Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does Corporate Governance Matter in Iran

In this paper, we construct a corporate governance Index (G-index) based on 13 attributes, which are associated with good and bad governance to investigate the impact of corporate governance on a firm’s stock return. After correlating each of the governance attributes of 141 Tehran Stock Exchange listed companies with their performance separately over a period of six years, we find the direction of each attribute’s correlation. After that, we compute the G-index by aggregating the individual attributes and converting each firm’s scores on attribute into the same scale. Finally, these scores are summed up by subtracting negatively correlated attributes from positively correlated attributes for each firm. We find a significantly high correlation between the firm’s performance and firm’s G-index. In the next step, we made three governance-sorted portfolios-from low to high governance-which we use to evaluate stock returns. We find better-governed portfolios significantly outperformed the poorly governed portfolios. We find that corporate governance score really matters in since the results show statistically significant relationship between the qualities of the corporate governance as measured by our G-index and firm’s stock return.
Assessing Competency of a Developing Country in High Technology?: A Case Study based on Indian Patenting Activity in the Biotechnology Sector

Abstract Technological capability at the national/firm level provides competitive advantage and is intrinsic to the ‘catch up’ process. However, it is difficult to capture ‘properly’ technological capability attained by a country in a particular industry/sector and gauge future trends; particularly so for a country in transition. Present paper addresses this issue. We argue that in high technology sectors, patents can provide relevant indications. Based on this argument, we analyse India’s patenting activity in biotechnology (a country epitomising developing economies). Global patenting trends shows core activity areas and changing dynamics. In addition comparison with BRIC countries assess India’s activity in proper perspective. Analysis was undertaken for ‘biotechnology domain’ and individual technology classes that constitute this domain. To assess role of different organisational categories in technology creation; patenting activity was delineated under Indian organisations, foreign R&D centres and resident individuals. Along with trend, types of actors involved, collaboration, linkages with other industries, etc were investigated. The Study shows that India is developing technological capability both in terms of depth and breadth. However, in comparison to global landscape, it is still in infancy. We conclude that in spite of limitations, novel indications derived from patent statistics is a good indication of measuring a country’s technological capability.
An investigation into the targeting of UK export assistance

Discusses the results of an empirical study undertaken in the UK using a modified six‐stage version of the Bilkey and Tesar model to investigate the usefulness of the internationalization process as a method of categorizing firms for the targeting of export assistance. The findings suggest that a although statistical differences exist between firms in the six stages of the model, many similarities are present in the major firm characteristics under study. Consequently, the results indicate that in pragmatic terms the UK government is correct in using a three‐stage model of the internationalization process to target export assistance.
Lean public management: How lean principles facilitate municipal governance reform in China

Traditional Chinese municipal governance set up on “information islands” brought negative effect to municipal governance reform. E-government has become a hot topic in public management recently just as lean supply chain does in business management. However, there is little discussion about their relationship. This article focused on this gap through referring to lean principles in supply chain management. The aim was to illustrate the determinants of efficient public service provision for citizens to support flexible municipal governance reform to satisfy increasing public demand. The explorative and deductive principles were put forward following by a case study on Jiangmen municipal service hotline that set an example of cross-network integration for lean public management. The determinants of different dimensions were demonstrated by analyzing the process and key points of the cross-network integration. Direction and endeavor for implementing lean management in public sectors were further discussed. This paper contributed to identifying framework, determinants and criteria of lean public management for municipal governance, and, was essential for ensuring the successful practices of lean public management in future. It provided a new insight for public sector reform and contributed to public management research as well as business management study. Key words: Public management, lean principle, municipal governance reform, cross-network integration, municipal service hotline, case study, China.
Nutritional Issues in Hepatobiliary Surgery

Advances in nutritional science and molecular immunobiology combined with an increased understanding in intermediary metabolism has radically changed the role of nutritional support in the 1 9 9 0 ~ . ' * ~ In addition to providing the basic components to correct protein calorie malnutrition, nutritional strategies have recently tried to identify and provide disease-specific nutrient requirement for individual organs, cells, and tissues. This new direction or application of nutritional science has been called nutritional pharmacology and is based on the observation that individual components of the immunoinflammatory response to injury and infection can be influenced and manipulated by the timely administration of specific nutrients, in specific concentrations, and by specific routes of feeding. Using the principles of nutritional pharmacology, clinicians and scientists have observed over the past few years that liver structure and function in both health and disease can be significantly influenced by nutritional means. This article will discuss recent developments in the nutritional sciences that can be combined with new knowledge about the biology of intermediary metabolism to improve postoperative outcome in three clinical situations: obstructive jaundice, liver resection, and liver transplantation.
Prorenin is the endogenous agonist of the (pro)renin receptor. Binding kinetics of renin and prorenin in rat vascular smooth muscle cells overexpressing the human (pro)renin receptor

Objective Mannose 6-phosphate receptors (M6PR) bind both renin and prorenin, and such binding contributes to renin/prorenin clearance but not to angiotensin generation. Here, we evaluated the kinetics of renin/prorenin binding to the recently discovered human (pro)renin receptor (h(P)RR), and the idea that such binding underlies tissue angiotensin generation. Methods and results Vascular smooth muscle cells from control rats and transgenic rats with smooth muscle h(P)RR overexpression were incubated at 4 or 37°C with human renin or prorenin. Incubation at 37°C greatly increased binding, suggesting that (pro)renin-binding receptors cycle between the intracellular compartment and the cell surface. Blockade of the M6PR reduced binding by approximately 50%. During M6PR blockade, h(P)RR cells bound twice as much prorenin as control cells, while renin binding was unaltered. Incubation of h(P)RR (but not control) cells with prorenin + angiotensinogen yielded more angiotensin than expected on the basis of the activity of soluble prorenin, whereas angiotensin generation during incubation of both cell types with renin + angiotensinogen was entirely due to soluble renin. The renin + angiotensinogen-induced vasoconstriction of isolated iliac arteries from control and transgenic rats was also due to soluble renin only. The recently proposed (P)RR antagonist ‘handle region peptide’, which resembles part of the prosegment, blocked neither prorenin binding nor angiotensin generation. Conclusions H(P)RRs preferentially bind prorenin, and such binding results in angiotensin generation, most likely because binding results in prorenin activation.
Complementation analysis and regulation of CO2 fixation gene expression in a ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase deletion strain of Rhodospirillum rubrum

A ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase (RubisCO) deletion strain of Rhodospirillum rubrum that was incapable of photolithoautotrophic growth was constructed. Photoheterotrophic growth, however, was possible for the R. rubrum RubisCO deletion strain when oxidized carbon compounds such as malate were supplied. The R. rubrum RubisCO-deficient strain was not complemented to photolithoautotrophic growth by various R. rubrum DNA fragments that contain the gene encoding RubisCO, cbbM. When the R. rubrum cbbM deletion strain harbored plasmids containing R. rubrum DNA inserts with at least 2.0 kb preceding the translational start site of the cbbM gene, RubisCO activity and RubisCO antigen were detected. Lack of RubisCO expression was therefore not the cause for the failure to complement the cbbM mutant strain. Interestingly, DNA fragments encoding either of two complete Calvin-Benson-Bassham CO2- fixation (cbb) gene operons from Rhodobacter sphaeroides were able to complement the R. rubrum RubisCO deletion strain to photolithoautotrophic growth. The same R. rubrum DNA fragments that failed to complement the R. rubrum cbbM deletion strain successfully complemented the RubisCO deletion strain of R. sphaeroides, pointing to distinct differences in the regulation of metabolism and the genetics of photolithoautotrophic growth in these two organisms. A number of cbb genes were identified by nucleotide sequence analysis of the region upstream of cbbM. Included among these was an open reading frame encoding a cbbR gene showing a high degree of sequence similarity to known lysR-type CO2 fixation transcriptional activator genes. The placement and orientation of the cbbR transcriptional regulator gene in R. rubrum are unique.
The Impact of the Adoption of International Financial Accounting Standards (IFRS) on Consolidated Financial Statements of Italian Enterprises

In this paper we present a preliminary analysis on the main changes due to the introduction of the International Accounting Financial Standards (IFRS) in the process of drafting consolidated financial statements, with respect to the currently adopted Italian Accounting Principles. The consolidated financial statements of 191 Italian holdings, listed in the Milan Stock Exchange and active in manufacturing and services sectors, have been analyzed. Important implications have been assessed for the following parts of the consolidated financial statement: the definition of the consolidation area, the goodwill treatment, the representation of the minority interests, and the elimination of intragroup transactions. It’s clearly apparent how new accounting rules may cause remarkable changes on values included in financial statements, with consequences on the stakeholders’ judgement and, in particular, on the investors’ judgement.This study constitutes a partial step of a research (the adoption of the international accounting standards (IFRS) in Italy: effects on management decisions and on the economic and financial communication process), supported by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, started in 2003 and conducted by Universities of Parma, Brescia, Genova, Napoli and Pisa (co-ordinated by University of Parma).
Clinical features of patients with esophageal and second primary cancers.

BACKGROUND The prevalence of esophageal cancer (EC) with second primary cancers (SPC) is increasing worldwide. This study was aimed to understand the clinical features of EC patients with SPC in the Taiwanese population. MATERIALS AND METHODS Clinical and laboratory data for 180 EC patients with or without SPC were collected between January 2009 and December 2013. Information on treatment approaches, location of SPCs and ABO blood type were also collected and stratified. RESULTS The most common SPC in EC patients was hypopharyngeal cancer, followed by laryngeal cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma in our study. Malignancies of colon, prostate and lung were also found. There was a significant higher portion of blood type A in the EC patients with SPC compared with those without (42.4% vs 19.5%, P=0.006). CONCLUSIONS The frequency and SPC site distribution and blood type A should be considered in clinical evaluation of EC patients with a high risk of developing SPC in the Taiwanese population.
Unsupervised feature selection using Tolerance Rough Set based Relative Reduct

Feature selection is a procedure to select highly informative features. The microarray data comprises less number of samples with more number of genes. Feature selection for gene expression data intends to find a set of genes that best discriminate highly expressed genes from highly suppressed genes. The supervised feature selection methods select features using evaluation function or metric that is related to the decision classes. However, Gene expression datasets are continuous and for such dataset, decision class is not provided. The existing unsupervised feature selection methods are not effective in selecting features which comprises real valued data. Discretizing the original data, results in information loss. An efficient Unsupervised Tolerance Rough Set based Relative Reduct (U-TRS-RelRed) algorithm is presented in this paper. This algorithm uses backward elimination method to remove features from the complete set of original features. K-Means and Rough K-Means algorithms are used to cluster and measure the quality of the reduced data. The proposed approach is compared with existing unsupervised methods and the result demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
A new model of advance care planning: observations from people with HIV.

BACKGROUND Although theoretical concepts from ethics and law have been applied, there is no conceptual model of advance care planning rooted in the perspective of individuals engaged in it. OBJECTIVE To develop a conceptual model of advance care planning by examining the perspectives of individuals engaged in it. METHODS In this qualitative research, we studied 140 individuals with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome who were engaged in advance care planning. Respondents' experience with and opinions about advance care planning were noted in interviews that were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed. RESULTS The primary goal of advance care planning was to prepare for death, which entailed facing death, achieving a sense of control, and strengthening relationships. CONCLUSIONS We have developed a conceptual model of advance care planning rooted in the perspectives of individuals engaged in it. The model has implications for theory, research, and practice regarding end-of-life care.
Psychological Implications of Customer Participation in Co-Production

Customer participation in the production of goods and services appears to be growing. The marketing literature has largely focused on the economic implications of this trend and has not addressed customers’ potential psychological responses to participation. The authors draw on the social psychological literature on the self-serving bias and conduct two studies to examine the effects of participation on customer satisfaction. Study 1 shows that consistent with the self-serving bias, given an identical outcome, customer satisfaction with a firm differs depending on whether a customer participates in production. Study 2 shows that providing customers a choice in whether to participate mitigates the self-serving bias when the outcome is worse than expected. The authors present theoretical and practical implications and provide directions for further research.
Integrated Mental Health Care: Practitioners' Perspectives

Objective: Integrated mental health care (IMHC) is a community-based model that considers the patient and informal carers to be the major contributors to stable recovery from severe mental health problems. This study investigates the implementation of IMHC by 35 New Zealand practitioners 1 year after being trained in the model. It also explores their experiences and perceptions regarding the model. Method: Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered by combining a questionnaire survey with in-depth interviews. Results: Few of the trainees had been able to implement the model as much as they would have liked. A primary barrier to implementation was created by the resource constraints that impede most innovative community care initiatives even when demonstrated to be more cost-effective than traditional hospital-based approaches. Concerns particular to IMHC included issues relating to flexibility, time-intensiveness and applicability to New Zealand. Many practitioners found some of the specific intervention strategies and the clear overall structure of the model useful. Its psychosocial emphasis had a positive impact on many practitioners' beliefs about the causes and prognosis of severe mental health problems. Conclusions: Participants offer a range of recommendations as to how IMHC might be applied and adapted. Consultation with staff, consumers, families and Maori, as well as a strengthening of the psychosocial components, are recommended.
Milking Frequency Effects in Early Lactation

Increasing the frequency of milk removal increases milk production in cattle as it does in many species (Pearson et al., 1979). Indeed, this is a common management approach to maximize production per cow and fully optimize capital investment in machinery and facilities. One obvious drawback is the increase in variable costs, mainly labor, required to reap the higher yield of milk. Traditionally, this technique has been employed throughout lactation, but recent evidence suggests that frequent milking appropriately timed within the lactation cycle can have persistent effects, and thus eliminate some of the higher costs while maintaining higher yields. This paper reviews the physiology behind the response, expected outcomes from increased milking frequency, and proposes easily adopted strategies to exploit frequent milking during early lactation to improve overall yields.
Cayzer, Steve and Aickelin, Uwe (2002) 'On the Effects of Idiotypic Interactions for Recommendation Communities in Artificial Immune Systems'. In: 1st International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems

It has previously been shown that a recommender based on immune system idiotypic principles can outperform one based on correlation alone. This paper reports the results of work in progress, where we undertake some investigations into the nature of this beneficial effect. The initial findings are that the immune system recommender tends to produce different neighbourhoods, and that the superior performance of this recommender is due partly to the different neighbourhoods, and partly to the way that the idiotypic effect is used to weight each neighbour’s recommendations.
High CO2 increases the freezing sensitivity of plants: Implications for paleoclimatic reconstructions from fossil floras

Reconstructions of coldest month mean temperature (CMMT) in the geologic past are important for understanding the dynamics of the climate system operating at that time. A common method for estimating CMMT involves applying the climatic tolerances of modern plant species to close analogues in the fossil record (the so-called nearest living relative [NLR] approach). Here we show that the leaves of seven modern species commonly used as NLRs to reconstruct CMMT from the fossil record freeze at warmer temperatures when grown at high CO2 (800 vs. 400 ppmv). This CO2 effect was found across all tested plant groups, including palms, taxodiaceous conifers, and two Southern Hemisphere evergreen species. This pervasive response indicates that many NLR-derived estimates of CMMT for times of high CO2 should be adjusted by at least 11.5 to 13 8C. A revision of CMMT estimates toward warmer values further increases the disparity in continental interiors between CMMT indicators from the fossil record and the colder predictions from general circulation models.
Multi-Scale Genetics towards Understanding the Hierarchy of Transcription Factor Network in Genome Regulation

The model bacterium, Escherichia coli, is able to survive under various stressful conditions in nature. From the complete genome sequence, about 4,400 genes are considered to exist on the genome. Selective and regulated expression of the genes is critical for bacterial adaptation to environment. Since the number of RNA polymerase, the enzyme responsible for transcription, is less than that of total genes, we proposed that the controlled distribution of RNA polymerase among 4,400 genes determines the genome expression pattern. In order to understand the molecular basis of genome regulation, we have been concerned with the analysis of all 300 transcription factors, which are involved in the functional modulation of RNA polymerase for switching the gene selectivity. For this purpose, we have performed the systematic search for target genes and promoters recognized by each transcription factor using the newly developed genomic SELEX system. Here we describe some results of this multi-scale genetics focusing on the protein-protein and protein-DNA interaction networks involved in the genome regulation. One hitherto undescribed finding is that the transcription factors form interplay networks, in which one transcription factor controls the expression of another factor and so on. The putative transcription factors with unidentified functions are often located on top of the hierarchy of transcription factor cascade. Such networks appear to be needed for stress response in nature
Public enterprise reform : the lessons of experience

This book tries to systematize the lessons learned in the past two decades of public enterprise reform to correct the perceived deficiencies of state-enterprise sectors in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It addresses the macroeconomic adjustments typically required in the effort to fashion a more open and competitive economy - liberalizing trade and ending preferential treatment for state enterprises; shifts toward market-oriented financing in the banking system; moves toward market pricing and reforming the institutional structure for setting tariffs; and establishing more competitive and evenhanded compensation and staffing policies in state enterprises. It argues that with macroeconomic reforms under way, government needs to ground its reform of state enterprises in an assessment of the purposes to be served by its state-owned sector. It describes how reforming the relationship between government and its enterprises entails striking a delicate balance between autonomy and accountability. The report examines the mechanisms used by governments in a variety of developing countries to set goals for state-owned firms and to evaluate their performance. It addresses the promise and the risks of privatization, whether through outright sales, management contracting, leasing, franchising, contracting-out, or encouraging new entrants into the private sector. It also offers an overview of the task facing governments with a failing public enterprise sector.