Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Case study summary report: New ways of working

The Introduction chapter of the Case Study Summary report presents shortly the history of the Alternative work development also called New Ways of Working a.k. a NewWoW. The effect of enablers usually classified as Technological, Physical and Social are in the main focus. Objectives are 1) perform three complementary approaches of enablers, concept and future of the organization using the same consultative process to engage work practices 2) find quantitative information of the aspects (what? ) of the work environment affecting to personal life using a survey 3) find out qualitative information of “How aspects of the social environment enhance or disrupt Knowledge Work – on individual, team, organizational, societal levels. Why? ” using focus group discussions in the same three organizations. The first part of the report is describing the companies (VTT, Granlund and ISS) change plans and the target setting. The Optimaze engagement methodology and the results are described for the three organizations cases. The key work practices in three organizations have remarkable similarities: the need for communication, coordination, sharing, being with customers/partners/colleagues etc. The second part describes a survey of totally 255 persons in three organizations addressing question “What factors of the social environment enhance or disrupt Knowledge Work? ”. The SPSSTM statistical program was used to analyse the survey data. The differences between the Granlund, ISS and VTT in survey response patterns reflected mainly the fact that they are different type of organizations. The third part describes the preparation, execution and the data analysis of the Focus group interviews. The transcripts were content coded both manually and by Atlas.ti, a software package for qualitative data analysis. The overall impression from the group discussion is that that most of the participants cared deeply about are issues that personally affect them or their close colleagues. The drivers for Job Crafting arise from three personal needs. Firstly to exert some control over the job to avoid alienation, secondly to build a positive self-image, and thirdly to connect with others. The three aforementioned needs echo the basic psychological needs of Self-Determination Theory: namely Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness.
Cellulose Surface Degradation by a Lytic Polysaccharide Monooxygenase and Its Effect on Cellulase Hydrolytic Efficiency

Background: Lytic polysaccharide monooxygenase (LPMO) has recently been discovered to depolymerize cellulose. Results: Dynamic imaging was applied to reveal the effects of LPMO and cellulase activity on solid cellulose surface. Conclusion: Critical features of surface morphology for LPMO synergy with cellulases are recognized. Significance: Direct insights into cellulose deconstruction by LPMO alone and in synergy with cellulases are obtained. Lytic polysaccharide monooxygenase (LPMO) represents a unique principle of oxidative degradation of recalcitrant insoluble polysaccharides. Used in combination with hydrolytic enzymes, LPMO appears to constitute a significant factor of the efficiency of enzymatic biomass depolymerization. LPMO activity on different cellulose substrates has been shown from the slow release of oxidized oligosaccharides into solution, but an immediate and direct demonstration of the enzyme action on the cellulose surface is lacking. Specificity of LPMO for degrading ordered crystalline and unordered amorphous cellulose material of the substrate surface is also unknown. We show by fluorescence dye adsorption analyzed with confocal laser scanning microscopy that a LPMO (from Neurospora crassa) introduces carboxyl groups primarily in surface-exposed crystalline areas of the cellulosic substrate. Using time-resolved in situ atomic force microscopy we further demonstrate that cellulose nano-fibrils exposed on the surface are degraded into shorter and thinner insoluble fragments. Also using atomic force microscopy, we show that prior action of LPMO enables cellulases to attack otherwise highly resistant crystalline substrate areas and that it promotes an overall faster and more complete surface degradation. Overall, this study reveals key characteristics of LPMO action on the cellulose surface and suggests the effects of substrate morphology on the synergy between LPMO and hydrolytic enzymes in cellulose depolymerization.
Development of three commercial sea cucumbers, Holothuria scabra, H. fuscogilva and Actinopyga mauritiana: larval structure and growth

Development of the tropical sea cucumbers Holothuria scabra, H. fuscogilva and Actinopyga mauritiana was investigated. Holothuria scabra developed through the feeding auricularia, the non-feeding doliolaria and the pentactula larval stages in 14-17 days at 26-28°C. Holothuria fuscogilva and A. mauritiana were reared to the auricularia and doliolaria stages respectively. The auricularia stage was reached by 40-70 h and the larvae developed lateral processes and a prominent ciliated band. Transformation to the doliolaria stage took 10-12 h and occurred on Days 9-12 in H. scabra and Days 12-22 in A. mauritiana. During this transition the ciliated band fragmented into ciliary rings, the location of which coincided with the lateral processes in the auriculariae. In H. scabra, metamorphosis to pentactulae (13-15 days) was marked by development of five primary tentacles and a ventroposterior podium. This podium was used to attach to the substratum. Newly settled pentactulae of H. scabra used their tentacles to test, adhere and move across the substratum. Development of a second podium marked the development of juveniles (14-17 days). Hyaline spheres were conspicuous in late auriculariae of H. scabra and may be an indicator of larval competence. They disappeared in the doliolaria stage, which suggests that they may function as nutritive reserves to sustain H. scabra through the non-feeding perimetamorphic period. Absence of these spheres in H. fuscogilva, and their poor growth in A. mauritiana, suggests the feeding protocol used may not be sufficient to support complete development in these species. Determination of food and culture conditions that promote hyaline sphere formation and control bacteria may be essential for successful culture of H. fuscogilva and A. mauritiana.
Bounds for expected supremum of fractional Brownian motion with drift

Abstract We provide upper and lower bounds for the mean $\mathscr{M}(H)$ of $\sup_{t\geq 0} \{B_H(t) - t\}$ , with $B_H(\! \cdot\! )$ a zero-mean, variance-normalized version of fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter $H\in(0,1)$ . We find bounds in (semi-) closed form, distinguishing between $H\in(0,\frac{1}{2}]$ and $H\in[\frac{1}{2},1)$ , where in the former regime a numerical procedure is presented that drastically reduces the upper bound. For $H\in(0,\frac{1}{2}]$ , the ratio between the upper and lower bound is bounded, whereas for $H\in[\frac{1}{2},1)$ the derived upper and lower bound have a strongly similar shape. We also derive a new upper bound for the mean of $\sup_{t\in[0,1]} B_H(t)$ , $H\in(0,\frac{1}{2}]$ , which is tight around $H=\frac{1}{2}$ .
The role of density in sex determination in Daphnia magna (Crustacea, Cladocera)

SUMMARY. 1. Cladocerans are generally believed to exhibit environmental sex determination; however, the evidence for this assertion is equivocal. Particularly, no studies have been performed which isolate potential effects of the environment on the sex of offspring (and hence sex ratio) from effects on the induction of sex (with the necessary appearance of males). We report the findings of a study of Daphnia magna Straus which is able to make this distinction. 2. We examined the sexes of broods produced by asexually reproducing females collected from high and low densities of D. magna in naturally occurring populations. We looked for an effect of density, a factor frequently implicated in male induction, on offspring sex. 3. We could find no effect of density on brood sex. Our results may indicate a true absence of interaction or may arise from our sampling procedure obscuring an interaction. More detailed field observations are suggested as a means of further examining the role of density in sex determination in Cladocera.
Influence of global and local features on parallel object identification

Background: The present study concerns parallel and serial processing of visual information, or more specifically, whether visual objects are identified successively or simultaneously in multiple object stimulus. Some findings in scene perception demonstrate the potential parallel processing of different sources of information in a stimulus; however, more extensive investigation is needed. Methods: We presented one, two or three visual objects of different categories for 100 ms and afterwards asked subjects whether a specified category was present in the stimulus. We varied the number of objects, the number of categories and the type of object shape distortion (distortion of either global or local features). Results: The response time and accuracy data corresponded to data from a previous experiment, which demonstrated that performance efficiency mostly depends on the number of categories but not on the number of objects. Two and three objects of the same category were identified with the same accuracy and the same response time, but two objects were identified faster and more accurately than three objects if they belonged to different categories. Distortion type did not affect the pattern of performance. Conclusions: The findings suggest the idea that objects of the same category can be identified simultaneously and that identification involves both local and global features.
Hedge Funds in Corporate Governance and Corporate Control.

Hedge funds have become critical players in both corporate governance and corporate control. In this article, we document and examine the nature of hedge fund activism, how and why it differs from activism by traditional institutional investors, and its implications for corporate governance and regulatory reform. We argue that hedge fund activism differs from activism by traditional institutions in several ways: it is directed at significant changes in individual companies (rather than small, systemic changes), it entails higher costs, and it is strategic and ex ante (rather than intermittent and ex post). The reasons for these differences may lie in the incentive structures of hedge fund managers as well as in the fact that traditional institutions face regulatory barriers, political constraints, or conflicts of interest that make activism less profitable than it is for hedge funds. But the differences may also be due to the fact that traditional institutions pursue a diversification strategy that is difficult to combine with strategic activism.Although hedge funds hold great promise as active shareholders, their intense involvement in corporate governance and control also potentially raises two kinds of problems: The interests of hedge funds sometimes diverge from those of their fellow shareholders; and the intensity of hedge fund activism imposes substantial stress that the regulatory system may not be able to withstand. The resulting problems, however, are relatively isolated and narrow, do not broadly undermine the value of hedge fund activism as a whole, and do not warrant major additional regulatory interventions.The sharpest accusation leveled against activist funds is that activism is designed to achieve a short-term payoff at the expense of long-term profitability. Although we consider this a potentially serious problem that arguably pervades hedge fund activism, we conclude that a sufficient case for legal intervention has not been made. This conclusion results from the uncertainties about whether short-termism is in fact a real problem and how much hedge fund activism is driven by excessive short-termism. But, most importantly, it stems from our view that market forces and adaptive devices taken by companies individually are better designed than regulation to deal with the potential negative effects of hedge fund short-termism while preserving the positive effects of hedge-fund activism.
The Structure of Polar Molecular Liquids

The importance of the solvent environment to chemistry in solution is widely appreciated; hence, the motivation for development of detailed molecular descriptions of chemically relevant liquids and their solutions is substantial. At the same time, the area of liquid state theory continues to evolve rapidly, with realistic descriptions of complex chemical systems becoming increasingly accessible to theoretical analysis. Reviews in this series alone show the steady progression of our theoretical understanding of liquid state molecular organization during the last ten years (1-6). Nevertheless, the theory of liquids remains an active area of study for systems that involve strong attractive forces in addition to the ubiquitous, short-range repulsive forces usually referred to as molecular "shape. " The latter forces contribute to liquid structure through the packing requirements for molecular species in the dense liquid phase (4), and are a necessary consideration, whether or not strong polar forces are present or effectively competitive. The purpose of the present review is to discuss elements of liquid structure studies for systems in which both types of forces are present. Such is the case for most solutions of chemical interest. I include in this discussion both an outline of current techniques and a description of general features of structure that have emerged from recent studies. When we discuss liquid "structure," we mean the statistical distribution of relative molecular separations and orientations in the fluid, and of intramolecular coordinates, if the molecules are flexible. These are typically described through equilibrium probability distributions or correlation functions (providing relative probabilities, compared to spatially uncor-
Learning the Skills of Policing

How important is experience in learning to become an effective police officer? Police officers say vehemently that there is no substitute. The training given in police academies is universally regarded as irrelevant to "real" police work. Policing, it is argued, cannot be learned scientifically, in the sense that if A is done in Y situation and B is done in X situation, then Z will result. The life police officers confront is too diverse and complicated to be reduced to simple principles. As police officers continually say, every situation is different. What is needed, then, is not learning in the book sense but skills derived from handling a multitude of what seem like unique situations over and over again. If this view of policing is correct, then it follows that the best officers are likely to be the most experienced, those who are older and have been in service longer. By extension, the only people fit to judge police activity in encounters with the public are other experienced officers. Certainly civilians could not make fair judgments, but neither could supervisors who had not experienced the peculiarities of a specific situation. In effect, the mysteries of the occupation are so profound that one not immersed repeatedly in police operations could not possibly understand the constraints as well as the possibilities of particular circumstances. Few officers would state the case as baldly as this, but these implications are fairly plain. That this view of policing is self-serving is obvious. More troubling, however, is that it suggests that policing is not amenable to rational analysis and, by extension, to formal learning. Contrary to the pretensions of police "professionalism," officers commonly portray policing as being essentially a craft in which learning comes exclusively through experience intuitively processed by individual officers. Admittedly, policing is not yet a science in the sense that a body of principles has been generated that officers may follow with a reasonable probability of achieving successful outcomes. Officers correctly perceive that there is a gap between the operational world and the classroom,
Seasonality, Aggregation and the Testing of the Production Smoothing Hypothesis

One of the leading hypotheses concerning the dynamics of production over time is the production smoothing hypothesis. Given a planning horizon which spans a number of production periods, the firm need not produce in each period an amount equal to expected sales. Rather, resorting to inventory accumulation and liquidation, the firm may follow a production plan temporally smoother than the path of demand. If firms faced with convex cost functions chose to smooth the rate of output in order to minimize costs, one would expect to observe that the rate of output would vary less than the rate of sales, with variations in inventory stocks absorbing some of the fluctuations in sales. Recently, work on the testing of the production smoothing hypothesis has cast doubt on its empirical validity. The evidence presented by Alan Blinder seems to indicate that the variance of production exceeds that of sales in seven out of eight two-digit retail industries (1981) and in eighteen out of twenty two-digit manufacturing industries (1983 and 1986). The purpose of this paper, then, is to examine the validity of such tests when seasonally adjusted aggregated data are used. The evidence presented show that the relative size of the variances of the seasonally adjusted production and sales does not provide valid tests of the production smoothing hypothesis. In addition, aggregating over firms where the seasonal patterns differ may also distort tests of production smoothing. Blinder realized that the use of seasonally adjusted data may not provide an adequate test of the hypothesis, stating "Had they been available, I would have preferred to use data that were not seasonally adjusted since the production smoothing model presumably applies to seasonal fluctuations in sales. However, such data are not available" (1983, fn. 19). In this paper I focus on the cement industry because the unadjusted disaggregated data are available for the direct testing of the conjecture that aggregate seasonally adjusted data mask production smoothing phenomenon. Aggregate monthly data on five other industries will also be examined.
Vasodilatation, not hypotension, improves resistance vessel design during treatment of essential hypertension: a literature survey

Correction of structural abnormalities in resistance arteries of patients with essential hypertension is a potential treatment goal, in addition to blood pressure reduction. However, available evidence from human as well as from animal studies indicates that antihypertensive therapy is not always accompanied by normalization of resistance vessel structure, despite normalization of blood pressure. Thus, blood pressure is not the only factor determining resistance vessel structure, and experimental studies show that several factors could play a role, including shear stress and hormonal stimulation. To date, there has been no systematic review of the many published papers which have studied the structural effects of antihypertensive therapy, and it is not known which conditions are best able to normalize resistance vessel structure. We have therefore made a survey of the available literature. The survey shows that change in blood pressure in indeed a poor indicator of change in resistance vessel structure. However, it is a remarkably consistent finding that normalization of resistance vessel structure is obtained with therapeutic regimens which reduce blood pressure by vasodilation rather than by lowering cardiac output. Thus, to the extent that normalization of resistance vessel structure is deemed a goal of antihypertensive treatment, the survey points towards the importance of considering not only the treatment effect on blood pressure, but also the haemodynamic effects within patients with essential hypertension.
Anxiety and Functional Status in Older Primary Care Patients

Objective: The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that anxiety in older primary care patients is associated with functional impairment after controlling for depression and medical comorbidity. Method: Primary care patients (n = 303), aged sixty or older were interviewed with a series of instruments designed to measure psychiatric symptoms including anxiety, depression, medical illness burden, and both examiner-rated and self-reported functional status. Anxiety was measured by the anxiety item of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression and the anxiety items of the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form SF-36. Multiple regression techniques were used to examine the association of anxiety with functional status after controlling for age, gender, education, medical burden, and depression. Results: When controlled for depression and medical morbidity, increased anxiety predicted poorer social function. Anxiety was not independently associated with more basic activities of daily living. Conclusions: Further studies with more comprehensive measures of anxiety are warranted to clarify the relationships between anxiety and functional status.
Prevalence of Vitamin B12 Deficiency in Type 2 Diabetes Patient Treated with Metformin

Background: Metformin-induced vitamin B12 deficiency was shown by several studies with a prevalence estimate ranging from 5.8% to 52%. Objectives: This study aimed to assess the prevalence of vitamin B12 deficiency in patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) on metformin. Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was done on 347 type 2 diabetic patients who were using the drug ‘metformin’ for at least six months and who attended a specialty diabetic clinic at Taif city of Saudi Arabia. Information on patients age, gender, type of metformin, assay results for Vitamin B12, and medical history were obtained. Vitamin B12 levels in serum were tested. Results: The mean age of the patients was found to be 58.10 ± 14.31, and the mean Vitamin B12 level was found to be (464.99 ± 419). The prevalence of vitamin B12 deficiency among participants was 10.4%. Patients with borderline levels were approximately 20.2% and the remaining 69.5% had normal vitamin B12 levels. No statistically significant difference was found between different age groups according to the mean level of Vitamin B12. Those who were on Metformin 1 mg and Metformin 750 mg had a statistically significant higher percentage of those who had deficient Vitamin B12 (<200) than those on Metformin 500 mg. Conclusions: Vitamin B12 supplementation should be prescribed for diabetic patients to prevent the occurrence of vitamin B12 deficiency complications.