histological analyses were thereafter evaluated. Results: The APAP-induced marked (p < 0.05) increases in the activities of alkaline phosphatase, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, gamma glutamyl transferase and the concentrations of bilirubin, oxidized glutathione, protein carbonyls, malondialdehyde, conjugated dienes, lipid hydroperoxides and fragmented DNA were dose-dependently extenuated in the extract-treated animals. The extract also significantly (p < 0.05) improved the reduced activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione reductase and glutathione peroxidase as well as total protein, albumin and glutathione concentrations in the hepatotoxic rats. These improvements may be attributed to the bioactive constituents as revealed by the gas chromatography–mass spectrometric chromatogram of the extract. The observed effects compared favourably with vitamin C and are informative of hepatoprotective and antioxidative attributes of the extract and were further supported by the histological analysis. Conclusion: The data from the present findings suggest that Stigma maydis aqueous extract is capable of preventing and ameliorating APAP-mediated oxidative hepatic damage via enhancement of antioxidant defence systems.
Modeling International Price Relationships and Interdependencies between EU Stock Index and Stock Index Futures Markets: A Multivariate Analysis

Over the past fifteen years, financial markets have become increasingly global. The gradual dismantling of regulatory barriers and the introduction of more advanced technology, particularly in data processing and telecommunications, have called for new market structures and practices. Asset and liability management has increasingly become a globally integrated function and the issuance of international securities is often used as a substitute for more traditional funding channels. These developments are to be welcomed in so far as the increased level of competition is expected to lead to a more efficient allocation of capital, both nationally and internationally, lower-cost financial services and new means of hedging risk. However, they also present a new regulatory challenge in securing financial stability. It was the 1987 world-wide stock market crash in particular which highlighted the inadequacies of a regulatory framework still largely based on old institutional divisions and national jurisdictions. In the globalized security markets, the main challenge for both investors and policy makers is to take advantage of and promote efficiency enhancing aspects of market interaction, while containing and controlling the undesirable destabilising effects.
Interest rate forecasting and the financial crisis: a turning point in more than just one way

Investors frequently rely on forecasts published by professional analysts. During the financial crisis uncertainty has substantially risen. Not surprisingly experts' predictions should be more than welcome for decision makers. After modelling the long-term relationship between the three month EURIBOR and the Consensus Economic forecast by using co-integration analysis this paper tests for changes in the accuracy of forecasts for the three month EURIBOR. We use traditional evaluation methods like sign accuracy tests, turning point analysis and the root mean square error (RMSE). We find evidence for a crisis related structural break. Checking for quality changes it can be stated that the forecasters' accuracy after the first months of the crisis is not much better in general. Furthermore, neither before nor after the structural break the analysts' forecasts did outperform a random prediction. But it can at least be stated that there is a significant improvement in the turning point prediction.
Diffusion of a new product under network effects: the US DVD market

We formulate a model that captures the inter-dependence between hardware demand and software supply – indirect network effect – in the DVD industry. The identification of the network effect comes from the difference in software availability across two different formats: VHS and DVD. We find that a 1% increase in the number of DVD titles raises the demand for DVD players by 0.87%. Simultaneously, a 1% increase in video player ownership leads to a 0.14% increase in the variety of video titles. Our simulations show that hardware manufacturers might be able to internalize the network externality to increase total industry revenues.
Brand Management Model in Sport Industry of Iran: Professional Football League Case

The study aims to examine brand management model in Iran's professional Football League (2011-2012) with emphasis on brand image. The study was descriptive-survey one. A sample of Iranian professional football league fans (N=911) responded 4 items questionnaire. A structural equation model (SEM) test with maximum likelihood estimation was performed to test the relationships among the research variables. The analyses of data showed three dimensions of brand image influenced on fanâ€™s brand loyalty of which the attitude was the most important. Benefits and attributes were placed in the second and third rank respectively. According to Results, brand image play a pivotal role between Iranian fans brand loyalty. Create an attractive and desirable brand image in the fans mind increases brand loyalty. And due to, revenue and profits increase through ticket sales and products of club and also attract more sponsors.
Internal versus external economies in European countries

In this paper sectoral production functions are estimated with a two digit disaggregation for eight European countries corresponding to the period 1978–1992, distinguishing between internal economies of scale and intersectoral external effects. In order to avoid the possibility that the regressions, carried out by way of panel data techniques, are spurious, the integration order of each variable has been identified using unit root. Similarly, the Hausman procedure has been applied to test the exogeneity of the variables and determine whether the most appropriate estimations should be SUR or three stage least squares.