University of Alberta

About: University of Alberta is a education organization based out in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 65403 authors who have published 154847 publications receiving 5358338 citations. The organization is also known as: Ualberta & UAlberta.

Association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and systemic inflammation: a systematic review and a meta-analysis

Abstract: Background: Individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are at increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, and muscle wasting. Systemic inflammation may be involved in the pathogenesis of these disorders. A study was undertaken to determine whether systemic inflammation is present in stable COPD. Methods: A systematic review was conducted of studies which reported on the relationship between COPD, forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) or forced vital capacity (FVC), and levels of various systemic inflammatory markers: C-reactive protein (CRP), fibrinogen, leucocytes, tumour necrosis factor-a (TNF-a), and interleukins 6 and 8. Where possible the results were pooled together to produce a summary estimate using a random or fixed effects model. Results: Fourteen original studies were identified. Overall, the standardised mean difference in the CRP level between COPD and control subjects was 0.53 units (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.34 to 0.72). The standardised mean difference in the fibrinogen level was 0.47 units (95% CI 0.29 to 0.65). Circulating leucocytes were also higher in COPD than in control subjects (standardised mean difference 0.44 units (95% CI 0.20 to 0.67)), as were serum TNF-a levels (standardised mean difference 0.59 units (95% CI 0.29 to 0.89)). Conclusions: Reduced lung function is associated with increased levels of systemic inflammatory markers which may have important pathophysiological and therapeutic implications for subjects with stable COPD.

Vinorelbine plus Cisplatin vs. Observation in Resected Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer

Abstract: background We undertook to determine whether adjuvant vinorelbine plus cisplatin prolongs overall survival among patients with completely resected early-stage non–small-cell lung cancer. methods We randomly assigned patients with completely resected stage IB or stage II non–smallcell lung cancer to vinorelbine plus cisplatin or to observation. The primary end point was overall survival; principal secondary end points were recurrence-free survival and the toxicity and safety of the regimen. results A total of 482 patients underwent randomization to vinorelbine plus cisplatin (242 patients) or observation (240); 45 percent of the patients had pathological stage IB disease and 55 percent had stage II, and all had an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status score of 0 or 1. In both groups, the median age was 61 years, 65 percent were men, and 53 percent had adenocarcinomas. Chemotherapy caused neutropenia in 88 percent of patients (including grade 3 febrile neutropenia in 7 percent) and death from toxic effects in two patients (0.8 percent). Nonhematologic toxic effects of chemotherapy were fatigue (81 percent of patients), nausea (80 percent), anorexia (55 percent), vomiting (48 percent), neuropathy (48 percent), and constipation (47 percent), but severe (grade 3 or greater) toxic effects were uncommon (<10 percent). Overall survival was significantly prolonged in the chemotherapy group as compared with the observation group (94 vs. 73 months; hazard ratio for death, 0.69; P=0.04), as was relapse-free survival (not reached vs. 46.7 months; hazard ratio for recurrence, 0.60; P<0.001). Five-year survival rates were 69 percent and 54 percent, respectively (P=0.03). conclusions Adjuvant vinorelbine plus cisplatin has an acceptable level of toxicity and prolongs disease-free and overall survival among patients with completely resected early-stage non–small-cell lung cancer.

Does Corporate Social Responsibility Affect the Cost of Capital

Abstract: We examine the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the cost of equity capital for a large sample of US firms. Using several approaches to estimate firms’ ex ante cost of equity, we find that firms with better CSR scores exhibit cheaper equity financing. In particular, our findings suggest that investment in improving responsible employee relations, environmental policies, and product strategies contributes substantially to reducing firms’ cost of equity. Our results also show that participation in two “sin” industries, namely, tobacco and nuclear power, increases firms’ cost of equity. These findings support arguments in the literature that firms with socially responsible practices have higher valuation and lower risk.

Corporate Governance, Economic Entrenchment, and Growth

Abstract: Outside the United States and the United Kingdom, large corporations usually have controlling owners, who are usually very wealthy families. Pyramidal control structures, cross shareholding, and super-voting rights let such families control corporations without making a commensurate capital investment. In many countries, a few such families end up controlling considerable proportions of their countries’ economies. Three points emerge. First, at the firm level, these ownership structures, because they vest dominant control rights with families who often have little real capital invested, permit a range of agency problems and hence resource misallocation. If a few families control large swaths of an economy, such corporate governance problems can attain macroeconomic importance—affecting rates of innovation, economywide resource allocation, and economic growth. If political influence depends on what one controls, rather than what one owns, the controlling owners of pyramids have greatly amplified political influence relative to their actual wealth. This influence can distort public policy regarding property rights protection, capital markets, and other institutions. We denote this phenomenon economic entrenchment, and posit a relationship between the distribution of corporate control and institutional development that generates and preserves economic entrenchment as one possible equilibrium. The literature suggests key determinants of economic entrenchment, but has many gaps where further work exploring the political economy importance of the distribution of corporate control is needed.

Consumer Decision Making in Online Shopping Environments: The Effects of Interactive Decision Aids

Abstract: Despite the explosive growth of electronic commerce and the rapidly increasing number of consumers who use interactive media such as the World Wide Web for prepurchase information search and online shopping, very little is known about how consumers make purchase decisions in such settings. A unique characteristic of online shopping environments is that they allow vendors to create retail interfaces with highly interactive features. One desirable form of interactivity from a consumer perspective is the implementation of sophisticated tools to assist shoppers in their purchase decisions by customizing the electronic shopping environment to their individual preferences. The availability of such tools, which we refer to as interactive decision aids for consumers, may lead to a transformation of the way in which shoppers search for product information and make purchase decisions. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the nature of the effects that interactive decision aids may have on consumer decision making in online shopping environments. While making purchase decisions, consumers are often unable to evaluate all available alternatives in great depth and, thus, tend to use two-stage processes to reach their decisions. At the first stage, consumers typically screen a large set of available products and identify a subset of the most promising alternatives. Subsequently, they evaluate the latter in more depth, perform relative comparisons across products on important attributes, and make a purchase decision. Given the different tasks to be performed in such a two-stage process, interactive tools that provide support to consumers in the following respects are particularly valuable: 1 the initial screening of available products to determine which ones are worth considering further, and 2 the in-depth comparison of selected products before making the actual purchase decision. This paper examines the effects of two decision aids, each designed to assist consumers in performing one of the above tasks, on purchase decision making in an online store. The first interactive tool, a recommendation agent RA, allows consumers to more efficiently screen the potentially very large set of alternatives available in an online shopping environment. Based on self-explicated information about a consumer's own utility function attribute importance weights and minimum acceptable attribute levels, the RA generates a personalized list of recommended alternatives. The second decision aid, a comparison matrix CM, is designed to help consumers make in-depth comparisons among selected alternatives. The CM allows consumers to organize attribute information about multiple products in an alternatives × attributes matrix and to have alternatives sorted by any attribute. Based on theoretical and empirical work in marketing, judgment and decision making, psychology, and decision support systems, we develop a set of hypotheses pertaining to the effects of these two decision aids on various aspects of consumer decision making. In particular, we focus on how use of the RA and CM affects consumers' search for product information, the size and quality of their consideration sets, and the quality of their purchase decisions in an online shopping environment. A controlled experiment using a simulated online store was conducted to test the hypotheses. The results indicate that both interactive decision aids have a substantial impact on consumer decision making. As predicted, use of the RA reduces consumers' search effort for product information, decreases the size but increases the quality of their consideration sets, and improves the quality of their purchase decisions. Use of the CM also leads to a decrease in the size but an increase in the quality of consumers' consideration sets, and has a favorable effect on some indicators of decision quality. In sum, our findings suggest that interactive tools designed to assist consumers in the initial screening of available alternatives and to facilitate in-depth comparisons among selected alternatives in an online shopping environment may have strong favorable effects on both the quality and the efficiency of purchase decisions-shoppers can make much better decisions while expending substantially less effort. This suggests that interactive decision aids have the potential to drastically transform the way in which consumers search for product information and make purchase decisions.