Tracking attendance is a necessity in a variety of contexts in the developing world: health programs, schools, government offices, and a litany of other milieux. While electronic attendance tracking systems exist and perform their core function well, they are expensive and offer little customizability. In this demonstration we present a fingerprint-based biometric attendance system which uses o...

We explored the bacterial diversity of untreated sewage influent samples of a wastewater treatment plant in Tucson, AZ and discovered that Arcobacter cryaerophilus, an emerging human pathogen of animal origin, was the most dominant bacterium. The other highly prevalent bacteria were members of the phyla Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes, which are major constituents of human gut microbiome, indicati...

This article presents cross-country comparisons of trends in for-profit nursing home chains in Canada, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. Using public and private industry reports, the study describes ownership, corporate strategies, costs, and quality of the 5 largest for-profit chains in each country. The findings show that large for-profit nursing home chains are increasi...

We examine the operating performance of Thai firms after they go public. Overall, we find that their performance declines. We then explore the relationship between managerial ownership and the change in firm performance. We find that firms with ‘low’ and ‘high’ levels of managerial ownership experience positive relationships between managerial ownership and the change in performance (alignment-...

this is a commentary on gilbert and colleagues’ (1) paper on morality and markets in the national health service (nhs). morality and values are not ephemeral qualities and universal healthcare is not simply an aspiration; it has to be enshrined in law. the creation of the uk nhs in 1948 was underpinned by core legal duties which required a system of public funding and delivery to follow. the mo...

the aim of this paper is to identify and analyses the influence of shareholder ownership identity on payout ratio for a panel of iran firms from 2002 to 2008. we found that there is a significant positive correlation between institutional ownership and payout ratio. the relation between payout ratio and individual ownership is negative. the most finding of the study indicates that iranian compa...

This study examines the relation between ownership concentration and performance of initial public offerings (IPOs) in Thailand during 1989-1993. Ownership concentration plays a crucial role in emerging capital markets such as Thailand and can significantly affect IPO performance. Several testable hypotheses are constructed from the IPO literature to examine short-term and long-term IPO perform...

INTRODUCTION Although some view the ownership of firearms as a deterrent to crime, the relationship between population-level firearm ownership rates and violent criminal perpetration is unclear. The purpose of this study is to test the association between state-level firearm ownership and violent crime. METHODS State-level rates of household firearm ownership and annual rates of criminal acts...