Locus of Control as Budget Slack Moderator: The Role of Ethical Leadership and Budget Participation

The current study investigates the impact of Budget Participation and Ethical Leadership on Budget Slack. Further, the study investigates how Locus of Control serves as a moderator. The study sample includes bankers working in the Egyptian banking sector. The study deployed an electronic survey. Of the 384 total distributed questionnaires 275 were retrieved, with a response rate of 71.6%. The final sample for the statistical analysis was 251 questionnaires after all exclusions. For testing hypothesis about the relationship between the study variables simple and multiple regression models were adapted. The study results revealed a negative and significant impact of Ethical Leadership on Budget Slack, while Budget Participation was found to affect Budget Slack behaviour positively and significantly. Furthermore, our study revealed that Locus of Control partially and negatively moderating the correlation between Ethical Leadership and Budget slack. These findings contribute to the organizational behavior and management accounting literature, representing one of the first studies to examine this interdisciplinary relationship and confirm the moderating roles identified in African and Middle Eastern contexts

The effect of prednisolone on endometrial uterine NK cell concentrations and pregnancy outcome in women with reproductive failure. A retrospective cohort study

This retrospective study of prospectively collected data examines the effect of prednisolone therapy on raised uterine Natural Killer cell (uNK) concentrations and pregnancy outcomes in women with recurrent miscarriage (RM) and recurrent implantation failure (RIF) after IVF/ICSI treatment. 136 women diagnosed with RRF who had a timed midluteal endometrial biopsy taken for uNK cell analysis were included. Women with high uNK cell concentrations (n = 45) were treated with prednisolone (10 mg/day) for one month, after which a second biopsy was taken for repeat uNK cell analysis. Women for whom prednisolone caused a decrease in uNK cell concentrations continued on prednisolone until 12 weeks of pregnancy. Pregnancy outcomes (live birth, miscarriage and implantation rates) and pregnancy complications were compared for women who received prednisolone and those who did not. Results showed that the prevalence of high uNK cells was 33.1%. Prednisolone significantly decreased the uNK cell concentration (P < 0.001), however reduction to normal limits was achieved in only 48.3% of patients. There was no difference in any of the pregnancy outcomes or complications between women who had received prednisolone and those who had not. In conclusion, this study showed a relatively high prevalence of raised uNK cells in women with recurrent reproductive failure and confirmed the effect of prednisolone on reducing uNK cell concentrations. We found however no evidence for a significant beneficial effect for prednisolone therapy on pregnancy outcomes. Until the results of an adequately powered RCT become available however, these findings should be considered preliminary

More Efficient Purifying scheme via Controlled- Controlled NOT Gate

A new modified version of the Oxford purification protocol is proposed. This version is based on the controlled-controlled NOT gate instead of controlled NOT in the original one. Comparisons between the results of the new version and the original and an earlier modification are given. It is found that the new version converges faster and consumes fewer initial qubit pairs of low fidelity per final qubit pair of high fidelity