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Climate change was identified as an urgent global problem that requires governments to unite their efforts to prepare for potential climate risks at the First World Climate Conference in 1979. This recognition led to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to assess the magnitude and timing of changes and estimate their impacts. The IPCC published its First Assessment Report in 1990, which became a basis for negotiations on a climate change convention under the United Nations General Assembly. Between February 1991 and May 1992, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change met five times under the auspices of the General Assembly, and the Convention text was adopted on May 9, 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where 154 states signed. The Convention entered into force on March 21, 1994. It has near universal membership with 194 Parties (member countries) having ratified (UNFCCC, 2006).

The purpose of this paper is to assess the nutritional status and quality of life in patients according to the clinical severity of liver cirrhosis.

A total of 151 cirrhotics were selected for study. Nutritional assessment was done by anthropometry, subjective global assessment, malnutrition universal screening tool, biochemical estimations and 72‐hour dietary recall. Quality of life was assessed by chronic liver disease questionnaire.

Child's status was A/B/C in 29/68/59, respectively. Muscle and fat depletion was significantly higher in grade C patients as compared to grade A and B patients. Incidence of malnutrition was lowest in grade A patients (72.4 percent) and highest in grade C patients (90.74 percent) (p = 0.00). Calorie and protein intake was significantly lower in grade C patients compared to grade A and B patients (p = 0.00). Child Pugh score was found to be an independent risk factor for various nutritional and clinical parameters.

The data presented reflect the assessment of a very small cohort of these patients and should be done on a larger scale.

Looking into the high prevalence of malnutrition and the negative impact of disease severity, nutritional assessment of these patients should be done on a regular basis and nutritional therapy planned accordingly.

Data on malnutrition from India are scarce. This study is a small attempt to throw light on the nutritional status and its variation according to clinical severity of liver cirrhosis.

Using a sample of 466 grants of stock options to executives of Japanese firms over the years 1997–2001, this study tests the managerial power theory of compensation design developed by Bebchuk, Fried, and Walker (2002) and Bebchuk and Fried (2004). This theory argues that managers of firms with weak corporate governance will use their “power” to design executive compensation that is “manager-advantageous.” Using our option grants sample, we test to determine if any of the firm's governance mechanisms are able to limit managerial self-dealing with respect to executive stock options. We find that smaller boards and a higher percentage of independent directors are important governance mechanisms for the control of managerial influences in the design of stock-option compensation. An alternative hypothesis, that firms elect to grant advantageously designed options to encourage risk taking by managers, is not supported by our empirical results. Finally, we determine that the market response to the announcements of such grants varies inversely with the extent to which the options are managerially advantageous. Overall, we conclude that managerial power effects are present in the design of executive stock options and that theory of managerial power advanced by Bebchuk et al. holds internationally.

The purpose of this paper is to trace a legal evolution of the monitoring board and to reveal what brought the evolution and what is expected to emerge. The paper points to unique complementarities in Japanese corporate governance institutions and norms which will affect how the monitoring board performs its functions.

Analysis is based on texts on corporate governance legislations in Japan from the revision of Commercial Code in 1950 to the revision of Companies Act in 2014. Other sources include Tokyo Stock Exchange regulations, White Paper on Corporate Governance and other academic literatures on Japanese corporate governance.

Changes of non-legal institutions and norms in Japanese corporate governance necessitated legal reforms toward the monitoring board. Persisting institutions and norms, in particular lifetime employment, influences how the monitoring board performs its functions in Japan.

This paper explains how the evolution of the monitoring board in Japan emerged and what will cause different expected functions of the monitoring board in Japan and other jurisdictions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms create and sustain competitive advantage in the inter-firm business relationships from a supplier’s perspective. It also investigates what factors affect their competitiveness and relationship between buyers and suppliers.

This is an exploratory study on keiretsu partnerships composed of four main phases: analysis of theoretical perspectives, construction of a conceptual framework, interview of a CEO, and finally, a survey questionnaire with Japanese automotive suppliers.

As a result, this paper classified these 11 companies into four supplier groups (affiliated or independent Tier 1 suppliers; affiliated or independent Tier 2 suppliers) and analysed their competitiveness developing the research propositions further. The benefits of affiliation under a keiretsu partnership are discussed, showing that there may be little benefit in being an affiliated Tier 1 supplier. Even more critical, the results show that independent Tier 2 supplier may be more competitive than affiliated tier ones.

These intriguing results reveal an urgent need of investigating Japanese automotive supply chains from the suppliers’ perspectives in the future research. This paper extended the literatures on competitive advantage and business relationships at both theory and managerial practice.

During the 1950s and 1960s the Japanese government promoted industrial organization in the form of a “competitive oligopoly” and fostered the institutionalizing of the strong competitive investment‐drive among large‐scale enterprises which came to characterize her economy. Reviews the economy of post‐war Japan as an economic system, and the necessity for government intervention and market competition to promote industrialization.

The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively review a large and heterogeneous body of academic literature on investors' feedback trading, one of the most popular trading patterns observed historically in financial markets. Specifically, the authors aim to synthesize the diverse theoretical approaches to feedback trading in order to provide a detailed discussion of its various determinants, and to systematically review the empirical literature across various asset classes to gauge whether their feedback trading entails discernible patterns and the determinants that motivate them.

Given the high degree of heterogeneity of both theoretical and empirical approaches, the authors adopt a semi-systematic type of approach to review the feedback trading literature, inspired by the RAMESES protocol for meta-narrative reviews. The final sample consists of 243 papers covering diverse asset classes, investor types and geographies.

The authors find feedback trading to be very widely observed over time and across markets internationally. Institutional investors engage in feedback trading in a herd-like manner, and most noticeably in small domestic stocks and emerging markets. Regulatory changes and financial crises affect the intensity of their feedback trades. Retail investors are mostly contrarian and underperform their institutional counterparts, while the latter's trades can be often motivated by market sentiment.

The authors provide a detailed overview of various possible theoretical determinants, both behavioural and non-behavioural, of feedback trading, as well as a comprehensive overview and synthesis of the empirical literature. The authors also propose a series of possible directions for future research.

A simulation framework that includes a finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is generated to study the effect of unstable two-phase flow-induced vibrations at a vertical 90° pipe bend. The corresponding fluid-structure interaction (FSI) of an unstable flow may pose danger to the piping structure. This paper intends to discuss this interaction.

Four cases of flows under the slug flow and churn flow regimes were investigated. The flow regimes vary in superficial gas velocities with velocities from 0.978 m/s to 9.04 m/s, while the superficial liquid velocity is kept constant at 0.61 m/s. The pipe model consists of an internal diameter of 0.0525 m, a bend radius of 0.0762 m, and a stainless-steel pipe structure.

Results show that the average unstable void fractions increase with the superficial gas velocities, but the peak frequencies were constant at 13 Hz for three of the cases. The total displacement and von Mises stress increase with a declining rate in each subsequent case, while the RMS of von Mises stress begins to stall at superficial gas velocities between 5 m/s and 9.04 m/s. The peak frequencies of von Mises stress decrease in each subsequent case.

The proposed model can be used to investigate the FSI effect of unstable void fractions at pipe bends and could assist in the development of piping systems in which the use of piping elements arranged close together are unavoidable.

Increased evidence for the health benefits of probiotics for health restoration coupled with the consumer's inclination towards a safe, natural and cost-effective substitute for drugs have led application of probiotics as a pharmaceutical agent and are rapidly moving in clinical usage. In this context, this article attempts to highlight the potential of probiotics as a pharmaceutical agent.

Endeavor has been made to explore the significance of probiotics for the modulation of gut ecology and their action. Potentiality of probiotics for their exploitation as a pharmaceutical agent has also been justified. Limitations of probiotic therapy and the various considerations for probiotic therapy have also been delineated.

Probiotic organisms influence the physiological and pathological process of the host by modifying the intestinal microbiota, thereby affecting human health. Beneficial effects of probiotics as a pharmaceutical agent seem to be strain and dose dependent and more efficacious with their early introduction. Combination of various probiotics proved to be more efficacious than single strain for exhibiting prophylactic activities.

Reviewed literature indicated that it is difficult to generalize for the beneficial effect of all probiotics for all types of diseases as efficacy of probiotics is strain-dependent and dose-dependent and its clinical application needs long-term investigations.

Clinical trials have displayed that probiotics may alleviate certain disorders or diseases in humans especially those related to gastro-intestinal tract.

Ingestion of fermented dairy products containing probiotic cultures may provide health benefits in certain clinical conditions such as antibiotic-associated diarrhoea, rotavirus-associated diarrhoea, inflammatory bowel disease, inflammatory bowel syndrome, allergenic diseases, cancer, Helicobacter pylori infection and lactose-intolerance. Application of probiotics as a pharmaceutical agent is recommended.