Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Competitive and Collaborative Quality and Warranty Management in Supply Chains

Product quality and product warranty coverage are two important and closely related operational decisions. A longer warranty protection period can boost sales, but it may also result in dramatically increased warranty cost, if product quality is poor. To investigate how these two decisions interact with each other and influence supply chain performance, we develop a single-period model with a supplier that provides a product to an original equipment manufacturer, which in turn sells it to customers. Customer demand is random and affected by the length of the product warranty period. Warranty costs are incurred by both the supplier and the manufacturer. We analyze two different scenarios based on which party sets the warranty period: manufacturer warranty and supplier warranty. Product quality is controlled by the supplier, and the manufacturer determines the ordering quantity. We analyze these decentralized systems and provide the structural properties of the equilibrium strategies. We also compare the results of centralized and decentralized systems and identify the conditions under which one system provides a longer warranty and better product quality than the other. Our numerical study further shows that, in decentralized settings, when the warranty period is determined by the firm sharing the larger proportion of total warranty costs, the supply chain can achieve greater system-wide profit. Both parties can therefore benefit from properly delegating the warranty decision and sharing the resulting additional profit. We further design a supplier-development and buy-back contract for coordinating decentralized supply chains. Several extensions are also discussed.
An analysis of the effects of risk biases on real options pricing | NOVA. The University of Newcastle's Digital Repository

Over the past two decades, a significant amount of academic knowledge has been created on how to apply real options analysis to business investments. Despite the many apparent advantages of using real options to value projects, the approach has not found favor with managers in practice. Some critics claim that the method is untrustworthy and might encourage too much risk taking. This dissertation provides an exploration of risk biases, viewed through the lens of prospect theory, as a potential cause for the mistrust toward real options. Using evidence from a survey of 67 business school students, the results showed that participants generally evaluated options with prospect theory’s S-shaped utility function rather than with the straight, risk-neutral function that is often assumed by normative pricing models. Pricing differences were found to be dependent on the framing of the scenario as either a gain or a loss and whether or not there were small probabilities involved. These findings bring into question the appropriateness of models based on the risk-neutral assumption.
Diagnosis of enteroviral meningitis with IgG‐EIA using heat‐treated virions and synthetic peptides as antigens

Two recently developed enzyme immunosorbent assays (EIA) for the detection of significant titre increases in enteroviral IgG‐antibodies were evaluated as diagnostic tools in 127 etiologically well‐characterized patients with aseptic meningitis. One assay was based on heat‐treated virions (H‐EIA) and one on synthetic peptides (PEIA) as antigens. The sensitivities, with virus isolation as reference method, were 0.67 by H‐EIA and 0.62 by P‐EIA, which were higher than by a routinely used complement fixation test (CFT, 0.51) but somewhat lower than the sensitivities found by two previously presented IgM‐assays, μ‐capture EIA, and solid‐phase reverse immunosorbent test (SPRIST). The specificities of the two IgG‐EIA techniques and CFT were apparently high, whereas the two IgM‐assays showed positive reactions in some non‐enteroviral cases. A relatively rapid increase in enteroviral IgG‐antibodies was apparent using H‐EIA and P‐EIA. The two IgG‐EIA tests contributed with considerable additional etiological information since significant IgG‐rises were obtained in 13 patients by H‐EIA and in 19 by P‐EIA, respectively, out of the 56 individuals in whom enterovirus isolation was negative and a non‐enteroviral diagnosis was not found. Thus, detection of enteroviral IgG‐antibodies by H‐EIA and P‐EIA seems to be a valuable alternative to CFT for the routine diagnosis of enteroviral meningitis. The IgM‐assays, μ‐capture EIA, and SPRIST, may allow a relatively rapid report of an enteroviral infection. However, since both the IgM‐tests are hampered by incomplete specificities, a confirmation of positive results by an IgG‐assay should be carried out. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Efficacy of Bacteriophage Therapy on Horizontal Transmission of Salmonella Gallinarum on Commercial Layer Chickens

SUMMARY. A Salmonella Gallinarum (SG)-specific bacteriophage isolated from sewage effluent was used to prevent horizontal transmission of SG in commercial layer chickens. Six-week-old chickens, each challenged with 5 × 108 colony-forming units of SG, cohabited with contact chickens treated with 106 plaque-forming units/kg of bacteriophage, prepared in feed additives, for 7 days before, and 21 days after challenge with SG. Mortality was observed for 3 wk after challenge and SG was periodically re-isolated from the liver, spleen, and cecum of chickens. SG re-isolation from organs was decreased and a significant (P < 0.05) reduction in mortality was observed in contact chickens treated with the bacteriophage, as compared to untreated contact chickens, indicating that bacteriophage administration in feed additives significantly prevented the horizontal transmission of SG. These results provide important insights into prevention and control strategies against SG infection and suggest that the use of bacteriophages may be a novel, safe, and effectively plausible alternative to antibiotics for the prevention of SG infection in poultry.
Recent advancements in lateral flow immunoassays: A journey for toxin detection in food

ABSTRACT Biotechnology embraces various physical and chemical phenomena toward advancement of health diagnostics. Toward such advancement, detection of toxins plays an important role. Toxins produce severe health impacts on consumption with high mortality associated in acute cases. The most prominent route of infection and intoxication is through food matrices. Therefore, rapid detection of toxins at low concentrations is the need of modern diagnostics. Lateral flow immunoassays are one of the emergent and popularly used rapid detection technology developed for detecting various kinds of analytes. This review thus focuses on recent advancements in lateral flow immunoassays for detecting different toxins in agricultural food. Appropriate emphasis was given on how the labels, recognition elements, or detection strategy has laid an impact on improvement in immunochromatographic assays for toxins. The paper also discusses the gradual change in sensitivities and specificities of assays in accordance with the method of food processing used. The review concludes with the major challenges faced by this technology and provides an outlook and insight of ideas to improve it in the future.
Monetary Policy Decisions - Comparing Theory and 'Inside' Information from MPC Members

How do monetary policy committee (MPC) members form their views about the appropriate interest rate? To what extent do they change their minds during the deliberations in the interest rate meeting? How important is the Chairman? The theoretical literature makes assumptions about these issues. We have asked actual MPC members in Sweden and Norway. This paper reports the results from this unique survey and discusses how well existing theories on monetary policy by committee capture the reality.
Were Modern Capital Structure Theories Valid in Belgium Before World War I?

This study investigates whether modern theories can explain capital structure in a historical environment which was characterized by poor investor protection, booming stock markets and strong banks, and in which taxes did not affect leverage. Our results, based on a unique, hand-collected sample of 556 firm-year observations for 129 listed companies in Belgium before World War I, are remarkably similar to findings for present-day samples. Leverage was positively related to asset tangibility, firm size and firm age, and it was negatively related to profitability and prior stock returns. Bank relationships were associated with lower leverage. Copyright (c) 2008 The Authors Journal compilation (c) 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
State Responses to Fiscal Crisis: the Effects of Budgetary Institutionsand Politics

This paper explores how state fiscal institutions and political circumstances affect the dynamics of state taxes and spending during periods of fiscal stress. The analysis focuses on the late 1980s, when sharp economic downturns in several regions, coupled with increased expenditure demands, led to substantial state budget deficits. State fiscal institutions, such as "no deficit carryover" rules and tax and expenditure limitations, appear to have real effects on the speed and nature of fiscal adjustment to unexpected deficits. Political factors are also important. When a single party controls the state house and the governorship, the reaction to state deficits is much faster than when party control is divided. In gubernatorial election years, tax increases and spending cuts are both significantly smaller than at other times.
Traumatic arterial injuries of the extremities: initial evaluation with MDCT angiography.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to retrospectively assess the accuracy of MDCT angiography as the initial diagnostic technique to depict arterial injury in patients with extremity trauma. MATERIALS AND METHODS Over 36 months, 87 patients (16 females and 71 males; age range, 16-87 years) with clinically suspected arterial injury after extremity trauma underwent 4-MDCT angiography and 67 ultimately underwent surgery. Eighty patients had blunt injuries, and seven had penetrating injuries. The presence of arterial involvement was investigated prospectively by the radiologist in charge and retrospectively by two independent radiologists. Each detected arterial lesion was then characterized as a spasm, stenosis, occlusion, or rupture. The standard of reference was surgery in 67 patients, angiography in two patients, and clinical and radiologic follow-up findings in 18 patients. MDCT angiography was assessed by means of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis for lesion detection and Spearman's rank correlation test for lesion characterization. Image quality, lesion depiction, and artifacts were subjectively assessed. RESULTS Sixty-two traumatic arterial lesions were confirmed at surgery in 55 patients. MDCT angiography yielded high accuracy in detection (area under the ROC curve [Az] = 0.96; p < 0.001) and characterization (r = 0.94; p < 0.001) of traumatic arterial injuries and in recognizing an underlying dissection (Az= 0.82; p < 0.001). Prospective sensitivity and specificity were 95% and 87%, respectively, and retrospective sensitivity and specificity were 99% and 87%, respectively. MDCT angiography was considered to be sufficient for a reliable diagnosis in 83 patients (p < 0.001). Image quality and lesion depiction on MDCT angiograms were considered to be good and artifacts were considered mild with substantial interobserver agreement (kappa, 0.62-0.69). CONCLUSION MDCT angiography provides significant and reproducible technique for the detection and characterization of arterial injuries to the extremities with high image quality and vascular delineation.
Understanding Multiplexity of Collaborative Emergency Management Networks

This article explores the multiplex relationships among organizations within the context of emergency management. It examines the role of friendship networks and disaster preparedness networks in predicting sustainable collaborative disaster response networks. Furthermore, it examines the impact of emergency management systems on network building and sustainability. This article applies inferential network analysis methods in analyzing relationships among emergency management networks and examines the predictive power of preestablished network arrangements. This research suggests that friendship networks are important for encouraging organizations to be involved in disaster preparedness networks. Yet it is the collaboration ties during disaster preparedness that influence the formation of collaborations during disaster response. Structural attributes of emergency management systems have impacts on the development of multiplex relationships among organizations within various networks. These findings not only contribute to developing sustainable emergency management networks but also provide insights for building collaborative networks in a broader context.
Rasa: Open Source Language Understanding and Dialogue Management

We introduce a pair of tools, Rasa NLU and Rasa Core, which are open source python libraries for building conversational software. Their purpose is to make machine-learning based dialogue management and language understanding accessible to non-specialist software developers. In terms of design philosophy, we aim for ease of use, and bootstrapping from minimal (or no) initial training data. Both packages are extensively documented and ship with a comprehensive suite of tests. The code is available at this https URL
Economic Forces and the Stock Market

This paper tests whether innovations in macroeconomic variables are risks that are rewarded in the stock market. Financial theory suggests that the following macroeconomic variables should systematically affect stock market returns: the spread between long and short interest rates, expected and unexpected inflation, industrial production, and the spread between high- and low-grade bonds. We find that these sources of risk are significantly priced. Furthermore, neither the market portfolio nor aggregate consumption are priced separately. We also find that oil price risk is not separately rewarded in the stock market.
Effects of a high dose of microbial phytase and myo‐inositol supplementation on growth performance, tibia mineralization, nutrient digestibility, litter moisture content, and foot problems in broiler chickens fed phosphorus‐deficient diets

&NA; A total of 660 one‐day‐old Ross 308 broiler chicks were randomly distributed into eleven dietary treatments. Treatments included a maize‐soybean meal‐based diet with recommended calcium (Ca) and non‐phytate phosphorus (nPP) (positive control; PC), an nPP‐deficient diet (negative control; NC), NC diets supplemented with different levels of phytase (0, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, and 6,000 FTU/kg), a NC diet plus 0.15% myo‐inositol, and a NC diet with reduced Ca level (Ca to nPP ratio same as PC). Feeding the NC diet had no effects on birds' body weight (BW), weight gain (WG), feed intake (FI), and feed conversion ratio (FCR), but decreased (P < 0.05) tibia P contents, crude protein (CP) digestibility, and serum P, but increased (P < 0.05) serum alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity at 21 d of age. Phytase supplementation at ≥4,000 FTU/kg improved (P < 0.05) BW, WG and digestibility of nutrients. Feeding the NC diet resulted in greater (P < 0.05) litter moisture content (42 d) and poorer gait score (21 d), but 4,000 and 6,000 FTU/kg phytase returned (P < 0.05) these parameters to that of the PC. Supplemental myo‐inositol increased (P < 0.05) serum total protein, P retention, and decreased (P < 0.05) litter moisture at 42 d of age. Feeding the low Ca NC diet increased (P < 0.05) serum total protein, ileum Ca, P, and CP digestibility and decreased serum ALP activity, litter moisture and gait score compared to the NC group. In conclusion, phytase in a dose‐dependent manner, especially at ≥4,000 FTU/kg levels, was effective in overcoming the negative consequences of NC diets, primarily due to the ability to improve nutrient utilization. In addition, reducing the Ca level or supplementation of inositol of NC diet can correct some the negative effects of feeding a NC diet confirming the negative effect of a wide Ca: P ratio in a P‐deficient diet and suggesting that inositol may play a role in the response to phytase addition.
Factors driving turnover and retention of information technology professionals

Taking into consideration turnover phenomenon and retention issues, the purpose of the paper is to reveal the employee perceptions on organisational and job-related factors impacting decisions to leave and to stay with the current employer. Based on theoretical discussion related to voluntary turnover and retention of employees, the research instrument was developed. A total of 143 responses were collected from employees working in private IT companies of Lithuania. The results revealed that base pay and challenging work content were perceived as the most important employment characteristics. Turnover prediction models disclose turnover intentions of project managers, which can be explained by participation in strategy development, support of top managers and negative perception of the base pay. Meanwhile, turnover intensions of heads of departments/ high level managers can be explained by negative associations with performance incentives/ bonuses, career opportunities and working conditions. The findings of the paper let us to develop theoretical insights and provide manager recommendations leading to the retention of information technology professionals.
Nerve growth factor receptors in the peripubertal rat ovary.

We previously demonstrated that the immature rat ovary synthesizes nerve growth factor (NGF), and that interference of NGF actions by immunoneutralization during neonatal life prevents development of the ovarian sympathetic innervation and delays follicular maturation. Since the actions of NGF are exerted via binding to specific cell surface receptors, the present study was undertaken to define and characterize the presence of NGF receptors (NGFrec) in the developing rat ovary. NGF interacts with two classes of NGFrec. The most abundant is a low affinity form expressed in the central nervous system and peripheral tissues. This receptor is encoded by a single 3.8-kilobase mRNA species. Cross-linking of [125I]NGF to ovarian membranes followed by immunoprecipitation, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and autoradiography showed the presence of a approximately 90-kilodalton molecular species which corresponds in size to the predominant NGF receptor species cross-linked to its ligand. While ovarian NGFrec may be of neuronal origin and reach the gland exclusively by anterograde axonal transport, RNA blot hybridization demonstrated that the ovary expresses the NGFrec mRNA species that encodes the low affinity NGF receptor and, thus, implicated the ovary itself as a site of NGFrec synthesis. NGFrec mRNA levels decreased abruptly after the first ovulation, suggesting that NGFrec may be synthesized in growing follicles and that this capacity is lost after follicular rupture and luteinization. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer in nonsmoking women: A multicenter study

Objective. —To determine the relative risk (RR) of lung cancer in lifetime never smokers associated with environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure. Design. —Multicenter population-based case-control study. Setting. —Five metropolitan areas in the United States: Atlanta, Ga, Houston, Tex, Los Angeles, Calif, New Orleans, La, and the San Francisco Bay Area, Calif. Patients or Other Participants. —Female lifetime never smokers: 653 cases with histologically confirmed lung cancer and 1253 controls selected by random digit dialing and random sampling from the Health Care Financing Administration files for women aged 65 years and older. Main Outcome Measure. —The RR of lung cancer, estimated by adjusted odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI), associated with ETS exposure. Results. —Tobacco use by spouse(s) was associated with a 30% excess risk of lung cancer: all types of primary lung carcinoma (adjusted OR=1.29;P Conclusion. —Exposure to ETS during adult life increases risk of lung cancer in lifetime nonsmokers. (JAMA. 1994;271:1752-1759)
Competencies in Practice: An Interview with Hanneke C. Frese

In this interview with Hanneke C. Frese, we explore a few of the issues associated with the practical application of competency models. Hanneke has broad international experience in a number of organizational settings and has observed both the advantages and the challenges of implementing competency frameworks. In addition, we discuss the contribution that competency modeling can make to the firm and areas for future development and application of these models.
LOCATIONAL FACTORS IN THE DEMAND FOR MENTAL HEALTH CARE

The demand for mental health care is not easily estimated. A surrogate measure, utilization, is viewed as a function of three groups of characteristics, relating to the service itself, the client group, and location. The influence of location upon utilization is complex. Empirical evidence from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, supports the notion that the location variable can be decomposed into four elements: physical distance, location as catchment, social distance, and relative location. The relative importance of location is placed in proper perspective by reviewing briefly the role of client and service characteristics on mental health service utilization.
Can Position Limits Restrain 'Rogue' Trading?

This paper studies the imposition of position limits on commodity futures from the perspective of curbing excessive speculation and thus manipulation. We present a simple general equilibrium model in a static rational expectations framework and agent heterogeneity to illustrate that excessive speculation serves to enrich other agents at the expense of the speculator. Position limits, on the contrary, are not only superfluous, but also counter-productive, as they exacerbate market power and lead to a deterioration in efficiency. Position limits not only reduce social welfare but also cannot restrain market manipulation.
The Epidemiology of Childhood Alopecia Areata in China: A Study of 226 Patients

Abstract: To study the clinical and epidemiologic profile of childhood alopecia areata, we performed a survey in which a total of 226 childhood patients less than 16 years old were enrolled. Statistical analysis and heritability were performed using EPI INFO 6.0, SPSS10.0, and the Falconer method. The median age of onset was 10 years. The majority of patients (84.96%) presented with limited alopecia. The male : female ratio was 1.4:1. Boys appeared to have more severe involvement. The earlier the age of onset, the greater the severity of the disease. Sixty‐seven patients (29.65%) had previous episodes of alopecia areata. Greater severity and longer duration were seen in the relapsing patients than in the primary patients. Six patients (2.65%) had an associated disease. A positive family history was reported in 25 patients (11.06%). The prevalence figures for alopecia areata in first‐, second‐, and third‐degree relatives of the probands were 2.87%, 0.40%, and 0.13%, respectively. The heritabilities of AA in first‐, second‐, and third‐degree relatives were 51.20%, 46.25%, and 25.65%, respectively. It can be speculated that the effect of genetic factors is important in the occurrence of this disease.