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Abstract
The structure-function relationship between white matter microstructure and episodic memory (EM) has been poorly studied in the developing brain, particularly in early childhood. Previous studies in adolescents and adults have shown that episodic memory recall is associated with prefrontal-limbic white matter microstructure. It is unknown whether this association is also observed during early ontogeny. Here, we investigated the association between prefrontal-limbic tract microstructure and EM performance in a cross-sectional sample of children aged 4 to 12 years. We used a multivariate partial least squares correlation approach to extract tract-specific latent variables representing shared information between age and diffusion parameters describing tract microstructure. Individual projections onto these latent variables describe patterns of interindividual differences in tract maturation that can be interpreted as scores of white matter tract microstructural maturity. Using these estimates of microstructural maturity, we showed that maturity scores of the uncinate fasciculus and dorsal cingulum bundle correlated with distinct measures of EM recall. Furthermore, the association between tract maturity scores and EM recall was comparable between younger and older children. Our results provide new evidence on the relation between white matter maturity and EM performance during development.

This research focuses on the drivers of e-government (E-gov) maturity in two comparable developing regions of the world i.e. Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa (LA&SSA). E-gov maturity refers to the growth levels in a country's online services and its citizens' online participation in governance. To date, few researchers have focused on the drivers of E-gov maturity in LA&SSA. Given the challenges faced by LA&SSA with regard to the implementations and deployment of technological innovations including E-gov, research such as this current one is needed to enrich insight in such contexts. Building on a prior framework and the modernization theory (MT), the impacts of macro-environmental factors of political, economic, social, and technological dimensions on E-gov maturity in LA&SSA are examined. A longitudinal data i.e. a 5-year panel data consisting of 160 observations or data points was used for analysis in conjunction with the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Such factors as human capital development, technological infrastructure, and rule of law were found to have positive impacts on E-gov maturity in LA&SSA. To a large extent, national wealth served as an enabler in the proposed research conceptualization and not as a direct driver of E-gov maturity. The implications of the study's findings for research and policy making are discussed and future research areas noted.

Digitalisaatio on tärkeä moderni ilmiö ja esimerkkejä löytyy sekä päivittäisestä elämästämme että liike-elämästä. Digitalisaatio haastaa meidät kyseenalaistamaan olemassa olevat liiketoimintaprosessit ja mahdollistaa niiden joustavuuden ja toimivuuden lisäämisen. Digitaalitekniikan tarjoamien mahdollisuuksien täysimääräinen hyödyntäminen on tällä hetkellä yksi organisaatioiden merkittävimmistä haasteista. Tämä tutkimus suuntautuu organisaatioiden digitalisointi valmiuden ymmärtämiseen. Yritysarkkitehtuurin hallinta on kattava johtamismekanismi, joka ottaa huomioon liiketoiminnan- ja tietotekniikan prosessit. Kypsyysmalli on työkalu, joka kuvaa organisaation kypsyyttä määriteltyjen kriteerien mukaisesti. Tutkimuksessa on käytetty yritysarkkitehtuurin kypsyysmalleja, koska näitä malleja voidaan käyttää organisaation kypsyyden mittaamiseen. Tutkimukseen osallistui Suomen julkinen sektori ja Suomen suuret ja keskisuuret yritykset. Julkisella sektorilla vain kunnat olivat mukana tutkimuksessa. Tutkimustiedot kerättiin kyselyillä, jotka toistettiin kolme kertaa vertailukelpoisten näytteiden saamiseksi. Näin ollen tämä tutkimus hyödyntää pitkittäismenetelmää. Tutkimus tarjoaa Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) kypsyystasotiedot tutkimusjoukoille ja edustaa uutta tietoa julkisen sektorin sekä suurten- ja keskisuurten yritysten kypsyystasoista. Lisäksi MIT-kypsyystasoja voidaan mitata suunnitellulla kyselylomakkeella myös tutkimuksen ulkopuolella oleville joukoille. Tutkimustulokset osoittavat, että suuret yritykset ovat ottaneet käyttöön yritysarkkitehtuurin hallinnan ja keskittäneet IT-johtamisen organisaation. Suuret yritykset ovat myös sitoutuneet merkittävissä määrin digitalisoinnin kehittämistoimintaan. Suurilla yrityksillä oli korkein yritysarkkitehtuurin kypsyystaso, ja siksi ne olivat paremmin valmistautuneita digitalisointiin kuin keskisuuret yritykset ja julkinen sektori. Keskisuuret yritykset eivät ole käyttöönottaneet yritysarkkitehtuurin hallinnan menetelmiä. Sen sijaan ne keskittyivät digitalisointihankkeiden toteuttamiseen. Tämä havainto tukee kirjallisuuden nykyistä käsitystä, jonka mukaan keskisuuret yritykset käyttävät tyypillisesti kokeellista toimintamallia. Keskisuurten yritysten maturiteetti oli aluksi alhaisin, mutta ne pystyivät kasvattamaan maturiteettia nopeammin kuin muut tutkimusjoukot. Keskisuuret yritykset pyrkivät hyötymään digitalisoinnista, mutta ne eivät olleet yhtä hyvin valmistautuneita digitalisointiin kuin suuret yritykset. Julkisen sektorin digitalisointi oli Suomen hallituksen ensisijainen projekti. Digitalisaation hyödyt ovat kuitenkin olleet melko vähäiset korkeista odotuksista huolimatta. Tämän tutkimuksen tulosten mukaan yritysarkkitehtuuri on näkyvämpää julkisella sektorilla kuin yksityisellä sektorilla, koska toimiva yritysarkkitehtuurin hallinta vaadittiin julkishallinnon tieto- ja viestintätekniikan laissa. Julkisen sektori ei ole investoinut yhtä voimakkaasti konkreettisiin digitalisointihankkeisiin kuin muut tutkimusjoukot. Konkreettiset digitalisointiprojektit paransivat yritysarkkitehtuurin kypsyyttä enemmän kuin pelkät metodologiakeskeiset yritysarkkitehtuurin hallintamekanismit, etenkin lain pakottamat. Tämä viittaa siihen, että olisi hyödyllistä aloittaa konkreettisia digitalisointitoimenpiteitä. Julkisen sektorilla oli alhaisimmat kypsyysasteet aktiivisesta yritysarkkitehtuurityöstä ja digitalisoinnin edistämisestä huolimatta. Tämä viittaa siihen, että julkinen sektori kamppailee edelleen digitalisointi valmiuden kanssa. Tulevaisuuden yritysarkkitehtuuritutkimus tulisi keskittyä pieniin- ja keskisuuriin yrityksiin, jotta ne voisivat hyödyntää yritysarkkitehtuurikäytäntöjä. Pieniä- ja keskisuuria yrityksiä olisi rohkaistava arvioimaan yritysarkkitehtuurin hyötyjä organisaatioilleen. Tutkijoiden tulisi myös keskittyä tarjoamaan apua pienille- ja keskisuurille yrityksille, jotta ne voivat hyötyä digitalisoinnista tarjoamalla tarkoituksenmukaisempia yritysarkkitehtuurimenetelmiä. ; Digitalization is an important modern phenomenon, and examples can be found both in our daily lives as well as in the business world. Digitalization challenges us to question existing business processes and makes it possible to increase their flexibility and functionality. Fully utilizing the opportunities offered by digital technology is currently one of the most significant challenges for organizations. This research is geared toward understanding organizations' digitalization preparedness. Enterprise architecture management is a comprehensive management mechanism which considers business and information technology (IT) processes. The maturity model is a tool that illustrates the maturity of an organization according to specified criteria. Enterprise architecture maturity models have been used in this work because these models can be used to measure the maturity of an organization. The research included participants from the Finnish public sector and large and medium-sized companies within Finland. Only municipalities within the public sector were included. Research data were collected via surveys, which were repeated three times in order to obtain comparable samples. This study therefore utilizes the longitudinal method. This work provides Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) maturity level information for all businesses surveyed and represents new knowledge about the maturity levels of the Finnish public sector as well as large and medium-sized companies within Finland. Additionally, the MIT maturity levels can also be measured using a planned questionnaire with other research groups outside of the research groups studied in this work. The research results indicate that large companies have adopted enterprise architecture management and have centralized IT management organization. Large companies have also engaged in a significant amount of digitalization development activities. These companies had the highest enterprise architecture maturity levels and were therefore better prepared for digitalization than the Finnish medium-sized companies and Finnish public sector. This study has also shown that the medium-sized companies surveyed had not adopted enterprise architecture management methods. They instead focused on implementing digitalization projects. This finding supports the current understanding from the literature that medium-sized companies typically adopt an experimental working model. The maturity of the medium-sized companies were initially the lowest, but they were able to increase their maturity faster than the other research groups. The medium-sized companies tried to benefit from digitalization, but were not as well prepared for digitalization as large companies. Public sector digitalization was the Finnish government's top priority project. However, the benefits of digitalization have been rather limited, despite high expectations. According to the results of this study, enterprise architecture is more visible in the public sector than in the private sector because functioning enterprise architecture management was required by the information and communication technology (ICT) law for public administrators. The Finnish public sector did not invest as heavily in concrete digitalization activities when compared with the other research groups. Concrete digitalization projects enhanced enterprise architecture maturity more than solely methodology-focused enterprise architecture management mechanisms, especially those forced by the ICT law. This suggests that it would be beneficial to start more concrete digitalization activities. The public sector had the lowest maturity level, despite active enterprise architecture work and digitalization promotion; this suggests that the Finnish public sector still struggles with its preparation for digitalization. I recommend that future enterprise architecture research place additional focus on small and medium-sized companies to enable their adoption of enterprise architecture practices. Small and medium-sized companies should be encouraged to evaluate the benefits of enterprise architecture for their organizations. Researchers should also focus on providing additional assistance to small and medium-sized companies to enable them to benefit from digitalization, by offering them more appropriate enterprise architecture methods.

Using data from the Treasury versus London Interbank Offer Swap Rates (LIBOR) for October 1987 to June 1998, this paper examines the determinants of swap spreads in the Treasury-LIBOR interest rate swap market. This study hypothesizes Treasury-LIBOR swap spreads as a function of the Treasury rate of comparable maturity, the slope of the yield curve, the volatility of short-term interest rates, a proxy for default risk, and liquidity in the swap market. The study finds that, in the long-run, swap spreads are negatively related to the yield curve slope and liquidity in the swap market. We also find that swap spreads are positively related to the short-term interest rate volatility. In the short-run, swap market's response to higher default risk seems to be higher spread between the bid and offer rates.

The tragic events of Erfurt in 2002 have shaken up society. As a result being under high social pressure the government enacted a supplementary law to prevent others from committing comparable crimes.Legal owners of weapons and their associations as well as people occupied with firearms by profession reacted spontaneously and intensely upon this act. An acute and emotional discussion was set going. The Author (Institute of Psychology of law, Universität Bremen) has made it his business to investigate the psychological dimension of this psychological construct of personal eligibility.The present doctoral thesis focuses on the not sufficiently defined legal term of personal eligibility as a precondition for the ownership of and handling with firearms as a direct answer of legislation to the violent act of Erfurt. By psychological methods of testing the legal term of personal eligibility is made operative and thus psychological testings makes the legal term personal eligability operative and finaly provides a strong basis for forensic evaluations.

Klyuev (2008) concluded that the Canadian market for housing finance is highly advanced and sophisticated, but financing options were somewhat limited, particularly at terms longer than five years. This paper argues that the paucity of longer-term loans is caused by a five-year maturity cap on government-guaranteed deposit insurance, and a prepayment penalty limit on residential mortgage loans in the Interest Act. That said, the availability and cost of residential loans for prime borrowers are comparable to those in the United States

SummaryThe use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economic history. Moreover, a number of core findings in the literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains thin. One example is 19th century African-Americans in US border-states. This paper introduces a new data set from the Missouri state prison to track the heights of comparable black and white men born between 1820 and 1904. Modern blacks and whites come to comparable terminal statures when brought to maturity under optimal conditions; however, whites were persistently taller than blacks in the Missouri prison sample by two centimetres. Throughout the 19th century, black and white adult statures remained approximately constant, while black youth stature increased during the antebellum period.

It is acknowledged that quality of life is related to economic development in a country or region. The impact of the ongoing transfer to the digital economy on economic growth, sustainable development, and quality of life has been a recent academic focus, finding that the development of digitalisation of the economy and society is happening at a comparable pace. Yet, despite the availability of governmental support and overall strategic orientation of top managers, there is evidence of low digital/advanced manufacturing technologies adoption readiness across economic sectors. Therefore, the object of the research is the digital/advanced manufacturing technologies adoption readiness, which can be assessed on both industrial and organisational levels. The authors carried out an expert poll that has shown low digital/advanced manufacturing technologies adoption readiness on the industrial level (average readiness of 2.18 across estimated industries). For this reason, the focus subject of the research is the evaluation method for determining barriers of digital transformation on organisational level. The review of the academic literature and available digital maturity assessment models has shown the lack of metrics for barrier evaluation. The objective of the research is to develop a method for digital-transformation barrier evaluation. An analytical research method is used to develop a ready-to-use method in a form of a questionnaire that can be applied to measure an overall digital-transformation barrier level and identify problem areas for a manufacturing enterprise. The developed method is approbated in two large industrial companies. The overall barrier equals 39.3% for a power engineering company, which is a deterrent barrier. The overall barrier equals 75.0% for a machine-building company, which is a limiting barrier. The results of approbation correspond with results of the expert poll: the power engineering company has a lower barrier level, which is in line with the engine building and turbine engineering industry showing higher levels of readiness to adopt digital technologies. This finding supports the hypothesis about the rationality of the author's method.

Evaluating the effectiveness of sustainability implementation at Higher Education Institutions is still challenging, due to less multi-dimensional approaches. Purpose is to present a new assessment - Sustainable Maturity model (SuMa model) for evaluating the implementation of sustainability at two universities in a border region with different maturity profiles through an internationally designed case study. Therefore, internal documents were analyzed, and interviews were conducted. The pilot implementation of this model showed that it can also be used internationally to evaluate the current state of sustainability implementation. As the assessment results prove, the critical point is effectiveness of strategy implementation and communication. Also, a lack of common understanding of sustainability still exists. The case study shows that the cultural and historical differences that exist in rural areas matters for implementing sustainability. The new SuMa assessment-model is a very suitable tool that delivers relevant indicators for measurable and comparable results over time and, above all, helps and supports the implementation of sustainability across all activities in the higher education landscape. It thus offers the possibility of being a standardized tool used worldwide.
Keywords: Higher Education Institutions; Sustainability; Strategy Implementation; Assessment

AbstractIn 1997, the U.S. Treasury introduced Inflation Protected Securities, commonly known as TIPS. Several in the finance field have since described these securities as "tax disadvantaged" relative to conventional securities, leading to serious questions regarding their appropriateness outside of tax‐deferred accounts. In this article, we develop a framework that demonstrates that at least in a real sense the tax treatment of TIPS is trivially different from that of conventional Treasury securities. Moreover, empirically we find evidence that TIPS generally have after‐tax yields comparable to, if not exceeding, conventional fixed‐rate Treasury securities. We also show that TIPS have generally outperformed matched‐maturity conventional Treasury securities in terms of after‐tax rates of return.

AbstractWe analyze the effect various delivery options embedded in commodity futures contracts have on the futures price. The two embedded options considered are the timing and location options. We show that early delivery is always optimal when only a timing option is present, but not so when joint options are present. The estimates of the combined options are much smaller than the comparable estimates for the timing option alone. The average value of the joint option is about 5% of the average basis on the first day of the maturity month. This suggests that joint options can increase deliverable supplies while potentially having only a small effect on basis behavior.

Eating disorders (EDs) have been documented in various cultural settings. A continuous increase in ED' rates among non-Western cultures (e.g., Arab cultures and East-Asian cultures) has been reported. We aimed to investigate the relations among culture, ED symptoms, and psychological features that are highly relevant in EDs through a cultural comparison of three groups. The groups included female university students in Israel with varying levels of exposure to Westernization: 118 Jewish students, 132 Arab students studying at a mixed university with a Jewish majority, and 111 Arab students studying at Sakhnin College, a college for Arab students only. The groups differed significantly on the Conservation Value dimension from the Short Portrait Values Questionnaire. Four psychological features were examined as predictors of ED symptoms: Interoceptive-deficits, Ineffectiveness, Asceticism, and Maturity-fear. The results revealed a comparable prevalence of self-reported ED symptoms among Arabs and Jews, with a small exception for bulimic symptoms, which were less prevalent among those in the Sakhnin group, who also scored lower on Ineffectiveness and higher on asceticism than the other groups. Testing the relations between the four psychological features and ED symptoms revealed that culture played a moderating role in predicting the strength of ineffectiveness and maturity-fear. Ineffectiveness was not a predictor among the Sakhnin group, whereas maturity-fear was not a predictor in the least conservative Jewish group. Asceticism and interoceptive-deficits predicted ED symptoms across all study groups. Our findings indicate that the problem of EDs may be similar among Arab and Jewish women in Israel. Moreover, despite some similarities in the relevance of some ED-related psychological features, other features are moderated by culture.

The mine action programme in Yemen is showing a depth of maturity that is comparable to the best mine action programmes in the world. Since the first convening of the high-level National Mine Action Committee in June 1998 and the establishment of the Yemeni Executive Mine Action Centre in January 1999, the programme has evolved in all directions, and shows results at the outcome level that reveal focus and clarity of purpose. The fundamental reason for the progress achieved is, without any doubt, the strong commitment of the Government. This commitment is not only revealed through the establishment of a legal, policy and management structure, but can also be judged from the substantial funds contributed from the national budget, amounting to some US$3.5 million annually.

This study evaluates the impact of a college-based dormitory program on transitioning youth with intellectual disabilities. A qualitative study, with interviews at pre and post, was conducted to evaluate the program's impact. Data were collected with semistructured interviews from young adults with intellectual disabilities who participated in a college-based residential program and their parents or guardians. Three general themes emerged from the data: Participants reported experiences that were (a) typical of normative life transitions, (b) typical of growing pains associated with significant life transitions and learning new skills, and (c) one step forward. Results indicate that the experience of living away from home for the first time was in some ways comparable to that of a typical college student. Improvement in life skills, including increased awareness of personal goals, enhanced vocational goals, increased maturity or assertiveness, was reported. Respondents were generally satisfied with the program.

International audience ; This paper studies the term structure of the liquidity premium of the European green bond market along three liquidity (short-term, medium-term, and long-term) premia.If the liquidity premium is an increasing function of bond's maturity, the estimated sizes of liquidity premia are comparable to those found on the German government bond markets. We then show that liquidity premia are moderately sensitive to economic determinants. Moreover, we detect a liquidity clientele effect on the ask side, which contributes to increase all liquidity premia. This clientele effect is, however, mitigated by spillover effects operating from the short-end to the long-end of the term structure and vice versa. In sum, our results deliver valuable insights on investors' strategies in the European green bond market, notably those of long-term investors who are not only compensated for their higher illiquidity risks but also provide market stability with their buy and hold strategies.