The impact of anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha drugs on lipid profile of patients with rheumatoid arthritis or seronegative spondyloarthropathy

Background: Inflammatory arthritis is associated with abnormal levels of lipoprotein. The cause is considered to be inflammation. Recently, the use of biologic drugs in the treatment of inflammatory arthritis, especially rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and seronegative spondyloarthropathy, has increased. There are different results of the effect of these drugs on fat profile. Evaluate the impact of anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha drugs on lipid profile of patients with RA or seronegative spondyloarthritis. Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, 50 patients with rheumatoid arthritis or seronegative spondyloarthritis, who were candidates for TNF alpha treatment, were included in the study. After obtaining written consent, a checklist was completed for all patients including demographic information such as age, sex, height, weight, place of residence, level of education, type of disease, and lipid profile test results including total cholesterol, triglycerides (TG), low density lipoprotein (LDL) and high density lipoprotein (HDL) were recorded. Then the patients were treated and evaluated for fat profile after 3, 6, 9 months after receiving the relevant treatment regimen. The test results were recorded in checklists. After completing the study, the data were entered into the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) 24 software and analyzed. Results: The mean age of patients was 46.38±14.33 years. 54% of patients were female. 54% of patients had rheumatoid arthritis. 62% of patients were treated with Sinora. The results of this study showed that serum triglyceride levels increased during the study period and this increase was statistically significant but the trend of changes in serum cholesterol, HDL and LDL levels was not statistically significant. However, serum LDL levels measured in the ninth month increased significantly compared to the initial measurement. Conclusions: Results showed that there was a significant relationship between lipid profile changes and anti-TNF alpha consumption. Although decreased inflammation appears but other mechanisms may be involved in dyslipidemia

Closing Price Manipulation and Market Quality

This thesis examines the impact of closing price manipulation (“marking the close”) on several dimensions of equity market quality, including both the efficiency and integrity of equity markets. Marking the close is an illegal practice that involves attempting to influence the closing price of a stock by aggressively executing orders at or near the end of the trading day. Although this practice affects a security’s market price over only a short period of time, often seconds before the close of business, it has significant harmful consequences because of the importance and widespread use of equity closing prices. For example, many financial institutions use the closing price as a reference price to calculate investment fund performance over a given time frame, or to determine fund manager compensation, or to determine the price or payoff to a derivative security. Current understanding of marking the close manipulation is poor due to the scarcity of data relating to demonstrated cases of manipulation. This thesis describes the curation of a dataset containing all prosecuted closing price manipulation cases reported by the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the period 1995 to 2018. This dataset is subsequently used to characterise manipulation, investigate how manipulation affects trading, and investigate the overall motivation(s) for manipulation. The results show that the majority of prosecuted and confirmed cases of manipulation were relatively illiquid small companies with manipulation often occurring to satisfy requirements to remain listed on an exchange and/or to avoid margin calls. Following the characterisation of market manipulation, this thesis investigates the impact of regulation on market quality in both liquid (U.S.) and comparatively illiquid (New Zealand) markets. In U.S. equity markets, a natural experiment was performed to investigate the impact of the 2011 SEC naked-access ban (Rule 15c3-5) on high-frequency trading (HFT) participation, market efficiency, and market integrity. The resulting insights shed new light on previous understanding of HFT as one of the largest drivers of efficiency and integrity of the U.S. equity market. The results dispel concerns that HFTs harm market quality by creating an uneven playing field and potential for market manipulation. On the contrary, higher HFT participation in the U.S. markets appears to lead to overall higher market integrity and more efficient markets. HFT activities, especially arbitrage strategies of trading against manipulators, increase the cost of manipulation by providing liquidity, minimising their trade impact in the market, and significantly decreasing adverse selection. To contrast the behaviour of the liquid U.S. markets, the thesis examined the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) trading characteristics and liquidity over the period 2007-2018. This analysis has shown some important, and possibly unique, characteristics of the NZX and the possibility of closing price manipulation associated with large negotiated off-market trades. The thesis highlights that approximately two-thirds of the total dollar turnover of the NZX in the past 10 years is negotiated off-market trades and that it is common for off-market trades to be executed at the closing auction price once that price is determined. Off-market volume is not typically part of the closing auction mechanism and, in many cases, the volume of off-market trades executed just after market close is much larger – sometimes 100 times larger – than the volume absorbed by the closing auction. Therefore, an off-market trader who wants to trade a large volume at the closing auction price could plausibly manipulate the thin pre-close auction using relatively low volume so that their large-volume off-market order is executed at the manipulated closing price just after the close. To measure the possibility and breadth of this kind of closing price manipulation, a rule-based manipulation index was developed based on the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) v Warminger judgment report (New Zealand’s first and, at present, only manipulation case to come to trial). The Warminger judgment report provides detailed insights regarding the machinery of the exchange surveillance systems and the regulators’ investigation process in the New Zealand context. This information became available to the public for the first time as a result of this case. Using the proposed manipulation index, trading in the S&P/NZX 50 component stocks over a two-year period was analysed to measure the possibility and breadth of this type of manipulation on the NZX. This study presents the first detailed empirical analysis of stock price manipulation in New Zealand markets. Feedback from both the NZX and the FMA suggests that the approach used in this thesis is based on the rational assumptions, effective in terms of structure, and arguably the best possible method for replicating a stock market surveillance system using publicly-available data

An adoption model to assess e-service technology acceptance

As the world today is witnessing the remarkable growth of information and communication technology development and the Internet popularity, the widespread use of the electronic service (e-service) is becoming inevitable. Many e-service projects have been developed but since they are not used by users, they cannot help to improve organizational performance. As the user adoption of an e-service is an essential key for a successful and an effective implementation of any e-service project, there is a need to access the user acceptance of the system. This research developed the E-Service Technology Acceptance Model (ETAM) to assess the user acceptance of an e-service technology. According to the literature review in the field of e-service technology and the acceptance theories, this research identified the main factors influencing the acceptance of e-services, namely; satisfaction and quality where the dimensions of these factors were extracted from the previous studies. In order to categorise the dimensions, an exploratory survey was developed and conducted among the university students and then, the Exploratory Factor Analysis was applied using the SPSS Software. Then, a confirmatory survey was designed and tested to test the validity (content and construct) and the reliability of the instrument, before it was used to evaluate the ETAM. The survey was conducted among the e-service users in Malaysia and 426 questionnaires were collected. Finally, the Structural Equation Modelling using Lisrel was applied to validate the casual relations between the constructs and to assess the goodness-of-fit for the ETAM. The result of this study revealed that quality, security and satisfaction significantly influenced the intention to use an e-service and consequently the acceptance of the e-service technology. The ETAM model developed in this study can be used as a foundation for e-service providers to develop strategies to encourage people to use e-service and to increase the usage and the acceptance of e-services in Malaysia. Moreover, the ETAM which explains 71.8% of variance can help to evaluate and predict how users will respond to an e-service before starting to develop an e-service project. This model can also be applied it to improve the provided e-service to increase the usage rate

An Investigation into the Role of Nano-Silica in Improving Strength of Lightweight Concrete

Development of technology and human’s access to nanotechnology brings about the necessity to use nanotechnology in the concrete industry. Since the decrease of particles size leads to new properties, and unusual mechanical, electrical, and magnetic properties which are inaccessible in usual state, nanotechnology is highly considered. The emergence of nanotechnology in concrete industry has made great changes in many of the concrete properties. Dead load resulted from weight of ceilings and separation walls is one of the fundamental problems in seismic design and structures implementation especially in tall buildings. Obviously, using the lightweight materials could decrease the dead load, weight of beams, columns, and foundation. However, low compressive resistance of lightweight concrete mostly has a direct ratio with the specific gravity of it. Lightweight concrete has a low resistance as a result of its low specific weight. Silica nanoparticles (SNs) have a high surface energy as a result of their high specific surface.  Therefore, they are supposed to have a high pozzolanic reaction and they accelerate hydration reactions. Since the increase of concrete compressive strength is highly noticeable in the new technology, the increase of effective materials with the purpose of increasing compressive strength of concrete could increase the life circle of concrete structures. The present paper intends to investigate the effect of silica nanoparticles on compressive strength, tensile strength, bending strength, contraction of lightweight concrete, and concrete microstructure

An Investigation of Factors Affecting the Employees' Quality of Work Life and Assessment of the Status of These Factors

The present study investigated the factors affecting the quality of work life of employees and assessed the status of these components in Mazandaran Gas Company. The population of this study included the employees of this company, and statistical sample involved 329 employees. Walton model was used to study the quality of work life components. To analyze data, test research hypotheses, and assess the status of components, the Chi-square test, Wilcoxon, Friedman, and confirmatory factor analysis were used. The results revealed that fair and appropriate compensation, providing opportunities for continued growth and safety, social  relevance of work life, and development of human capacities were at a good status, and healthy and safe environment as well as  social cohesion and integration were at an average status,  and total space of life and constitutionalism were at an adverse status

Mechanical properties of copper/cotton core-spun yarns produced by siro and ring spinning methods

431-436Copper/cotton core-spun yarns have been produced using siro and conventional ring methods, and their mechanical properties and cover factor are analyzed. The results indicate that the cover factor and tensile properties of copper/cotton core-spun yarns decrease with an increase in copper core diameter. Nevertheless, the siro copper/cotton core-spun yarns exhibit higher tensile properties as compared to conventional ring copper/cotton core-spun yarns

Mechanical properties of copper/cotton core-spun yarns produced by siro and ring spinning methods

Copper/cotton core-spun yarns have been produced using siro and conventional ring methods, and their mechanicalproperties and cover factor are analyzed. The results indicate that the cover factor and tensile properties of copper/cottoncore-spun yarns decrease with an increase in copper core diameter. Nevertheless, the siro copper/cotton core-spun yarnsexhibit higher tensile properties as compared to conventional ring copper/cotton core-spun yarns