Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
International Financial Reporting Standards Compliance: Evidence from Ghana

Ghana adopted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs), in place of Ghana National Accounting Standards (GNASs) from 1st January, 2007, for all listed companies including government business enterprises, banks, insurance companies, security brokers, pension funds, and public utilities. This study examines the extent of compliance with IFRSs disclosure requirements, by analysing annual reports of listed companies on the Ghana Stock Exchange. The study also investigates factors associated with the level of compliance. Findings reveal a high level of (83%) compliance with IFRSs disclosure requirements with leverage and multiple listing statistically associated with the level of compliance. Although, the listed companies complied with more than 60% of the IFRSs disclosure requirements, regulatory intervention is needed to ensure full compliance.
A Mathematical Programming- and Simulation-Based Framework to Evaluate Cyberinfrastructure Design Choices

Modern scientific experimental facilities such as x-ray light sources increasingly require on-demand access to large-scale computing for data analysis, for example to detect experimental errors or to select the next experiment. As the number of such facilities, the number of instruments at each facility, and the scale of computational demands all grow, the question arises as to how to meet these demands most efficiently and cost-effectively. A single computer per instrument is unlikely to be cost-effective because of low utilization and high operating costs. A single national compute facility, on the other hand, introduces a single point of failure and perhaps excessive communication costs. We introduce here methods for evaluating these and other potential design points, such as per-facility computer systems and a distributed multisite "superfacility. " We use the U.S. Department of Energy light sources as a use case and build a mixed-integer programming model and a customizable superfacility simulator to enable joint optimization of design choices and associated operational decisions. The methodology and tools provide new insights into design choices for on-demand computing facilities for real-time analysis of scientific experiment data. The simulator can also be used to support facility operations, for example by simulating the impact of events such as outages.
Effects of adaptive section collimation on patient radiation dose in multisection spiral CT.

PURPOSE To evaluate the potential effectiveness of adaptive collimation in reducing computed tomographic (CT) radiation dose owing to z-overscanning by using dose measurements and Monte Carlo (MC) dose simulations. MATERIALS AND METHODS Institutional review board approval was not necessary. Dose profiles were measured with thermoluminescent dosimeters in CT dose index phantoms and in an Alderson-Rando phantom without and with adaptive section collimation for spiral cardiac and chest CT protocols and were compared with the MC simulated dose profiles. Additional dose measurements were performed with an ionization chamber for scan ranges of 5-50 cm and pitch factors of 0.5-1.5. RESULTS The measured and simulated dose profiles agreed to within 3%. By using adaptive section collimation, a substantial dose reduction of up to 10% was achieved for cardiac and chest CT when measurements were performed free in air and of 7% on average when measurements were performed in phantoms. For scan ranges smaller than 12 cm, ionization chamber measurements and simulations indicated a dose reduction of up to 38%. CONCLUSION Adaptive section collimation allows substantial reduction of unnecessary exposure owing to z-overscanning in spiral CT. It can be combined in synergy with other means of dose reduction, such as spectral optimization and automatic exposure control.
Stochastic Models for Epidemics

Early in 1987, the AIDS epidemic was still in its relatively early stages in the United Kingdom, although well underway in the United States. In preparation for a one-day Royal Statistical Society meeting on the statistical aspects of AIDS (Royal Statistical Society, 1988) later that year, an informal workshop was organised by David Cox to discuss the various mathematical modelling approaches then being employed. At David’s instigation, I prepared a review paper (Isham, 1988) on models of the transmission dynamics of HIV and AIDS for the one-day meeting, based in part on the workshop, and thus began my involvement with epidemic modelling. It has proved to be an area full of theoretical challenges and complex applied problems. Understanding the dynamics of the spread of an infectious disease brings possibilities for its control. Human infections such as influenza, malaria and HIV are still major worldwide causes of morbidity and mortality. In 2001, the UK experienced the severe economic and social effects of an epidemic of foot and mouth disease, while early in 2003 the world became aware of a new infection, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), spreading rapidly across the globe. In both cases, the ease and speed of modern communications meant that considerable transmission had already taken place before the threat of an epidemic was recognised. In such situations, strict control strategies must be imposed rapidly if they are to be effective in curtailing the spread of infection and preventing a large-scale epidemic. A clear understanding of the basic theory of epidemic models is a prerequisite for this and, equally, for informing the development of the successful vaccination policies against a wide range of infections (Anderson and May, 1991) routinely used around the world.
Reorganization in SMEs: Decision-Making Processes and Conflicts of Interest among Stakeholders

This paper discusses the interests of stakeholders and the entrepreneur in the course of corporate reorganization as well as their decision-making processes. The research is based on the assumptions of stakeholder theory and the thesis that managing these stakeholder relationships is an essential part of a corporate reorganization. By means of a single case study, the various interests of involved parties and possible conflicts of interest in the reorganization process are illustrated. The main finding of this paper is that successful reorganization requires both sustainable collaboration with stakeholders and the resolution of conflicts of interest.
Alcohol and drug use following traumatic brain injury: A prospective study

Primary objectives: To establish pre-morbid alcohol and drug use in persons with TBI, relative to controls, investigate how patterns of substance use change over time following TBI and identify factors associated with heavy post-injury substance use. Methods and procedures: The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification test (AUDIT) and Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) was completed by 121 hospital inpatients with TBI, documenting pre-injury alcohol and drug use, and 133 demographically similar controls. Participants with TBI completed these measures and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) again 1 and 2 years post-injury and 76 also completed them at 3 years. Results: Participants with TBI showed similar levels of drug and alcohol use to controls pre-injury, with 31.4% of the TBI group and 29.3% of controls drinking at hazardous levels. Alcohol and drug use declined in the first year post-injury, but increased by 2 years post-injury, with only 21.4% of participants with TBI reporting abstinence from alcohol and 25.4% drinking at hazardous levels. Only 9% showed a drug problem, but 24% had returned to some drug use. Those showing heavy alcohol use post-injury were young, male and heavy drinkers pre-injury. Drug and alcohol use was similar at 3 years post-injury. Conclusions: More active intervention is needed to reduce alcohol and drug use following TBI.
The Link Between Innovativeness and Market Orientation in Beekeeping Enterprises

Innovativeness within beekeeping enterprises reflects their propensity to support new ideas and creative processes that will result in new products. The orientation towards customers in beekeeping enterprises involves identifying, understanding and monitoring of customers. The results of the present study demonstrate the fact that there is a positive link between innovativeness and market orientation in the beekeeping enterprises under study.
At the Sources of One's Well-Being: Early Rehabilitation for Employees With Symptoms of Distress

Objective: To examine the effects of a new multifaceted early rehabilitation program on employee well-being targeted on distressed employees in small-to-medium sized workplaces. Methods: Fifty-two employees (92% women; age: 34 to 66 years) participated in five biweekly sessions with one follow-up day at 6 months. Rehabilitation professionals specially trained for the mindfulness method covered topics from health, nutrition, sleep, physical activity to stress management. Employees were divided by their well-being level at baseline into “healthy” and “symptomatic” groups. Main outcomes were job, mental, and physical well-being. Results: Well-being among the symptomatic employees reached that of the healthy ones at baseline. Also, the healthy participants benefited from the program to a small degree. Conclusions: The preliminary findings of this new program are promising although more research is needed on its effects and cost-effectiveness.
Radiation fear: Impact on compliance with trauma imaging guidelines in the pregnant patient

BACKGROUND The Royal Melbourne Hospital is a Level 1 adult trauma center, and due to its colocation with The Royal Women’s Hospital, it functions as the state’s major obstetric trauma center. Obstetric trauma guidelines have been established to facilitate management of pregnant patients, yet adherence to these recommendations has not been evaluated. The aim of this study was to assess compliance with recommended imaging guidelines in obstetric trauma patients. METHODS The prospectively collated trauma registry at Royal Melbourne Hospital was used to identify obstetric trauma presentations to the emergency department from January to December 2012. Demographics, mechanism of injury, clinical examination findings, and the use of diagnostic radiology were collected to determine adherence to recommended imaging guidelines. RESULTS Of 74 obstetric trauma patients, the most common mechanisms of injury were motor vehicle collisions (81%), assaults (8%), and falls (7%). Despite the mechanism and severity of injury, 29 patients (39%) did not undergo imaging during their initial emergency department assessment. All of the remaining 45 patients (61%) were imaged as part of their assessment; however, plain x-rays were often used to avoid imaging with computed tomography. Of the 32 patients identified with a high-risk mechanism, chest x-ray was used in 84.4%, pelvic x-ray in 28.1%, and computed tomography-angiography in 34.4%. In the high-risk mechanism group, the compliance rate with guidelines was only 18.8% (6 patients had the recommended radiologic assessment). CONCLUSION Concerns about fetal radiation have resulted in a low compliance rate with recommended trauma guidelines at our institution. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Therapeutic/care management study, level IV.
Multiscale Approach and Role of Validation in the Thermal-Hydraulic Modeling of the ITER Superconducting Magnets

The ITER superconducting (SC) magnets require the forced flow of supercritical He (SHe) at ~ 4.5 K and ~ 0.5 MPa, giving thermal-hydraulics (TH) a key role in the multiphysics arena of SC magnets. Here we introduce a multiscale approach to the TH modeling of ITER magnets, based on the fact that the TH relevant space scales range from the 10 to 100 m of magnet size/cable-in-conduit conductors (CICC) length, down to the 10-2 m of the transverse size of a CICC, while the relevant TH time scales also cover several orders of magnitude. On the “macro-scale”, the entire system (winding + structures + cryogenic circuit) is considered; this requires the treatment of the “meso-scale”, where single CICC are treated, weakly thermally coupled inside a winding as needed. The constitutive relations needed by the 1D meso-scale models, i.e., friction factors and heat transfer coefficients, may in turn be derived analyzing a limited portion of the CICC on the “micro-scale”, with detailed 2D-3D computational thermal-fluid-dynamics models. At each scale, the different issues related to code development, benchmarking/validation, and application are considered in the paper. The choice of developing a code in-house is compared to the commercial codes and/or freeware. The reciprocal benefits obtained from these codes by the ITER magnet R&D program (which led, e.g., to the realization and test of Model and Insert coils, as well as many short samples), and vice versa, are discussed. Several examples of the multiscale approach to the TH modeling of SC magnets will be presented in the paper, based on the experience developed during the last 15 years within our group, in collaboration with laboratories in the EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the U.S. It is argued that the intrinsic modularity of the multiscale approach leads to significant benefits. It is also argued that the effort towards verification and validation of the existing TH models of the ITER SC magnets has been rather limited so far, sometimes notwithstanding the existence of a significant experimental database; therefore, it is recommended to launch a systematic initiative in that direction, with particular attention to the assessment of the predictive capabilities of the existing TH codes. While these capabilities are going to be more and more relevant for the ITER nuclear device, for operation and safety studies in particular, there is at this time hardly any evidence of such predictive capabilities in the published literature.
Efficiently generating correction suggestions for garbled tokens of historical language

Abstract Text correction systems rely on a core mechanism where suitable correction suggestions for garbled input tokens are generated. Current systems, which are designed for documents including modern language, use some form of approximate search in a given background lexicon. Due to the large amount of spelling variation found in historical documents, special lexica for historical language can only offer restricted coverage. Hence historical language is often described in terms of a matching procedure to be applied to modern words. Given such a procedure and a base lexicon of modern words, the question arises of how to generate correction suggestions for garbled historical variants. In this paper we suggest an efficient algorithm that solves this problem. The algorithm is used for postcorrection of optical character recognition results on historical document collections.
Joint linear transmitter and receiver design for the downlink of multiuser MIMO systems

In this letter, we address the problem of designing jointly the linear transmitter and receiver for the downlink of Multiuser MIMO system, using minimum total mean square error criterion (T-MMSE), subject to a total transmit power constraint. We show that transmitter and receiver under such criterion could be realized through a joint iterative algorithm. The convergence of the proposed algorithm is proved. Simulation results have also been provided to demonstrate the feasibility of this new method.
INSTITUTIONAL AND COMPETITIVE BANDWAGONS: USING MATHEMATICAL MODELING AS A TOOL TO EXPLORE INNOVATION DIFFUSION

The sheer number of organizations adopting an innovation can cause a bandwagon pressure, prompting other organizations to adopt this innovation. Institutional bandwagon pressures occur because nonadopters fear appearing different from many adopters. Competitive bandwagon pressures occur because nonadopters fear below-average performance if many competitors profit from adopting. Our mathematical model of bandwagons examines how organizational collectivities' characteristics determine (a) whether a bandwagon will occur, (b) how many organizations jump on it, and (c) how many retain the Innovation it diffuses. Simulating the model suggests, first, that any technological, organizational, or strategic innovation with ambiguous returns can diffuse in a bandwagon manner; second, that minor differences in organizational collectivities can have major effects on bandwagons' occurrence, extent, and persistence: and third, that bandwagons can prompt most organizations in a collectivity to adopt an innovation, even wh.
Characterization of a novel mutation in the cardiac ryanodine receptor that results in catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia

Catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) is an arrhythmogenic disease that manifests as syncope or sudden death during high adrenergic tone in the absence of structural heart defects. It is primarily caused by mutations in the cardiac ryanodine receptor (RyR2). The mechanism by which these mutations cause arrhythmia remains controversial, with discrepant findings related to the role of the RyR2 binding protein FKBP12.6. The purpose of this study was to characterize a novel RyR2 mutation identified in a kindred with clinically diagnosed CPVT. Single-strand conformational polymorphism analysis and direct DNA sequencing were used to screen the RyR2 gene for mutations. Site-directed mutagenesis was employed to introduce the mutation into the mouse RyR2 cDNA. The impact of the mutation on the interaction between RyR2 and a 12.6 kDa FK506 binding protein (FKBP12.6) was determined by immunoprecipitation and immunoblotting and its effect on RyR2 function was characterized by single cell Ca2+ imaging and [3H]ryanodine binding. A novel CPVT mutation, E189D, was identified. The E189D mutation does not alter the affinity of the channel for FKBP12.6, but it increases the propensity for store-overload-induced Ca2+ release (SOICR). Furthermore, the E189D mutation enhances the basal channel activity of RyR2 and its sensitivity to activation by caffeine. The E189D RyR2 mutation is causative for CPVT and functionally increases the propensity for SOICR without altering the affinity for FKBP12.6. These observations strengthen the notion that enhanced SOICR, but not altered FKBP12.6 binding, is a common mechanism by which RyR2 mutations cause arrhythmias.
The pangenome of hexaploid bread wheat

There is an increasing understanding that variation in gene presence-absence plays an important role in the heritability of agronomic traits; however, there have been relatively few studies on variation in gene presence-absence in crop species. Hexaploid wheat is one of the most important food crops in the world and intensive breeding has reduced the genetic diversity of elite cultivars. Major efforts have produced draft genome assemblies for the cultivar Chinese Spring, but it is unknown how well this represents the genome diversity found in current modern elite cultivars. In this study we build an improved reference for Chinese Spring and explore gene diversity across 18 wheat cultivars. We predict a pangenome size of 140 500 ± 102 genes, a core genome of 81 070 ± 1631 genes and an average of 128 656 genes in each cultivar. Functional annotation of the variable gene set suggests that it is enriched for genes that may be associated with important agronomic traits. In addition to variation in gene presence, more than 36 million intervarietal single nucleotide polymorphisms were identified across the pangenome. This study of the wheat pangenome provides insight into genome diversity in elite wheat as a basis for genomics-based improvement of this important crop. A wheat pangenome, GBrowse, is available at http://appliedbioinformatics.com. au/cgi-bin/gb2/gbrowse/WheatPan/, and data are available to download from http://wheatgenome.info/wheat_genome_databases. php.
Differentiation of human adult cardiac stem cells exposed to extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields.

AIMS Modulation of cardiac stem cell (CSC) differentiation with minimal manipulation is one of the main goals of clinical applicability of cell therapy for heart failure. CSCs, obtained from human myocardial bioptic specimens and grown as cardiospheres (CSps) and cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs), can engraft and partially regenerate the infarcted myocardium, as previously described. In this paper we assessed the hypothesis that exposure of CSps and CDCs to extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF-EMFs), tuned at Ca2+ ion cyclotron energy resonance (Ca2+-ICR), may drive their differentiation towards a cardiac-specific phenotype. METHODS AND RESULTS A significant increase in the expression of cardiac markers was observed after 5 days of exposure to Ca2+-ICR in both human CSps and CDCs, as evidenced at transcriptional, translational, and phenotypical levels. Ca2+ mobilization among intracellular storages was observed and confirmed by compartmentalized analysis of Ca2+ fluorescent probes. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that ELF-EMFs tuned at Ca2+-ICR could be used to drive cardiac-specific differentiation in adult cardiac progenitor cells without any pharmacological or genetic manipulation of the cells that will be used for therapeutic purposes.
Enabling Marker-Assisted Seedling Selection in the Washington Apple Breeding Program

Breeding new cultivars is a slow and expensive process, but genetic screening tools exist to improve efficiency. We employed the marker-assisted breeding (MAB) Pipeline approach to facilitate routine use of MAB in the Washington apple breeding program. This study traced the journey of one marker-locus-trait (M-L-T) association from publication through high-throughput PCR-based genetic testing to application. The final stages of the Pipeline involve determining cost-efficient highthroughput marker-assisted seedling selection (MASS) schemes with available genetic tests, followed by a trial run on several thousand seedlings. For maximum cost-efficiency in the Washington apple breeding program, genetic screening should be implemented prior to expensive grafting and field planting operations but usually after inexpensive visual culling for traits such as disease susceptibility. Routine MAB is now enabled for this tree fruit breeding program and we estimate that at least 60% of conventional operating costs for first-stage seedling selection could be saved using the available genetic test.
The increasing dynamics between consumers, social groups and brands

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a contribution to advancing knowledge on the more recent phenomenon of social brand community.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on an extensive interdisciplinary literature review in areas such as sociology, management, and marketing. Three interrelated and consecutively developed conceptualizations resulting from a co‐operation of the researchers over the last three years are presented to explain the influence of the evolution of current social trends on the relationship between consumers and brands in different contexts (socio‐demographic aspects and culture). The conceptualizations have been applied to a qualitative case study on Cypriot consumers, which conducted in‐depth expert interviews and focus groups. The research project has been designed in three stages: the first stage elicited thenature of relationships between consumer, brands and social groups; the second stage was concerned with differentiating consumer behaviour and segment.