bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Cross-Species Network Analysis Uncovers Conserved Nitrogen-Regulated Network Modules in Rice
Authors: Obertello Mariana , Shrivastava Stuti , Katari Manpreet S. , Coruzzi Gloria M. 
Published: June 2015

AbstractIn this study, we used a cross-species network approach to uncover nitrogen (N)-regulated network modules conserved across a model and a crop species. By translating gene network knowledge from the data-rich model Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) to a crop, rice (Oryza sativa), we identified evolutionarily conserved N-regulatory modules as targets for translational studies to improve N use efficiency in transgenic plants. To uncover such conserved N-regulatory network modules, we first generated an N-regulatory network based solely on rice transcriptome and gene interaction data. Next, we enhanced the network knowledge in the rice N-regulatory network using transcriptome and gene interaction data from Arabidopsis and new data from Arabidopsis and rice plants exposed to the same N treatment conditions. This cross-species network analysis uncovered a set of N-regulated transcription factors (TFs) predicted to target the same genes and network modules in both species. Supernode analysis of the TFs and their targets in these conserved network modules uncovered genes directly related to N use (e.g. N assimilation) and to other shared biological processes indirectly related to N. This cross-species network approach was validated with members of two TF families in the supernode network, BASIC-LEUCINE ZIPPER TRANSCRIPTION FACTOR1-TGA and HYPERSENSITIVITY TO LOW PI-ELICITED PRIMARY ROOT SHORTENING1 (HRS1)/HRS1 Homolog family, which have recently been experimentally validated to mediate the N response in Arabidopsis.
Relationship between capital, risk and efficiency
Authors: Miah Md. Dulal , Sharmeen Kashfia 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– This paper aims to investigate the relationship between capital risk and efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks operating in Bangladesh. In this pursuit, the research attempts to answer these questions: do inefficient banks assume more risk? Is there any major difference between Islamic and conventional banks in terms of efficiency and risk taking behavior?

Design/methodology/approach
– The study collects various bank-level data from the audited financial statements of Islamic and conventional banks for the period of 2001 to 2011. Collected data are analyzed using Stochastic Frontier Analysis for efficiency estimation and Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) approach for assessing the relationship between capital, risk, and efficiency.

Findings
– Analysis of data shows that conventional banks are more efficient in managing cost than Islamic banks. Moreover, the SUR results show that the relation between capital and efficiency are bidirectional and negative, whereas the relation between capital and risk is also bidirectional but positive for Islamic banks. On the other hand, risk and efficiency are positively related, and the result is bidirectional for conventional banks.

Research limitations/implications
– The research concentrates on private-commercial banks as proxy for conventional banks. State-owned banks including specialized banks and foreign commercial banks are excluded from the sample due to various anomalies in reporting of financial data.

Practical implications
– There is a lot of room for Islamic banks to increase productive efficiency because cost efficiency of Islamic banks is less than that of the conventional banks. This can be attributed to the relative small size of Islamic banks in Bangladesh. Because there exists a positive relationship between size and efficiency for Islamic banks, they can concentrate on increasing their size to capitalize on economies of scale. Moreover, the analysis shows that inefficient conventional banks assume higher risk which conforms to moral hazard hypothesis. Therefore, regulatory authorities should discourage banks from exercising such practice for the greater stability of the overall banking system in Bangladesh.

Originality/value
– A good number of studies is available in the existing literature that compares the performance of Islamic and conventional banks in the case of Bangladesh. However, very few studies are found that examine the relationship between capital, risk and efficiency. Therefore, the research is new for the selected area. As a result, the research is expected to contribute to the existing literature by providing new information.
Regional initiative in the Gulf Arab States: the search for a common currency
Authors: Basher Syed 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– This paper aims to make two main additions to the literature on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) monetary union. First, it emphasizes that the creation of a fiscal union is necessary for the GCC monetary union to succeed. Second, it proposes some alternatives to pegging to the dollar, which would allow the GCC countries to absorb large swings in global commodity prices (oil, food) in the short to medium run.

Design/methodology/approach
– This paper uses exploratory research to shed light on the feasibility of a common currency for the proposed GCC Monetary Union.

Findings
– Given the challenges associated with creating a GCC fiscal union as a requirement for a successful monetary union, the GCC countries could easily set up an “anti-crisis fund” to partially protect themselves from the economic and social costs of unforeseen crises. A basket, band and crawl (BBC) currency system, at an individual country level or a regional level, would allow the GCC countries to cope with not just large swings in global commodity prices, but also as an effective instrument for the governments to promote their economic diversification.

Practical implications
– This paper offers a template for the GCC central banks to consider the BBC currency system as an alternative to their existing dollar peg regime.

Originality/value
– This is the first paper that attempts to provide a formal argument in support of the BBC currency system as an alternative exchange rate arrangement for the GCC countries.
International comparison of Shari’ah compliance screening standards
Authors: Ho Catherine S F 
Published: June 2015

Purpose– This paper aims to review the Shari’ah investment screening methodologies of 34 prominent global Islamic finance users, including index providers, Shari’ah service providers, Islamic banks, a regulator, an association body and fund managers.Design/methodology/approach– A comparative analysis is performed to highlight the variances of the Shari’ah-compliant methods and principles practiced by these renowned institutions with the latest compiled data.Findings– The two sets of business screens and financial screens are profiled separately to clearly examine the similarities and differences between the different methodologies. Some of these practitioners are more specific in their listing of Shari’ah-impermissible activities, while some are more general in allowing more businesses to be included as permissible. The majority of these users practice a two-tier method of screening: qualitative and quantitative. Under quantitative screen, the range of allowable threshold ratios on non-permissible criteria differs slightly between them.Research limitations/implications– With the wide divergence in screening methodologies applied by practitioners, there is a general consensus in the acceptance of compliant assets from various countries and practice. Standardization is, therefore, seen as a need not only to make understanding of Shari’ah investments clear to investors but also to discourage misunderstandings between scholars and investors.Practical implications– The suggestion, therefore, is to set globally acceptable universal Shari’ah standard methodologies which are applicable by the world Islamic financial market. These standards which are relevant and logical to global ethical investing would further stimulate investments in Islamic finance.Social implications– With Shari’ah-compliant asset growing exponentially relative to the world’s financial assets, it is alleged that greater harmonization of the global screening methods would prevent misunderstanding and provide a clearer insight on Shari’ah investing, which could further accelerate growth of the Islamic finance sector worldwide.Originality/value– To provide a more transparent regulatory environment and build local and regional regulatory framework through establishment of standards, there should be more consistency with minimum barriers that prevent the industry from achieving its full potential. The paper also contributes to existing literature by documenting and analyzing the qualitative and quantitative screening procedures as practiced by a comprehensive set of global Islamic finance users. It is, therefore, important to share this knowledge as an effort toward greater understanding and harmonization of the practices at the global level to accelerate growth in the industry.
Scripting the active patient in online health communities
Authors: Vennik Femke D. , Adams Samantha A. , Putters Kim 
Published: June 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to improve the general operationalization of an “active patient,” by examining the specific activities and skills expected of active patients.Design/methodology/approach– Expected activities and necessary skills were studied through a qualitative case study into the development and use of an assistive technology (i.e. web site) aimed at stimulating active patient-ship. Interviews, observations and document analysis were used to capture and explore designers’ inscribing practices and their consequences regarding expected competences and activities of patients using the web site.Findings– Designers inscribed two “co-design roles” that active patients were expected to perform on the web site (co-designing their own healthcare and co-designing the healthcare of peers), for which at least eight different competencies were needed. The absence of skills or facilities to apply these skills resulted in incomplete use, a different use than intended by designers and non-use of the web site.Practical implications– Technological choices and inscribing processes determine who is able or facilitated to become active and who is not. Due to inscribed co-design roles, it also influences the extent to which already active peers are able to perform health-related activities. Different users with different conditions should be taken into account in the design as specific group characteristics can influence level of individual activity.Originality/value– This study is, as far as the authors know, the first that examines the “active patient” concept by studying an assistive technology and using scripting literature, resulting in an improved understanding of what it means to become “active” in terms of skills and activities.
Using clinical governance levers to support change in a cancer care reform
Authors: Brault Isabelle , Denis Jean-Louis , Sullivan Terrence James 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– Introducing change is a difficult issue facing all health care systems. The use of various clinical governance levers can facilitate change in health care systems. The purpose of this paper is to define clinical governance levers, and to illustrate their use in a large-scale transformation.

Design/methodology/approach
– The empirical analysis deals with the in-depth study of a specific case, which is the organizational model for Ontario’s cancer sector. The authors used a qualitative research strategy and drew the data from three sources: semi-structured interviews, analysis of documents, and non-participative observations.

Findings
– From the results, the authors identified three phases and several steps in the reform of cancer services in this province. The authors conclude that a combination of clinical governance levers was used to transform the system. These levers operated at different levels of the system to meet the targeted objectives.

Practical implications
– To exercise clinical governance, managers need to acquire new competencies. Mobilizing clinical governance levers requires in-depth understanding of the role and scope of clinical governance levers.

Originality/value
– This study provides a better understanding of clinical governance levers. Clinical governance levers are used to implement an organizational environment that is conducive to developing clinical practice, as well as to act directly on practices to improve quality of care.
Supporting and activating clinical governance development in Ireland: sharing our learning
Authors: Flynn Maureen A. , Burgess Thora , Crowley Philip 
Published: June 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to present a description of the Irish national clinical governance development initiative and an evaluation of the initiative with the purpose of sharing the learning and proposing actions to activate structures and processes for quality and safety. The Quality and Patient Safety Division of the Health Service Executive established the initiative to counterbalance a possible focus on finances during the economic crisis in Ireland and bring attention to the quality of clinical care.Design/methodology/approach– A clinical governance framework for quality in healthcare in Ireland was developed to clearly articulate the fundamentals of clinical governance. The project plan involved three overlapping phases. The first was designing resources for practice; the second testing the implementation of the national resources in practice; and the third phase focused on gathering feedback and learning.Findings– Staff responded positively to the clinical governance framework. At a time when there are a lot of demands (measurement and scrutiny) the health services leads and responds well to focused support as they improve the quality and safety of services. Promoting the use of the term “governance for quality and safety” assisted in gaining an understanding of the more traditional term “clinical governance”. The experience and outcome of the initiative informed the identification of 12 key learning points and a series of recommendationsResearch limitations/implications– The initial evaluation was conducted at 24 months so at this stage it is not possible to assess the broader impact of the clinical governance framework beyond the action project hospitals.Practical implications– The single most important obligation for any health system is patient safety and improving the quality of care. The easily accessible, practical resources assisted project teams to lead changes in structures and processes within their services. This paper describes the fundamentals of the clinical governance framework which might serve as a guide for more integrative research endeavours on governance for quality and safety.Originality/value– Experience was gained in both the development of national guidance and their practical use in targeted action projects activating structures and processes that are a prerequisite to delivering safe quality services.
Swedish politicians’ view of obstacles when dealing with priority settings in health care
Authors: Werntoft Elisabet , Edberg Anna-Karin 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe main obstacles for politicians when dealing with healthcare priority setting.

Design/methodology/approach
– The study had an exploratory descriptive design based on interviews with 18 politicians from two different county councils in Sweden. The interviews were analyzed using inductive qualitative content analysis.

Findings
– The politicians highlighted the importance of, and difficulties in, communicate political missions; the politicians in this study saw the media as not always being fair watchdogs, implying that possibly important but unpopular prioritizing decisions were not made because of the risks of being badly reported and therefore not re-elected. Breaking up established structures in care practice is difficult and change takes time, partly because of existing higher level financing and rules and the system’s traditional separation of facilities and services. Although the politicians highlighted their limited power to influence and control resource allocation they could give small and “lower profile”, low-prioritized disciplines control of their own budgets and base payments on the results the disciplines accomplished.

Originality/value
– This study highlights the difficulties that politicians experience, for example, having to take unpleasant decisions and thereby run the risk of being scrutinized by media, which in turn could influence how effectively tax money is being used.
The synergy between eBooks and printed books in Brazil
Authors: Sehn Thaís Cristina Martino , Fragoso Suely 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to discuss reading habits in relation to printed books and eBooks.

Design/methodology/approach
– The study was structured in two steps: first, an online survey was used to trace a general profile of a group of Brazilian readers who had had previous contact with digital books. Second, a subset of respondents was invited to participate in open-ended interviews. Interviewees were chosen according to their responses to the profiling questionnaire. All interviews were semi-structured.

Findings
– The results indicate the existence of a synergy between digital and paper books. The decision between reading one or the other depends on several factors, amongst which the authors emphasise online accessibility, reading motivation (for work or for leisure), intended modes of use and appropriation, circumstances of use and emotional factors. Other elements of importance are the corporeality of the readers and the materiality of the devices used for reading.

Originality/value
– The departure point of the study was the perception that, in Brazil, the arrival of digital books was accompanied by an increase in the sales of printed books. This contradicts the idea that digital books and printed books are concurrent, and the growth of the eBooks market will inevitably lead to a decrease in the revenue from printed books. The initial hypothesis was that digital and printed books could be complementary. Addressing this question required knowledge of readers’ experience with and opinion of printed and digital books. The results of the qualitative study suggest that the relation between these two types of publication is not one of alternatives, but instead is one of synergy. Specific aspects of this synergy are highlighted in the paper.
Evaluating the degree of domain specificity of terms in large terminologies
Authors: Martín-Moncunill David , Sicilia-Urban Miguel-Ángel , García-Barriocanal Elena , Sánchez-Alonso Salvador 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– Large terminologies usually contain a mix of terms that are either generic or domain specific, which makes the use of the terminology itself a difficult task that may limit the positive effects of these systems. The purpose of this paper is to systematically evaluate the degree of domain specificity of the AGROVOC controlled vocabulary terms as a representative of a large terminology in the agricultural domain and discuss the generic/specific boundaries across its hierarchy.

Design/methodology/approach
– A user-oriented study with domain-experts in conjunction with quantitative and systematic analysis. First an in-depth analysis of AGROVOC was carried out to make a proper selection of terms for the experiment. Then domain-experts were asked to classify the terms according to their domain specificity. An evaluation was conducted to analyse the domain-experts’ results. Finally, the resulting data set was automatically compared with the terms in SUMO, an upper ontology and MILO, a mid-level ontology; to analyse the coincidences.

Findings
– Results show the existence of a high number of generic terms. The motivation for several of the unclear cases is also depicted. The automatic evaluation showed that there is not a direct way to assess the specificity degree of a term by using SUMO and MILO ontologies, however, it provided additional validation of the results gathered from the domain-experts.

Research limitations/implications
– The “domain-analysis” concept has long been discussed and it could be addressed from different perspectives. A resume of these perspectives and an explanation of the approach followed in this experiment is included in the background section.

Originality/value
– The authors propose an approach to identify the domain specificity of terms in large domain-specific terminologies and a criterion to measure the overall domain specificity of a knowledge organisation system, based on domain-experts analysis. The authors also provide a first insight about using automated measures to determine the degree to which a given term can be considered domain specific. The resulting data set from the domain-experts’ evaluation can be reused as a gold standard for further research about these automatic measures.
Disclosing the network structure of private companies on the web
Authors: Orduña-Malea Enrique , Delgado López-Cózar Emilio , Serrano-Cobos Jorge , Romero Nuria Lloret 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– It is common for an international company to have different brands, products or services, information for investors, a corporate blog, affiliates, branches in different countries, etc. If all these contents appear as independent additional web domains (AWDs), the company should be represented on the web by all these web domains, since many of these AWDs may acquire remarkable performance that could mask or distort the real web performance of the company, affecting therefore on the understanding of web metrics. The purpose of this paper is to determine the amount, type, web impact and topology of the AWDs in commercial companies in order to get a better understanding on their complete web impact and structure.

Design/methodology/approach
– The set of companies belonging to the Spanish IBEX-35 stock index has been analysed as testing bench. The authors proceeded to identify and categorise all AWDs belonging to these companies, and to apply both web impact (web presence and visibility) and network metrics.

Findings
– The results show that AWDs get a high web presence but relatively low web visibility, due to certain opacity or less dissemination of some AWDs favoring its isolation. This is verified by the low network density values obtained, that occur because AWDs are strongly connected with the corporate domain (although asymmetrically), but very weakly linked each other.

Research limitations/implications
– The categories used to classify the various AWD, although they are clearly distinguishable conceptually, have certain limitations in practice, since they depend on the form adopted by companies to publish certain content or to provide certain services or products. Otherwise, the use of web indicators presents certain problems of accuracy that could be softened if applied with caution and in a relational basis.

Originality/value
– Although the processes of AWDs creation and categorisation are complex (web policy seems not to be driven by a defined or conscious plan), their influence on the web performance of IBEX 35 companies is meaningful. This research measures the AWDs influence on companies under webometric terms for the first time.