Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stakeholder pressures and corporate climate change mitigation strategies

Climate change mitigation and its related reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is one of the most important challenges facing society. The major cause of the problem and the key to its solution are GHG‐intensive firms that emit vast amounts of anthropogenic GHG emissions. The study reported herein aims to increase our understanding of the climate change mitigation strategies of these firms, in particular their antecedents and effects. A comprehensive conceptual model is proposed and tested empirically based on a survey of 247 firms that participated in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme in the first two trading periods. We find that market pressures for reducing GHG emissions, perceived GHG‐related regulatory uncertainty and environmental strategy focus are important determinants of corporate GHG reduction strategies which, in turn, enhance GHG‐related performance. We also show that the results vary depending on the type of emissions.
Mode Adaptive Droop Control With Virtual Output Impedances for an Inverter-Based Flexible AC Microgrid

A decentralized power control method in a single-phase flexible ac microgrid is proposed in this paper. Droop control is widely considered to be a good choice for managing the power flows between microgrid converters in a decentralized manner. In this work, to enhance the power loop dynamics, droop control combined with a derivative controller is used in islanded mode. In grid-connected mode, to strictly control the power factor in the point of common coupling (PCC), a droop method combined with an integral controller is adopted. Small-signal analysis of the proposed control is shown both in islanded and grid-connected mode. The proposed control scheme does not need any mode switching action. Thus, it is relatively simple in control for full mode of operation. Smooth transitions between the operation modes and the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme are evaluated through simulation and experimental results.
Acute effects of transdermal nicotine on sleep architecture, snoring, and sleep-disordered breathing in nonsmokers.

Previous research has suggested that nicotine may be therapeutically useful in the treatment of sleep-disordered breathing. The development of transdermal nicotine delivery systems has allowed us to test the overnight effectiveness of nicotine. Twenty nonsmoking subjects (10 men, 10 women) were recruited on the basis of a history of habitual snoring that was confirmed by overnight laboratory monitoring. Subjects were then randomized (double-blind crossover design) to receive either placebo or an active patch that delivers 11 mg of nicotine over a 24-h period. Patches were applied at 6 P.M. and removed at 6 A.M. the following morning, at which time venous blood was obtained for determination of serum nicotine concentrations. Polysomnography was performed using standard techniques to assess sleep architecture and sleep-disordered breathing. Snoring was monitored with a sound-level meter and quantitatively analyzed to determine the snoring index (SI) (number of snores per hour of sleep) and mean and maximum snoring intensities. The age of the subjects was 46.9 +/- 11.4 yr (mean +/- SD) and their mean body mass index (BMI) 33.3 +/- 4.6 kg/m2. A mean nicotine level was nondetectable with placebo and 7.8 +/- 2.3 ng/ml with wearing of an active patch. Nicotine decreased total sleep time (TST) by 33 min (p < or 0.01), sleep efficiency from 89.7 to 83.5% (p < or = 0.01), and percent rapid eye movement (REM) sleep from 18.8 to 15.1% (p < or = 0.01), and prolonged initial sleep latency (ISL) from 6.7 to 18.2 min (p < or = 0.01). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Can More Information Lead to More Voter Polarization? Experimental Evidence from Turkey

Many claim that increased availability of information via both old and new media drives political polarization, possibly undermining democratic institutions. However, rigorous evidence on this topic remains limited. I address this gap by conducting two experiments during a recent Turkish referendum that was on an important institutional change to weaken constraints on the executive. First, I designed a randomized door-to-door campaign. In this campaign, the opposition party gave uniform information on poor economic performance and increased terrorist activity under the incumbent's leadership to more than 130,000 voters. I show that voters, despite receiving the same information, diverged further in their vote choice on aggregate, leading to a significant increase in ideological polarization. The result is consistent with a model where polarization in vote choice is driven by differences in reaction to the same information and not self-segregation to different information sources, as others have assumed. The opposition failed to increase its vote share in this campaign, on aggregate, because it lacked the necessary data to target the subset of constituents that interpreted the information in their favor. In a second experiment with politicians, I confirm that the opposition had inadequate data on voters relative to the incumbent based on an analysis of roughly one million of their tweets. The evidence from both experiments, taken together, suggests that the incumbent party can exploit its access to higher quality data on voters to maintain its grip on power and advance an agenda that weakens democratic checks and balances.
Principles of the electromagnetic modelling of some microwave components, based on the circular waveguides with azimuthally magnetized ferrite

The principles of electrodynamic analysis of the characteristics of the ferrite control components (nonreciprocal digital phase shifters, cut-off switches and isolators) which use circular waveguides, entirely filled with azimuthally magnetized ferrite or containing a coaxial disc- or ring-shaped area of the medium alluded to and a dielectric one, surrounding it or taking up its hollow, resp. , and work in the normal TE01 mode, are enunciated: i) employment of complex confluent hypergeometric and eventually also of real cylindrical functions; ii) indispensability of inventing of numerical methods for evaluation of some special functions of the mathematical physics: the Euler gamma function, its logarithmic derivative and the confluent functions in the complex field, as well as of the cylindrical ones in the real domain; iii) elaboration of techniques for numerical solution of complicated transcendental equations, involving complex confluent and possibly real cylindrical functions, too; iv) introduction of a new class of real numbers, called L numbers, connected with the purely imaginary roots of the equations mentioned; v) development of numerical schemes for computation of the phase curves of geometries regarded and of iterative procedures for finding the differential phase shift provided by them; vi) laying down of criteria for the operation of configurations as phase shifters, magnetically controlled cut-off switches and isolators. Each of the maxims pointed out is elucidated in detail.
Efficacy of amisulpride in treating primary negative symptoms in first‐episode psychosis: a pilot study

Negative symptoms are debilitating and associated with poor role functioning and reduced quality of life. There is a paucity of research on antipsychotic efficacy against the primary negative symptoms, particularly in first‐episode psychosis (FEP). We undertook a prospective, open‐label pilot trial to investigate the use of amisulpride in the treatment of young people with FEP characterised by primary negative symptoms.
Policy processes, professionalism and partnership: an exploration of the implementation of 'Teaching Scotland's Future'

The aim of this research was to explore the implementation of the recommendations from a recent teacher education policy in Scotland, ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’ (TSF; Donaldson, 2011), in ‘real time’, as the policy was alive and continuously evolving. Shortly after the publication of TSF, the Scottish Government set up a partnership model, the National Partnership Group (NPG) to refine and begin to implement a number of its recommendations in partnership between key organisations in Scottish education. The membership of the NPG consisted of representatives from these key organisations, as well as a small number of individual teachers. The NPG, its structure, membership and the multiple ways in which it operated, was the main focus of this research. Taking a critical policy analysis approach, this research set out to investigate the representation and participation of actors within the policy process and identify the voices that were not heard within the NPG. The research employed elements of actor-network theory (ANT) to conceptualise the participation of institutional actors as a process of ‘interest translation’ and drew on literature in the area of policy networks and democratic network governance in order to examine the processes by which the NPG operated. The data used in this research consisted of interviews conducted with members of the NPG and documentary evidence in the form of minutes of meetings, policy documents and press releases. Drawing mainly on the perspectives of actors central to the process, this thesis highlights the complexity and subtly of the policy processes at work. On the surface, the development of a partnership model was regarded as evidence of the government’s apparent commitment to collaborative and democratic policy-making. However, this research shows that underneath this ‘simulacra of order’ lay great disorder: divergent institutional interests, unequal power relations, strategic institutional positioning and a conservative network culture that favoured the participation of some actors over others. Of even more concern was the exclusion and restriction of the voice of the teaching profession. The non- involvement of teacher unions and restriction individual teachers in the policy process sits at odds with the overall policy vision set out in TSF: the development of teachers as ‘agents of change’ who can shape and lead educational change. The thesis concludes that there is a significant tension between the overall intentions of the policy agenda and the process that was designed to implement it and calls for a new model of policy-making where disorder and divergent interests can be brought to the fore in a way that allows the voice of the teaching profession to be heard.
Energy-Efficient Cooperative Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Mixed-Integer Optimization Framework and Explicit Solution

This paper presents an optimization framework for a wireless sensor network whereby, in a given route, the optimal relay selection and power allocation are performed subject to signal-to-noise ratio constraints. The proposed approach determines whether a direct transmission is preferred for a given configuration of nodes, or a cooperative transmission. In the latter case, for each node, data transmission to the destination node is performed in two consecutive phases: broadcasting and relaying. The proposed strategy provides the best set of relays, the optimal broadcasting power and the optimal power values for the cooperative transmission phase. Once the minimum-energy transmission policy is obtained, the optimal routes from every node to a sink node are built-up using cooperative transmission blocks. We also present a low-complexity implementation approach of the proposed framework and provide an explicit solution to the optimization problem at hand by invoking the theory of multi-parametric programming. This technique provides the optimal solution as a function of measurable parameters in an off-line manner, and hence the on-line computational tasks are reduced to finding the parameters and evaluating simple functions. The proposed efficient approach has many potential applications in real-world problems and, to the best of the authors' knowledge, it has not been applied to communication problems before. Simulations are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the approach.
Anthropology and Public Health: The Role Culture Plays in Epidemics

During an epidemic, there are many factors that can inhibit or facilitate the spread of disease and the severity of the epidemic beyond biomedical responses, including structural and social considerations. This paper will be an interdisciplinary work between the areas of anthropology and public health and will explore the history of these two disciplines working together, including theoretical and methodological frameworks utilizing key concepts from both areas of study, as well as the development of the subfield of medical anthropology and the tools used to investigate disease like outbreak ethnography. In addition, the relationship between culture and epidemics will be analyzed, culminating in the examination of the use of anthropological techniques and their results throughout the history of Ebola virus disease outbreaks in central and western Africa. By utilizing Ebola outbreaks starting in 1976 up till the most recent outbreak of 2014, this paper will demonstrate how culture can play a crucial role in disease epidemiology and controlling infectious disease.
Risk, prevalence and prevention of pressure ulcers in three Swedish healthcare settings.

OBJECTIVE This cross-sectional survey set out to delineate risk, prevalence and prevention of pressure ulcers in a university hospital, a general hospital and a nursing home in Sweden. It also looked at the differences in risk factors and preventive strategies between patients with and without pressure ulcers. METHOD The one-day survey followed the methodology developed by the European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (EPUAP). It was conducted on Tuesday 5 February 2002. Each patient was visited by two registered nurses, their skin was inspected and any pressure ulcer classified according to the EPUAP grading system. A total of 695 patients were included: 612 from the university hospital, 38 from the general hospital and 45 from the nursing home. RESULTS The prevalence of pressure ulcers was 23.9% (university hospital), 13.2% (general hospital) and 20.0% (nursing home). Most (60-66%) of the pressure ulcers in the hospitals were assessed as grade I. Only half of the patients at risk or with pressure ulcers were placed on a pressure-reducing mattress and a third of these patients had a plan for repositioning. Significant variables associated with pressure ulcers were old age, geriatric care, low Braden score and incontinence. CONCLUSION Prevalence of pressure ulcers was higher than expected. Results relating to both prevalence of pressure ulcers (grade I excluded) and the preventive care given to patients at risk or with pressure ulcers accord with those of a larger Dutch study. Attention must focus on the appropriate risk-assessment skills, highlighting grade I as pressure damage, and the use of appropriate preventive strategies, based on the level of risk.
Successful transport to the vacuole of heterologously expressed mung bean 8S globulin occurs in seed but not in vegetative tissues

This study investigated the subcellular location of mung bean (Vigna radiata) 8S globulin in transient expression systems as well as in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) BY-2 cells and different tissues from a transgenic Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) line stably expressing this storage globulin. When transiently expressed in protoplasts from both BY-2 cells and Arabidopsis suspension cultured cells, the 8S globulin located to structures that were neither Golgi nor pre-vacuolar compartments (PVCs). Immunogold electron microscopy of the transgenics reveals the 8S globulin-positive structures to be small, spherical, ribosome-covered endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-derived bodies. In BY-2 cells and all vegetative cells, the 8S globulin was present as a pro-form. However, in Arabidopsis embryos, with the onset of endogenous storage protein synthesis, the 8S globulin exited the ER and passed through the PVC to the protein storage vacuole where it was processed to its smaller mature form. These results clearly demonstrated that, when taken out of context and expressed in vegetative cells, the mung bean 8S storage globulin cannot exit the ER, and indicate that natural targeting of storage proteins to the vacuole should be better studied in the maturing seed.
Zebrafish heat shock protein a4 genes in the intestinal epithelium are up‐regulated during inflammation

A number of heat shock proteins (HSPs), including Hsp70 and Hsp110, function as molecular chaperones within intestinal epithelial cells that line the mammalian digestive system. HSPs confer cellular protection against environmental stress induced by chemical toxins or pathogens. There is interest in how members of this protein family might influence the progression of inflammatory bowel disease. Using the zebrafish model system, we report the expression of the duplicated hspa4 genes within the intestinal epithelium. The hspa4 genes belong to the Hsp110 family. We show that under inflammatory stress conditions within the gut, expression of these genes is up‐regulated in a similar manner to that previously observed for mammalian Hsp70. Because of the amenability of the zebrafish to whole‐animal screening protocols, the hspa4 genes could be used as effective read‐outs for genetic, chemical and environmental factors that might influence intestinal inflammation. genesis 49:905–911, 2011. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Diffusion tensor microscopy of the intervertebral disc anulus fibrosus

Morphologically accurate biomechanical models of the intervertebral disc anulus fibrosus (AF) require precise knowledge of its lamellar architecture; however, available methods of assessment are limited by poor spatial resolution or the destructive nature of the technique. In a novel approach, diffusion tensor microscopy was used in this study to characterize the microstructure of excised porcine AF samples. Results show diffusion in the AF to be anisotropic. The orientations of anisotropy exhibit a layered morphology that agrees with light micrographs of the corresponding samples, and the behavior of the orientation angles is consistent with the known AF collagen fiber architecture. A static magnetic field‐dependent relaxation anisotropy was observed in the AF, which has methodological implications for magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of ordered collageneous tissues. These findings present MR diffusion tensor microscopy as a potentially valuable tool to assess quantitatively and nondestructively water diffusion anisotropy and lamellar structure of the intervertebral disc AF. Magn Reson Med 41:992–999, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Reproducibility of liver biopsy diagnosis in relation to the size of the specimen.

For the purpose of evaluating the reproducibility of the chief diagnosis and several individual lesions in liver needle biopsies in relation to the size of the biopsy, we investigated without knowledge of clinical data 100 liver specimens in five sessions with an increasing amount of tissue made visible. The material consisted of routine liver biopsy specimens that were 25 mm or longer, comprising 50 with acute viral hepatitis (AVH), 10 with chronic aggressive hepatitis (CAH), 10 with micronodular cirrhosis, 10 with macronodular cirrhosis, 10 with steatosis, and 10 with other diagnoses. For the statistical analysis of the chief diagnoses, Friedman's two-way analysis of variance and Cochran's Q-test have been used. The predictive value of a lesion present and a lesion absent was used in evaluating the efficiency of the diagnoses of the individual lesions. The microscopic diagnosis of AVH was found to be safe even on biopsies only 5 mm long. Furthermore, the predictive value of both presence and absence of .
Franchisee responses during strategic change processes: An extension of the renowned Hirschman typology

Franchise systems do not differ from other organizational forms in their need to react to an increase in competitive pressure by implementing strategic changes. Although strategy formulation is mainly the franchisor’s task, real strategy implementation largely depends on the franchisees. Franchisees are legally independent and intelligent players, who may adopt several responses in reaction to strategic changes initiated by the franchisor. This paper has three main objectives. The first one is to develop a typology of franchisee responses during strategic change processes. The second objective is to present propositions regarding the antecedents of these franchisee responses. The third objective is to develop a research design for studying franchisee responses during strategic change processes.
HIV Cell Fusion Assay

The health and disease-related biology of the CXCR4 chemokine receptor presents the challenge of finding a small molecule that can bind CXCR4 and block T-cell tropic human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) cell entry, while preserving the ability of CXCR4 to respond to its native ligand, CXCL12. HIV entry into the host cell involves the interaction of the viral envelope glycoprotein gp120 binding to CD4, followed by a rearrangement in gp120, and subsequent interaction with the chemokine receptor CXCR4 or CCR5. These initial events can be re-created in a cell fusion assay that represents a surrogate system, mimicking the early stages of viral entry via these host cell receptors. In the current study, a T-tropic HIV cell fusion assay was established using U2OS cells expressing the envelope glycoprotein gp160 from the T-tropic HIV NL4-3 and HeLa cells expressing CD4 and CXCR4. Detection of the cell fusion event was based on a Gal4/VP16-activated β-lactamase signal and was measured by automated microscopy or laser scanning plate cytometry. Changes in morphology associated with cell fusion were combined with β-lactamase activity to generate results with robust assay statistics in both 384-well and 1536-well plates. Compounds were subsequently characterized by CXCR4 signaling assays to eliminate functional antagonists and allow the identification of a function-sparing HIV entry inhibitor.
Does CEO compensation suppress employee wages?

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of CEO equity-based compensation (EBC) on employee wages. It also examines the impact of EBC on average employee wages in different industries and business cycles. Design/methodology/approach The authors use pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) to measure for CEO EBC and run OLS models with year and industry dummies. As many firms do not report labor expenses, the authors conduct the two-step analysis as in Heckman (1979) to overcome the potential selection bias. Findings The authors find that CEOs with higher EBC tend to pay their employees lower wages. They also find that such an impact is more evident in non-technology firms than in technology firms. Finally, they find that CEOs with higher PPS are more likely to depress employee wages when the business cycle shows a downturn. Originality/value No study examines the impact of EBC on employee wages directly to date. The authors add to the existing stream of literature regarding employee wages and managerial compensation. Hence, they purport that the findings support existing literature suggesting EBC contributes to, rather than alleviates, the classic agency conflict. Finally, the evidence suggests an unexplored manifestation of that agency conflict and an additional source of CEO rent extraction.