Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Remuneration of Non-Executive Directors in German Listed Firms: An Empirical Note

In the last years, non-executive directors are facing increasing duties and (legal) responsibilities. From that perspective, it is quite surprising that the remuneration of non-executive directors has received rather little attention so far. In this study we examine the German experience. We present the status quo of non-executive director remuneration and discuss its challenges. Specifically, we will look at the level of director remuneration and the (possible) problem of limited incentives.
ISSUES RELATED TO INTERNET DIFFUSION: A CASE STUDY ON ICT RELATED PROJECTS IN SRI LANKA.

Internet user percentage in Sri Lanka has lingered at a mere 13.1% in 2011 according to an Annual report by Department of Census and Statistics in Sri Lanka. The aim of this paper is to identify the issues and problems of internet diffusion among rural communities in Sri Lanka. This conceptual paper is based on literature review. Reasons for Sri Lanka to experience a very low internet usage, due to social, economic, political, cultural and moral circumstances: no clear policy framework for facilitating the use of the Internet, lack of knowledge about the benefits of the new information technology, lack of motivation to use the Internet, economic problems, English Language barriers, attitudinal problems and inadequate infrastructure. ‘E- Sri Lanka’, ‘Horizon Lanka project’, ‘Virtual Village project’, ‘Kotmale Community Radio Internet project’ are ICT related projects in Sri Lanka. These ICT related programs are based in specific rural areas and there are experimental programs still trying to establish in other rural areas. There should be powerful and effective programs to empower rural and semi urban communities with ICT and English language literacy, skills and attitudinal motivation to access internet for socioeconomic development purposes.
Stability of Executive Functioning Measures in 8–17-Year-Old Children With Unilateral Cerebral Palsy

The study investigated the stability of executive functioning (EF) measures in children and adolescents aged 8–17 years with unilateral cerebral palsy (CP). Here 44 participants with unilateral CP (mean age = 11 years, 11 months; Manual Abilities Classification Scale Level I = 6 and Level II = 37; Gross Motor Function Classification Scale Level I = 22 and Level II = 22) were randomized into the wait-list control group of a large randomized controlled trial. Participants had baseline testing with Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Fourth Edition Short Form (WISC-IV-SF) and Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) subtests. Parents completed the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF). Participants were re-assessed 20 ±2 weeks later with a shortened test battery including the D-KEFS subtests; Digit Span, Coding and Symbol Search (WISC-IV); and BRIEF. Pearson’s test–retest reliabilities and Reliable change scores were calculated. Results indicated excellent to fair test–retest reliabilities (r = 0.91–0.74) for all measures except Digit Span Backwards (r = 0.62), Inhibition (r = 0.69), and Initiate (r = 0.68). Reliable change scores applying 90% confidence intervals for estimating reliable change while accounting for practice effects were provided for all measures. The data support the stability of EF measures in this population.
Is Intimate Partner Violence Associated with Unintended Pregnancy? A Review of the Literature

Although a substantial body of literature explores the adverse physical and mental health consequences associated with intimate partner violence, only a limited body of international research has explored the effect of intimate partner violence on women’s fertility control. Yet a compelling argument can be made of the indirect mechanism through which the climate of fear and control surrounding abusive relationships could limit women’s ability to control their fertility. Lack of fertility control can lead to unintended pregnancies, which are also associated with adverse outcomes for women’s and infant health, especially in developing countries. The association between intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy also suggests serious social effects spawned by a cycle of unintended childbearing in abusive households. Therefore, further investigation is warranted to explore the nature of the association as well as the mechanisms through which these phenomena operate in the United States and in developing countries.
A System Dynamics Approach for the Determination of Adverse Health Impacts of Healthcare Waste Incinerators and Landfill Sites on Employees

The risks associated with the treatment and disposal of healthcare wastes has gained attention across the world over last decades. The potential for a causal link between the hazardous emissions from waste treatment facilities and certain adverse health outcomes in workers employed in these facilities is difficult to prove or to supply with decent figures. However it is required to have a mechanism which provides an approach and data to assess this risk in order for the justification of selection and planning of any waste treatment system. In order to derive usable estimates for the adverse health impacts on workers, a system dynamics approach was adopted by using a software package, Vensim Ple Plus. Using relative risks and latency periods of adverse health outcomes reported by the epidemiological studies and the incidence rates from Turkish Health Statistics for Istanbul, Turkey, the hospital admissions (morbidity) is expected to increase by 40.0% and 9.3% among landfill and incinerator workers respectively over the 30-year employment time; while mortality rate goes up by 0.4% in landfill employees and 0.6% in incinerator employees over the same period of employment.
E‐service quality: a model of virtual service quality dimensions

Service quality is increasingly recognised as an important aspect of electronic commerce (e‐commerce). Because the online comparison of the technical features of products is essentially costless, feasible, and easier than comparisons of products through traditional channels, service quality is the key determinant for successful e‐commerce. A conceptual model of the determinants of e‐service quality is proposed and discussed. Given the exploratory nature of this research, focus groups are used to investigate e‐service quality dimensions. It is proposed that e‐service quality has incubative and active dimensions for increasing hit rates, stickiness, and customer retention. The incubative dimension consists of: ease of use, appearance, linkage, structure and layout, and content. The active dimension consists of reliability, efficiency, support, communication, security, and incentives. The importance and implications of each determinant are presented.
Attitudes towards offensive advertising: an Australian study

As society becomes more complex, as we become more aware of the harmful effects of some products and as agencies try to become more creative to “cut through the clutter” to gain awareness, there will be more advertisements which the general public perceive as “offensive”. Analyses the responses to a survey of attitudes towards the advertising of particular products and reasons for being offensive. The attitudes are examined by means of a survey which presents a series of potentially controversial/offensive products. The study can be used by advertising agencies to develop an understanding of which advertising is perceived by some people as offensive, and a list of potentially controversial clients.
Australian banks as corporate citizens: are they toeing the triple bottom line?

Banks represent an important industry in Australia due to their size and overall impact on the economy. A banking sector characterised by good corporate citizens, behaving in a socially responsible manner, will benefit all Australians. The question posed in this paper is not whether banks can be considered good corporate citizens per se, but rather whether they report their citizenship behaviour in an open and honest way. Accounting criteria applied to evaluate the quality of banking reports include relevance, freedom from bias, and understandability. Findings suggest banks are beginning to recognise they have a responsibility to a broader group of stakeholders than shareholders alone, but with a few notable exceptions, there is little evidence to suggest they have gone beyond the rhetoric stage. The current state of play is highlighted, areas in need of reform are identified and some examples of good practice provided for other banks to follow. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Victoria University for a seeding grant provided to support this project. Comments and feedback provided by participants at an Evaluation Society and Victoria University Business Ethics Seminar are gratefully acknowledged.
Service productivity in different industries – an empirical investigation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively evaluate of the current status of productivity management of industrial and non-industrial service companies in Germany. Based on that knowledge, best practices and needs regarding tools and methods can be identified. Design/methodology/approach – In two qualitative pre-studies the theoretical foundation of service productivity was built. Using this knowledge, a quantitative empirical survey was conducted, including almost 2000 service companies. The sampling frame was based on a company database provided by Hoppenstedt. Samples were randomly selected using proportionate stratified sampling. Findings – The findings show the economic importance and meaningfulness of service productivity management, independently from the industry. Research limitations/implications – Due to the chosen population, the findings are limited to Germany. Furthermore, a more detailed comparison of service industries beyond industrial and non-industrial services was not feas.
Adult Age Differences in Visual Acuity, Stereopsis, and Contrast Sensitivity

ABSTRACT We investigated adult age differences in four measures of visual function: distance acuity, near acuity, stereopsis, and contrast sensitivity. Twenty‐four young adults (mean age 19.5 years) and 24 older adults (mean age 68.4 years) participated. Age differences were present in each of the four measures. A stepwise discriminant analysis performed on the four measures revealed that, when the correlations among the measures were taken into account, only contrast sensitivity significantly discriminated young and older adults' performance. The strength of the correlations among the four measures was greater for older adults than for young adults. The results indicated that contrast sensitivity is a useful measure for detecting age‐related changes in visual function and that a common mechanism may underlie age differences on various visual tests.
Priority setting: learning to make tough decisions

The costs of trying to provide modern medical care for all who could potentially benefit exceed the capacity of most countries Priority setting (also termed resource allocation) for healthcare expenditure is inevitable in all societies, even the most affluent.1 New technologies are the dominant driving forces.2 Although these advances have been successful both in saving lives and in improving quality of life, the costs of trying to provide such modern medical care for all who could potentially benefit exceed the capacity of most countries. A very considerable proportion of medical expenditure is generated on treating patients during what turns out to be the last year of life.3 It is now increasingly recognised that there are inadequate health returns from such expenditure (both in terms of duration and quality of life) and that there are limits to what medicine should be attempting to achieve.4 Consequently there has been a subtle, but largely unacknowledged, shift from a “sanctity of life” approach (in which medical care is continued relentlessly, even when death seems imminent) to “quality of life” considerations.5 This is reflected in the wishes of many patients to be spared ongoing heroic measures and to be allowed to die peacefully. Increasingly healthcare professionals are also willing to withdraw treatment when the prognosis seems very poor, or when other goals of health care are considered to be higher priorities.6 Additional reasons for interest in priority setting, beyond the appropriateness of aggressive medical care, include the need for more equitable access to care and the desirability of reducing arbitrariness in medical practice through use of practice guidelines informed by the best evidence. As many values are at stake and there are differing rankings given to these, the debate about priority setting has been heated and acrimonious. In the …
Role of Information and Communication Technology Solutions on the Growth of Small and Medium Enterprises: Case of Nairobi County

The study set out to assess the role of E-commerce tools on the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), analyze how the use of Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and use social media technologies affects the growth of SMEs. Descriptive survey design was used; a sample of 60 SMEs was selected using quota sampling in Nairobi County. Primary data was collected using semi- structured questionnaires. Analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Study findings indicated that e-commerce tools were highly adopted by SMEs with mobile payment systems being the highest adopted, online shopping and online catalogues for products and services. Adoption of e-commerce tools related to growth of SMEs. CRM systems were highly adopted by SMEs and had a moderate positive correlation their growth. Findings indicated that high growth SMEs was mostly associated with usage of social media. The study recommended that SMEs should consider wide flexible solutions of open source software solutions, scalable platforms to allow progressive upgrade to meet increasing use and cloud solutions. Research should be conducted to identify additional challenges that will enable SMEs operations to be efficient, cost-effective to ensure their growth and sustainability.
Cryptococcus neoformans Variants Generated by Phenotypic Switching Differ in Virulence through Effects on Macrophage Activation

ABSTRACT Macrophages have a central role in the pathogenesis of cryptococcosis since they are an important line of defense, serve as a site for fungal replication, and also can contribute to tissue damage. The objective of this study was to investigate the interaction of macrophages with cells from smooth-colony variants (SM) and mucoid-colony variants (MC) arising from phenotypic switching of Cryptococcus neoformans. Alveolar macrophages (AMs) isolated from SM- and MC-infected mice exhibited differences in gene and surface expression of PD-L1, PD-L2, and major histocompatibility class II (MHC-II). PD-L1 and PD-L2 are the ligands for PD1 and are differentially regulated in Th1- and Th2-type cells. In addition, macrophage activation in SM- and MC-infected mice was characterized as alternatively activated. Flow cytometric and cytokine analysis demonstrated that MC infection was associated with the emergence of Th17 cells and higher levels of interleukin-17 (IL-17) in lung tissue, which were reduced by AM depletion. In conclusion, our results indicate that macrophages play a significant role in maintaining damage-promoting inflammation in the lung during MC infection, which ultimately results in death.
FOREIGN CURRENCY TRANSLATION: NEW ACCOUNTING STANDARDS IN AUSTRALIA

The case examines the effects of the adoption of Australian equivalents to International Financial Reporting Standards related to foreign currency translation on the accounts of two Australian multinational companies operating in the oil and gas industry and one insolvent manufacturing firm. In January 2005 the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) issued accounting standard AASB 121 The Effects of Changes in Foreign Exchange Rates, which was based on the international standard IFRS 21 with the same title. Students explore the accounting effects of AASB 121, compare with U.S. FASB 52, evaluate the adequacy of the translation adjustment, devise strategies for the company, and consider ethical aspects surrounding earnings management motivations in choosing the functional currency. The case is designed to give financial accounting and international finance students opportunities to examine the process of translating foreign currency based financial statements and to make decisions from the viewpoint of a financial analyst. A detailed TN is available from the authors.
SPBv: Benchmarking Linked Data Archiving Systems

As Linked Open Data (LOD) datasets are constantly evolving, both at schema and instance level, there is a need for systems that e ciently support storing and querying of such evolving data. However, there is a limited number of such systems and even fewer benchmarks that test their performance. In this paper, we describe in detail the rst version of the SPBv benchmark developed in the context of the HOBBIT EU H2020 project. SPBv aims to test the ability of archiving systems to e ciently manage evolving Linked Data datasets and queries evaluated across multiple versions of these datasets. We discuss the benchmark data generator and the query workload, and we describe a set of experiments we conducted with Virtuoso and R43ples systems.
A Correlation-Based Mechanism of Representational Development

In this article, I present a theory of infant concept development that stresses continual representational enrichment. Fundamental to this process is that infant possess a sensitive perceptual system, which is biased to detect and attend to particular aspects of the visual array, and a domain general associative learning mechanism, which encodes correlations among static and dynamic attributes. It is argued that infants’ categories appear to change qualitatively in the second year of life, though the underlying process of conceptual change is that of gradual, incremental learning. To support this view, I present evidence from empirical studies on infants’ ability to attend to static and dynamic correlations as well as recent connectionist simulations of early categorization. The empirical evidence provides a direct demonstration that infants develop the ability to detect and learn the associations that exist among specific features – in this case, object parts and the functional or motion-related properties to which they are causally related – and the connectionist models suggest, among other things, that a form of continuous Hebbian-based learning can lead to qualitative changes in representational content and structure.
The Economic Consequences of Earnings Management from the Perspective of Corporate Investment Efficiency:Empirical Evidence from Listed Companies in China

Taking the companies listed in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2009 as an example,this paper studies the economic consequences of earnings management in China from the perspective of investment efficiency.The results show that corporate earnings management is negatively related to future investment efficiency,namely listed companies with higher level of earnings management have lower future investment efficiency.Then it arrives at a conclusion that earnings management not only misleads external investors' judgments and decision-making,but also leads to adverse effects on corporate internal decision-making and the allocation of market resources,therefore corporate earnings management should be curbed.
Chemoradiotherapy for anal cancer in HIV patients causes prolonged CD4 cell count suppression.

BACKGROUND Despite the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy, anal cancer remains a significant health problem in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) patients. We present the clinical features and treatment outcomes of anal cancer in 60 HIV-positive patients over a 20-year period. PATIENTS AND METHODS A prospective database of all HIV-positive individuals managed in a specialist unit since 1986 includes 11 112 patients (71 687 person-years of follow-up). Sixty patients with anal cancer were identified. Their clinicopathological and treatment details were analysed. RESULTS At anal cancer diagnosis, the mean age was 44 years (range: 28-75 years) and the median CD4 cell count was 305 mm(-3) (range: 16-1252 mm(-3)). Fifty (83%) had chemoradiotherapy (CRT). Forty-six (92%) responded, of whom 10 (22%) subsequently relapsed with locoregional (70%), metastatic disease (10%) or both (20%). The overall 5-year survival is 65% (95% confidence interval 51% to 78%). The median CD4 count fell from 289 mm(-3) before CRT to 132 mm(-3) after 3 months and to 189 mm(-3) after 1 year (P<0.05). Six patients in remission of anal cancer died of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome defining illnesses. CONCLUSIONS The management of anal cancer with CRT achieves similar outcomes as the general population. CRT is associated with significant prolonged CD4 suppression that may contribute to late deaths of patients in remission.
Effect of temperature on task performance in officeenvironment

Indoor temperature is one of the fundamental characteristics of the indoor environment. It can be controlled with a degree of accuracy dependent on the building and its HVAC system. The indoor temperature affects several human responses, including thermal comfort, perceived air quality, sick building syndrome symptoms and performance at work. In this study, we focused on the effects of temperature on performance at office work. We included those studies that had used objective indicators of performance that are likely to be relevant in office type work, such as text processing, simple calculations (addition, multiplication), length of telephone customer service time, and total handling time per customer for call-center workers. We excluded data from studies of industrial work performance. We calculated from all studies the percentage of performance change per degree increase in temperature, and statistically analyzed measured work performance with temperature. The results show that performance increases with temperature up to 21-22 C, and decreases with temperature above 23-24 C. The highest productivity is at temperature of around 22 C. For example, at the temperature of 30 C, the performance is only 91.1% of the maximum i.e. the reduction in performance is 8.9%
Direct Oral Anticoagulants in Frail Older Adults: A Geriatric Perspective

Abstract Direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) have changed the paradigm of anticoagulation management, improving patient convenience as well as possibly reducing the incidence of spontaneous intracranial hemorrhage. However, concerns remain with these agents because of the lack of monitoring capacity and availability of readily accessible specific antidotes. This is particularly pertinent in the older population, specifically the frail older adults who have multiple comorbidities, higher risk of falls, and increased bleeding risk. This group has not been specifically studied in the DOAC randomized controlled trials and, hence, extrapolation of these data into this population should be done cautiously. We provide a review of the use of DOACs in the older frail population from both hematological and geriatric perspectives, as well as propose an algorithm for how these agents may be used in this frail population.