Influence of Corporate Attributes on Forward-looking Information Disclosure in Publicly Traded Turkish Corporations

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to determine the extent of forward-looking information disclosure in publicly traded Turkish corporations, and to identify drivers of disclosure. Through content analysis of annual reports, we identified the level of forward- looking information disclosure in Turkish listed manufacturing companies. According to the results, forward-looking disclosure level is not high among Turkish companies currently; the majority of the disclosures are qualitative; and while all firms spread good news, no one discloses the bad ones. Furthermore, the results indicate that firm size and auditor size are the significant variables in explaining forward-looking information disclosure level; other five variables (i.e. profitability, leverage, ownership structure, independent directors, listing age) are insignificant

Sustainable Stock Market and Sustainability Reporting Propensity of the Public Sector: Mediating Role of the Private Sector

The objective of this article is to investigate the mediating role of the private sector between sustainable stock markets (i.e., the existence of a sustainability index) and the sustainability reporting level of the public sector through spillover theory. The sample of the study consists of 115 country records for 2015 and 2016. The results confirm that the private sector mediates the association between sustainable stock markets and the sustainability reporting level of the public sector. Hence, establishing sustainability indices in stock markets first helps the private sector achieve a higher level of transparency, and then they indirectly help public organizations be more transparent and accountable to their stakeholder

The link among board characteristics, corporate social responsibility performance, and financial performance: Evidence from the hospitality and tourism industry

The aim of this study is twofold: to explore whether board characteristics (i.e. a sustainability committee, board independence, board diversity, and board diligence) lead to greater corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance, and to test whether CSR performance enhances firms\u27 financial performance in the hospitality and tourism (H&T) industry. Data were collected from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database for the H&T firms listed there between 2011 and 2018. We employed panel data analysis, after which we ran robustness tests. The results indicated that having a CSR committee and female directors on the board are robust factors driving firms to show superior CSR performance in all dimensions, including environmental, social, and governance (ESG). Independent directors and directors\u27 diligence selectively enhance the overall CSR score and individual pillars of CSR. Investigating the relationship between CSR performance and firms\u27 financial performance did not produce a significant outcome. The findings propose a straightforward roadmap for H&T firms and policymakers to identify characteristics of CSR-friendly boards

Student Centered Education Scale: A Validity and Reliability Study

The purpose of the study is to develop a valid and reliable scale to measure the teachers’ levels of student-centered education practices. The Exploratory Factor Analysis sample included a total of 426 teachers and the Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the scale was conducted on a total of 160 teachers working in the province of Duzce during the spring term of 2014-2015 education year. Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to test the construct validity of the scale and the model was tested through the Confirmatory Factor Analysis. For the reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha internal coefficient was calculated and item analysis was performed based on the corrected item total correlation. The final form of the scale included 32 items and one dimension. These 32 items explained 40.04% of the total variance. The results of the item total correlation analysis indicated that none of the item was below 0.30 and the lowest item correlation coefficient was 0.51. Cronbach’s Alpha was found to be 0.95 for the internal consistency of the scale. The reliability and validity results for the Student-Centered Education Scale suggest that this scale is a reliable and valid tool to measure the levels of student-centered educational practices among teachers

A Review on the Link between Psoriasis Vulgaris and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Psoriasis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are both triggered by hormones and chemical messengers. Psoriatic women are also more prone than the general population to PCOS, and both diseases are tightly associated with obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, and metabolic and cardiovascular alterations. The aim of this paper is to review the current knowledge on the association between psoriasis and PCOS, from immunologic and genetic perspectives

Prenatal ethanol intoxication and maternal intubation stress alter cell survival and apoptosis in the postnatal development of rat hippocampus

It is well known that the fetal ethanol exposure and prenatal stress may have adverse effects on brain development. Interestingly, some morphological and functional recovery from their teratogenic effects that take place during brain maturation. However, mechanisms that underlie this recovery are not fully elucidated. The aim of this study was to examine whether the postnatal attenuation of fetal alcohol - and maternal stress-induced morphological and functional deficits correlates with compensatory changes in the expression/activation of the brain proteins involved in inflammation, cell survival and apoptosis. In this project, we investigated the hippocampus which belongs to the brain regions most susceptible to the adverse effects of prenatal ethanol exposure. Pregnant rat dams were administered ethanol (A) or isocaloric glucose solution (IC) by a gastric intubation during gestational days 7-20. The pure control group received ad libitum laboratory chow and water with no other treatment. The hippocampi of fetal-ethanol and control pups were examined at the postnatal day (PD)1, PD10, PD30 and PD60. Moderate fetal-ethanol exposure and prenatal intubation stress caused a significant increase in molecular factors relating to inflammation (iNOS) and cell survival/apoptosis pathways (PTEN, GSK-3 and ERK) at birth, with a rapid compensation from these developmental deficits upon removal of alcohol at PD10. Indeed, an increase in ERK1/2 and JNK1/2 activation at PD30 was observed with ethanol consumption. It indicates that the recovery process in A and IC brains started soon after the birth upon the ethanol and stressor withdrawal and continued until the adulthood

The local clinical validation of a new lithium heparin tube with a barrier: BD Vacutainer® Barricor LH Plasma tube

Introduction: Although serum-providing blood tubes with a barrier are still widely used due to their significant advantages, the use of blood tubes with a barrier to provide plasma is becoming widespread. We compared 22 analytes in a BD Vacutainer® Barricor LH Plasma tube for local clinical validation of this new lithium heparin tube with a barrier. Materials and methods: Samples from 44 volunteers were collected in different tubes (Becton Dickinson and Company): Z tube without additive (reference), clot-activator tube with gel (SST), lithium heparin tube without gel (LiH), and lithium heparin tube with barrier (Barricor). Analyte concentrations in different tubes were compared with the reference tube. All tubes were also evaluated according to additional testing (different centrifugation durations, blood-sampling techniques and individual differences). Results: Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), glucose (Glc), potassium (K), lactate dehydrogenase (LD), sodium (Na), and total protein (TP) had a significant bias in Barricor (9.19%, - 3.24%, - 4.88%, 21.60%, - 0.40%, 5.03%, respectively) relative to the reference tube. There was no statistical difference between different centrifugation durations and individual differences for AST, K and LD in LiH and/or Barricor (P > 0.05). There was a significant bias for LD between LiH and Barricor in terms of blood-sampling techniques (21.2% and 12.4%, respectively). Conclusions: Recently, the use of plasma has become prominent due to some of its advantages. In this study, plasma AST, K, LD, Glc and TP levels in Barricor were clinically different in comparison to serum. The results of additional tests showed that higher levels of LD in Barricor did not result from haemolysis, and they might be related to other factors including number of platelets, cellular fragility, or functional environment

Analysis of intestinal and nasopharyngeal microbiota of children with meningococcemia in pediatric intensive care unit: INMACS-PICU study

This article belongs to the Special Issue Pediatric Diagnostic Microbiology.Microbiota composition might play a role in the pathophysiology and course of sepsis, and understanding its dynamics is of clinical interest. Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) is an important cause of community-acquired serious infection, and there is no information regarding microbiota composition in children with meningococcemia. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the intestinal and nasopharyngeal microbiota composition of children with IMD.[Materials and Methods]: In this prospective, multi-center study, 10 children with meningococcemia and 10 age-matched healthy controls were included. Nasopharyngeal and fecal samples were obtained at admission to the intensive care unit and on the tenth day of their hospital stay. The V3 and V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene were amplified following the 16S Metagenomic Sequencing Library Preparation.[Results]: Regarding the alpha diversity on the day of admission and on the tenth day at the PICU, the Shannon index was significantly lower in the IMD group compared to the control group (p = 0.002 at admission and p = 0.001, on the tenth day of PICU). A statistical difference in the stool samples was found between the IMD group at Day 0 vs. the controls in the results of the Bray–Curtis and Jaccard analyses (p = 0.005 and p = 0.001, respectively). There were differences in the intestinal microbiota composition between the children with IMD at admission and Day 10 and the healthy controls. Regarding the nasopharyngeal microbiota analysis, in the children with IMD at admission, at the genus level, Neisseria was significantly more abundant compared to the healthy children (p < 0.001). In the children with IMD at Day 10, genera Moraxella and Neisseria were decreased compared to the healthy children. In the children with IMD on Day 0, for paired samples, Moraxella, Neisseria, and Haemophilus were significantly more abundant compared to the children with IMD at Day 10. In the children with IMD at Day 10, the Moraxella and Neisseria genera were decreased, and 20 different genera were more abundant compared to Day 0.[Conclusions]: We first found alterations in the intestinal and nasopharyngeal microbiota composition in the children with IMD. The infection itself or the other care interventions also caused changes to the microbiota composition during the follow-up period. Understanding the interaction of microbiota with pathogens, e.g., N. meningitidis, could give us the opportunity to understand the disease’s dynamics.This study was supported by the Eskisehir Osmangazi University Scientific Research Grant (2018/11046).Peer reviewe