bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Exercise Periodization over the Year Improves Metabolic Syndrome and Medication Use
Authors: MORALES-PALOMO FELIX , RAMIREZ-JIMENEZ MIGUEL , ORTEGA JUAN FERNANDO , MORA-RODRIGUEZ RICARDO 
Published: May 2018

ABSTRACT

Purpose
We aimed to determine if yearly repeated exercise training reduces metabolic syndrome (MetS) and the use of medicines to control MetS components.

Methods
Fifty-five MetS individuals were randomized into a TRAIN group that underwent two yearly programs of 16-wk high-intensity interval training or a nonexercising CONT group. We measured the evolution of all five MetS components, cardiorespiratory fitness (assessed by V˙O2PEAK) and medicine use, at baseline (0 months), mid (12 months), and end-point (24 months). Testing took place 8 months after the last training session to assess the chronic effects of training.

Results
Daily physical activity (wristband activity monitors) and calorie intake (3-d nutritional diary) remained similar to baseline at 1 and 2 yr in each group and were not different between groups. Blood triglycerides and glucose concentrations did not significantly vary in any group. However, waist circumference increased only in CONT after 2 yr (107 ± 2 cm to 111 ± 3 cm; P = 0.004). Mean arterial pressure decreased in TRAIN (101 ± 2 mm Hg to 94 ± 2 mm Hg; P = 0.002), whereas it remained unchanged in CONT (98 ± 2 mm Hg to 99 ± 2 mm Hg; P = 1.000) after 2 yr. Starting from similar levels at baseline, after 2 yr V˙O2PEAK was higher (2.32 ± 0.14 L·min−1 vs 1.98 ± 0.11 L·min−1; P = 0.049) and medicine use lower (1.27 ± 0.22 vs 2.23 ± 0.43; P = 0.043) in TRAIN than CONT. The reduction in MAP in TRAIN commanded a parallel reduction in MetS Z-score from baseline to 2 yr (0.30 ± 0.1 to 0.07 ± 0.1; P = 0.013).

Conclusions
Two yearly 16-wk high-intensity interval training programs are enough exercise to chronically lower MetS while preventing the reductions in cardiorespiratory fitness associated to aging. Of clinical relevance, yearly exercise training halts the increase in medicine use that occurs in non-exercising MetS individuals.
Branch-and-Price-and-Cut for the Truck-and-Trailer Routing Problem with Time Windows
Authors: Rothenbächer Ann-Kathrin , Drexl Michael , Irnich Stefan 
Published: May 2018

In this paper, we present a new branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm to solve the truck-and-trailer routing problem with time windows (TTRPTW) and two real-world extensions. In all TTRPTW variants, the fleet consists of one or more trucks that may attach a trailer. Some customers are not accessible with a truck-and-trailer combination, but can however be serviced by one if the trailer is previously detached and parked at a suitable location. In the first extension, the planning horizon comprises two days and customers may be visited either on both days or only once, in which case twice the daily supply must be collected. The second extension incorporates load transfer times depending on the quantity moved from a truck to its trailer. The exact branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm for the standard variant and the two new extensions is based on a set-partitioning formulation in which columns are routes describing the movement of a truck and its associated trailer. Linear relaxations of this formulation are solved by column generation where new routes are generated with a dynamic programming labeling algorithm. The effectiveness of this pricing procedure can be attributed to the adaptation of techniques such as bidirectional labeling, the ng-neighborhood, and heuristic pricing using dynamically reduced networks and relaxed dominance. The cutting component of the branch-and-price-and-cut adds violated subset-row inequalities to strengthen the linear relaxation. Computational studies show that our algorithm outperforms existing approaches on TTRP and TTRPTW benchmark instances used in the literature. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2017.0765 .
Leveraging Customer Flexibility for Car-Sharing Fleet Optimization
Authors: Ströhle Philipp , Flath Christoph M. , Gärttner Johannes 
Published: May 2018

Car-sharing is a precursor to the emerging class of “mobility services” leveraging modern technology to enable access to car-based mobility without the consumer owning the physical asset. Consequently, it plays an increasingly important role for urban mobility. Two-way station-based systems, where the customer picks up and returns a car at a single designated station, are the most common type of car-sharing solution. While these systems are most common in practice, they have attracted limited research activity from the optimization community. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the potentials of spatial and temporal customer flexibility to achieve better supply-demand alignment. To this end, we assess both the value and the cost of customer flexibility. Using a real-world data set with over 50,000 car-sharing reservations from a midsized German city, we assess the potential benefits of customer flexibility under offline and online optimization. The offline results indicate that temporal flexibility has only very limited potentials for fleet size reductions (4% reduction at four hours’ flexibility). At the same time, spatial flexibility is highly valuable—customer flexibility of 1 kilometer facilitates a fleet reduction of 12%. Furthermore, we find that spatial and temporal flexibility are highly complementary, with 750 meters and 3 hours yielding reduction potentials of almost 20%. The viability of the potentials is confirmed in the online setting with this reduced fleet. To assess customer willingness to provide flexibility, we conducted a basic discrete choice experiment with 1,529 car-sharing customers. We find that several customers are likely to offer flexibility in time or space for relatively little compensation. These estimates are then used as an input to an expanded fleet optimization problem. These results provide novel insights into the benefits and costs of leveraging consumer flexibility in car-sharing schemes. They are of particular relevance for car-sharing service providers and communities that aim to efficiently bridge the gap between individual and public transportation, and to inform urban transportation policy. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2017.0813 .
Redistributive policies and technology diffusion
Authors: Magalhães Manuela , Sequeira Tiago Neves 
Published: May 2018

Abstract
In this paper we examine the effects of redistributive policies in a transition economy in the presence of technology diffusion on labor and education decisions, and skill-premium. We set a micro-founded dynamic general equilibrium model with a skill-biased technology diffusion, elastic leisure/labor decisions, and investments in education. The economy is populated by two types of households – skilled and unskilled, which become skilled through investments in education. We highlight the importance of the general equilibrium effects of redistributive policies over the leisure/labor and education decisions and wages. Lump-sum transfers reduce investments in education, raising the share of unskilled individuals, decreasing their wage and, raising the skill-premium. Education subsidies raise investments in education, the skills supply, and unskilled wages and reduce the skill-premium during the slowdown of the technology diffusion.
Feminism and Postmodernism in Kuwaiti Women’s Fiction: Four Novels by Fawziyya S. al-Sālim
Authors: Tijani O. Ishaq 
Published: May 2018

Abstract
This article comparatively examines the first four novels of Fawziyya Shuwaysh al-Sālim (b. 1949): al-Shams madhbūḥa wa-l-layl maḥbūs (1997), al-Nuwākhidha (1998), Muzūn (2000), Ḥajar ʿalā ḥajar (2003). I argue that these novels reflect not only the stages of the author’s career as a novelist but also of the transition of Kuwaiti women’s fiction from the conventional to the postmodern narrative technique and discourse. Al-Sālim’s first and second novels typically reproduce-albeit subversively-the dominant literary discourse and employ conventional narrative techniques. On the other hand, her millennial-third and fourth-novels signal the inception of the feminist-postmodernist novel in Kuwait; in varying degrees, both texts utilise present-day, globalised linguistic vulgarism and fragmented narrative techniques to explore feminist discourses bordering on female transcendence and self-determination.
The Use of Economic Analysis of Law in the Context of Environmental Regulations
Authors: Roy Sharanya Basu 
Published: May 2018

Abstract
One of the recent developments in comprehending the effects and complexities of environmental regulations are by building environmental models. These models play various functional roles in environmental regulations ranging from assisting in policy making, in formulating new laws and resolving legal disputes to being used as a tool for collaborative negotiations between multiple set of parties. One such methodology for developing models in the context of environmental regulations is the economic analysis of law (EAL). This paper looks into how the EAL could be used in formulating environmental regulation models. This paper is an attempt to help policy makers, lawyers and environmental professionals, in general to understand how EAL could be used as an empirical tool to identify how regulatory quality could reduce pollution levels successfully and also how other variables (such as public participation, Ngo′s etc) could help reinforce the existing regulatory quality. In addition, to understand how this methodology can aid in devising models for examining the effectiveness of the regulatory quality, it also looks at EAL′s historical origins and how it has developed over time and its use (both advantages and disadvantages) in understanding regulation.
A Kernel-Based Metric for Balance Assessment
Authors: Zhu Yeying , Savage Jennifer S. , Ghosh Debashis 
Published: May 2018

Abstract
An important goal in causal inference is to achieve balance in the covariates among the treatment groups. In this article, we introduce the concept of distributional balance preserving which requires the distribution of the covariates to be the same in different treatment groups. We also introduce a new balance measure called kernel distance, which is the empirical estimate of the probability metric defined in the reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. Compared to the traditional balance metrics, the kernel distance measures the difference in the two multivariate distributions instead of the difference in the finite moments of the distributions. Simulation results show that the kernel distance is the best indicator of bias in the estimated casual effect compared to several commonly used balance measures. We then incorporate kernel distance into genetic matching, the state-of-the-art matching procedure and apply the proposed approach to analyze the Early Dieting in Girls study. The study indicates that mothers’ overall weight concern increases the likelihood of daughters’ early dieting behavior, but the causal effect is not significant.
Follow the Money: Remittance Responses to FDI Inflows
Authors: Coon Michael , Neumann Rebecca 
Published: May 2018

AbstractMigrant networks are an important catalyst for promoting FDI flows between countries. Migrants also send increasingly large remittances to their home countries. This paper considers how these two capital flows are related, specifically examining how remittance flows respond to the amount of FDI inflows to a country. Using a panel of 118 countries over 1980–2010, we estimate a random effects model and find a positive and significant effect of FDI flows on remittances, while controlling for other standard determinants of remittance flows. We account for the potential endogeneity of FDI to remittances by utilizing a two-stage Instrumental Variables approach. These findings suggest that FDI complements remittances, rather than crowding out emigrant investment to the home countries. We find the relationship is strongest for low income countries, highlighting the importance of remittances as a source of investment capital in these countries.
Defamiliarizing the popular image of the bible in some contemporary rewritings in english
Authors: Rychter Ewa 
Published: May 2018

AbstractThis paper focuses on the ways some recent British and Irish rewritings of the Bible estrange what has become the publicly accepted and dominant image of the biblical text. Recently, the Bible has been given the status of “home scripture” (Sherwood, Yvonne. 2012.Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age. Cambridge: CUP) and become a domesticated and conservative text, a rather placid cultural/literary monument, an important foundation of democracy, a venerable religious document judged more tolerant and liberal than other scriptures. Though the Bible used to be perceived as an explosive text, peppered with potentially offensive passages, today its enmity is neutralised either by linking the Bible with ancient times or by relating it to people’s religious beliefs and by entrenching its more scandalous parts within the discourse of tolerance. It is such an anodyne image of the Bible that the biblical rewritings of Roberts, Winterson, Barnes, Crace, Pullman, Tóibin, Alderman, Diski defamiliarize. By showing biblical events through the eyes of various non-standard focalizers, those novels disrupt the formulaic patterns of the contemporary perception of the Bible. It is through these strange perspectives that we observe the critical moment when the overall meaning and the role of the biblical text is established and the biblical story is actually written down. Importantly, it is also the moment when somebody moulds the scripture according to their ideas and glosses over all the complexities, violence and immorality related to the events the biblical text describes. Also, contemporary biblical rewritings defamiliarize the currently popular image of the Bible – that of a whitewashed text which inculcates morality, conserves social order and teaches love and tolerance, by employing images of disintegration, dirt and contagion as well as by constructing a figure of a fervent believer in the Bible and its ideas.
Structural and dielectric properties of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) stabilized by sugar solutions
Authors: Kumar D. Siva , Naidu K. Chandra Babu , Rafi M. Mohamed , Nazeer K. Prem , Begam A. Ayisha , Kumar G. Ramesh 
Published: May 2018

Abstract Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) have been synthesized using co-precipitation method. Their microstructure and dielectric properties were studied. The sugar solutions like glucose, fructose and sucrose were used as stabilizers to control the size of the SPIONs. The crystal structure and grain size of the particles were determined by X-ray diffraction. The magnetic studies of the samples were carried out using the vibrating sample magnetometer and their surface morphology was studied by HRTEM, FE-SEM and zeta potential. The dielectric properties of glucose-SPIONs (GF), fructose-SPIONs (FF) and sucrose-SPIONs (SF) were investigated in the frequency range of 10 Hz to 5 MHz at selected temperatures. The FF showed a high dielectric constant of 62 at 1 MHz and the dielectric properties of SPIONs were found to have been significantly improved, especially in the low frequency regime according to the Maxwell-Wagner interfacial polarization. The AC conductivity measurements revealed that the electrical conduction depends on both frequency and temperature. Impedance analysis was carried out using Cole-Cole plot and the conduction mechanism of the studied compounds was explained. R and C values were further calculated using RC-circuit.
The crystal structure of 3-((phenylamino)methylene)-1,5-dioxaspiro[5.5]undecane-2,4-dione, C16H17N1O4
Authors: Jin-He Jiang , Wu-Lan Zeng , Yong-Mei Yang 
Published: May 2018

Abstract
C16H17N1O4, triclinic, P1̅ (no. 2), a = 7.0971(3) Å, b = 7.6638(4) Å, c = 13.2375(6) Å, α = 92.116(10)°, β = 99.690(10)°, γ = 95.196(10)° V = 705.81(6) Å3, Z = 2, R
gt(F) = 0.0529, wR
ref(F
2) = 0.1489, T = 296(2) K.
The Dignity of Being a Cause
Authors: O’Meara Thomas F. 
Published: May 2018

Abstract
Theologians, philosophers, and scientists have pondered the causalities of human beings, nature, and cosmos. This seeks to avoid the reduction of all activity to God and to understand the richness of beings other than God. Thomas Aquinas valued this ‟secondary causality” greatly, while recent thinkers are also advocating its importance again.
God Is Dying in Turkey as Well: Application of Secularization Theory to a Non-Christian Society
Authors: Ertit Volkan 
Published: May 2018

Abstract
It has been stated in academic studies and popular media that Islam began its rise in dominance in Turkey with the accession of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power in 2002 under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. However, contrary to claims of societal Islamization, in light of quantitative and qualitative studies this study argues that despite the AKP and its leader Erdoğan being in power, the following evidence has been observed in Turkey: praying rates have decreased, extramarital sexual relationship has become prevalent, the number of mosques per person has decreased, the belief in virginity is a point of honour for fewer people, people‘s clothes have become more flatteringly formfitting and more attractive, including women’s head-scarves; secular experts rather than religious officials are being sought for help concerning problems in daily life, homosexuality has become more socially acceptable visible, traditional family structures has been shattered. Therefore, it is claimed that AKP (or Erdoğan) has failed in efforts to Islamize Turkey over the past 15 years (2002-2017) despite having all the governmental means and opportunities to do so. This study argues that the classical theory of secularization, which claims that modernization leads to secularization, can still explain not only the social transformation seen in historically Christian and Western European countries and their offshoots, but also the social transformation of Turkey, a Muslim-majority country that has been governed for the past 15 years by a political party with clear Islamic sensitivities.
Centrifuge Modeling of Stress and Pore Pressure Responses Due to Closed-Ended Pile Jacking in Silty Clay
Authors: Zhang Yaguo , Liang Fayun , Li Jingpei , Li Tonglu 
Published: May 2018

Abstract
A series of centrifuge model tests were performed to examine the short-term soil stress responses around closed-ended displacement piles during jacking in Shanghai silty clays. Miniature transducers were placed near the piles to monitor the evolution of the total radial soil stress and pore pressure at different positions, which were closely associated with the progress of pile penetration. The results show that these stresses accumulated when the pile approached and decreased when the tip (or shoulder) passed, which indicates that the transducers experienced a loading and unloading process. The maxima of the soil stress or pore pressure increased with the initial depth of the observation positions and decreased with the horizontal distance to the pile axis. Compared with the total radial stress, the arrival of the peak pore pressure had an obvious hysteresis. Three typical modes to describe the stress variations during the pile installation process were summarized. Furthermore, the cumulative total stresses and pore pressures at a given location because of the installation of two piles were investigated.
Evaluation of Ion-pair Formation of Adefovir to Improve Permeation across Artificial and Biological Membranes
Authors: Darsazan Bahar , Shafaati Alireza , Zarghi Afshin , Mortazavi Seyed Alireza 
Published: May 2018

Purpose: Adefovir is an antiviral drug that exhibits high hydrophilic properties and negligible bioavailability (less than 12%). It is only applied in the form of the ester prodrug adefovir dipivoxil (ADV). The oral bioavailability of ADV is limited (32% to 45%) by its low permeability (Class 3) and biological conversion of the prodrug to adefovir. Ion-pair formation is considered as an alternative approach to a covalent prodrug (ADV) to enhance intestinal permeation of adefovir. Methods: The effect of various counter-ions (anionic, cationic and two quaternary ammonium salts) on the lipophilicity of adefovir was investigated by means of the n-octanol/buffer partitioning system, an in vitro transport model (PAMPA) and a biological membrane (everted gut sac). Results: Quaternary ammonium salts, cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) and cetrimide enhanced the lipophilicity of adefovir 136- and 87-fold, respectively. The apparent permeability of adefovir in combination with CPC (counter-ion) was 2.5-fold greater than ADV permeability in the PAMPA model. The apparent permeability of adefovir-CPC (counter-ion) was 1.3-fold greater than that of adefovir dipivoxil permeability in a biologic membrane (everted gut sac). Conclusion: These results suggest that the adefovir-CPC ion-paired system has potential for improving the permeation of adefovir across the intestinal membrane. This article is open to POST-PUBLICATION REVIEW. Registered readers (see “For Readers”) may comment by clicking on ABSTRACT on the issue’s contents page.
La protección de los empresarios en la Proposición de Ley “De impulso de la transparencia en la contratación predispuesta”: Una solución a medias.
Authors: Albiez Dohrmann Klaus Jochen 
Published: May 2018

Resumen: Se examina una propuesta de ley sobre la transparencia material en los contratos no negociados individualmente, la cual extiende la protección también a los empresarios. El estudio se centra en aquellos aspectos positivos y negativos de la transparencia material relacionados con los contratos de adhesión entre empresarios. Al mismo tiempo, se proponen algunos cambios para mejorar el texto normativo. El estudio termina con una propuesta más: la incorporación de una cláusula general de buena fe para todos los contratos de adhesión en la Ley de Condiciones Generales de la Contratación.Palabras clave: condiciones generales de la contratación, cláusulas no negociadas, empresarios, transparencia formal, transparencia material, cláusula general de buena fe. Abstract: This paper examines a Proposal of Law on material transparency in contracts that are not individually negotiated, which also extends protection to entrepreurs. The study focuses on those positive and negative aspects of material transparency related to the adhesion contracts between entrepreneurs. At the same time, some changes are proposed to improve the normative text. The study ends with one more proposal: the incorporation of a good faith general clause for all the adhesion contracts in the General Terms of Contracting Law.Key words: General terms of contracting; non negotiated contract terms; entrepreneurs; formal transparency; material transparency; general clause of good faith.