Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Globalisation of SMEs and implications for international human resource management research and practice

This paper includes a summary of selected research results on International Human Resource Management (IHRM) in Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Within the analysis and discussion, the focus is on specificities of SMEs, implicitly compared to Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). This paper first addresses the importance of the SME founder's profile in designing the internationalisation process. Then, particular features of HR practices in SMEs such as recruitment, selection and retention issues, human resource development practices and associated learning processes as well as expatriate management are analysed. Furthermore, the major problem of SMEs, the scarcity of resources, is discussed in the context of HRM. This analysis leads to implications for practice and for future research, mainly calling for more empirical studies and for a different approach to the strategic international management of human resources than in MNEs.
Organized professionalism in healthcare: articulation work by neighbourhood nurses

Organizational and professional logics are often viewed as intrinsically conflicting. Organizational influences either encroach on professional work or professionals resist change and evade organizational rules. Increasingly however, this dualistic view is supplemented with the perspective of organized professionalism, which focuses on the negotiated and reciprocal relationship between organizational and professional logics. In this perspective, professionals increasingly engage in new organizational issues and incorporate those into their professional work. We build on these insights, but take the debate on organized professionalism one step further. Using the sociological concept of articulation work, we show that organizational tasks are not always ‘new’, but can be inherent to professionalism. In a study of Dutch neighbourhood nurses (NNs), we find three types of articulation work: intraprofessional, interprofessional, and lay articulation work. NNs perform articulation work to provide and organize care at the same time. They integrate taylorized home care services, coordinate the work of different professionals, and stimulate informal care. We conclude that articulation work traditionally lies at the heart of professionalism, but is not static and acquires new meaning because of changing organizational conditions and policy reforms.
The BASES Expert Statement on use of music in exercise

Abstract The use of music during exercise has become ubiquitous over the past two decades and is now supported by a burgeoning body of research detailing its effects and the contingencies surrounding its use. The purpose of this statement is to present a synopsis of the body of knowledge, with selected references, and to provide practical recommendations for exercise practitioners regarding music selection. Following the identification of methodological shortcomings in early studies, researchers have been guided by new conceptual frameworks, and have produced more consistent findings as a consequence. The use of music has been found to yield ergogenic effects in the exercise domain while also promoting psychological (e.g. enhanced affect) and psychophysical (reduced ratings of perceived exertion) benefits. There is a paucity of research examining the longitudinal effects of music on key outcome variables such as exercise adherence.
Estimating Residents’ Preferences of the Land Use Program Surrounding Forest Park, Taiwan

This paper aims to build up a preference function to evaluate the public benefits of the type of agricultural farming, biodiversity, water provisions, land use type, ecotourism modes, and a monetary attribute (willingness to pay and willingness to work) associated with an ecosystem service and land use program in a forest park. This study used choice experiments to build a random utility model, analyze the average preference for the above land use attributes based on the conditional logit (CL) and used a latent class model to test the residents’ heterogeneous preferences for land use planning in the forest park. We also estimated the welfare derived from various land use programs. The empirical result has shown that: (1) increasing organic farming area, increasing the surface water provision, increasing the area of custom flora, increasing the wetland area, and setting up an integrated framework for ecotourism increase the public’s preference for the land use program; (2) farmer and non-farmers do not have the same land use preferences, attributes, marginal willingness to pay and willingness to work; and (3) the ecotourism development program incorporating biodiversity, organic farming, ethnobotany, and wetland area with integrated ecotourism has the highest values when compared to other land use program scenarios.
LOCATIONAL DETERMINANTS OF FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN AN EMERGING MARKET ECONOMY: EVIDENCE FROM TURKEY

Over the past two decades, Turkey has recorded a substantial increase in the level of annual foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Building on the prior literature, this paper provides an empirical analysis of location-related determinants of FDI. This is undertaken by means of a cointegration analysis of major locational factors impacting upon the level of FDI inflows for the period 1980-1998. The evidence from this study supports the contention that while Turkey offers several location advantages to foreign investors in terms of market size, infrastructure, openness of the economy and market attractiveness, the lack of exchange rate and economic stability has hindered its efforts to harbor much higher volume of FDI.
Challenges in Teacher Education in South Africa: Do Teacher Educators and Teachers Effectively Prepare Student Teachers to Perform their Roles as Educators?

Abstract The Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications provides criteria for designing curricula for initial teacher education. This policy emphasizes that the roles that teachers have to fulfill should be interpreted as functions carried out by the collective of teachers in a specific school.The purpose of this research was to explore how effective student teachers are prepared to fulfil their multiple roles as teachers. A qualitative research design was employed by making use of focus group interviews. The findings indicate that teacher educators and teachers do not model the required roles of teachers and therefore fail to prepare student teachers adequately to fulfil these roles. The findings from the data will be discussed in this paper.
Inequality and Growth: Theory and Policy Implications

Even minute increases in a country's growth rate can result in dramatic changes in living standards over just one generation. The benefits of growth, however, may not be shared equally. Some may gain less than others, and a fraction of the population may actually be disadvantaged. Recent economic research has found both positive and negative relationships between growth and inequality across nations. The questions raised by these results include: What is the impact on inequality of policies designed to foster growth? Does inequality by itself facilitate or detract from economic growth, and does it amplify or diminish policy effectiveness? This book provides a forum for economists to examine the theoretical, empirical, and policy issues involved in the relationship between growth and inequality. The aim is to develop a framework for determining the role of public policy in enhancing both growth and equality. The diverse range of topics, examined in both developed and developing countries, includes natural resources, taxation, fertility, redistribution, technological change, transition, labor markets, and education. A theme common to all the essays is the importance of education in reducing inequality and increasing growth.
Primary debulking surgery versus neo-adjuvant chemotherapy in stage III/IV ovarian cancer: Comparison of perioperative morbidity and survival data in Pakistani women.

OBJECTIVE To compare the peri-operative morbidity and survival rates between ovarian cancer patients treated with two different approaches. METHODS The retrospective study was conducted at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, and comprised data related to patients with advanced stage ovarian carcinoma treated between 1999 and 2008. Medical records were reviewed and relevant demographic, clinical, surgical, pathologic and follow-up information was acquired. Progression-free survival and overall survival rates were compared between patients who underwent primary debulking surgery and those who had received neo-adjuvant chemotherapy before surgery. SPSS 19 was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS Of the total 118 patients, 78(66%) had undergone primary debulking surgery and 40(34%) had received neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. The mean age and pre-operative carcinoma antigen-125 level were similar. The debulking group had 74(94.8%) patients with stage 3, and 4(5.1%) patients with stage 4 disease, while the other group had 32(80%) and 8(20%) with stage 3and 4 respectively. The frequency of optimal debulking was 42(56.8%) in the former group against 27(79.4%) in the latter (p=0.01). Duration of surgery, estimated blood loss >1500ml and stay at the intensive care unit were not statistically different (p>0.05). Rate of Urinary tract, bowel injury and bowel resections were also similar. There was no difference in the progression-free survival in both groups (p>0.05). CONCLUSIONS Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval debulking produced comparable survival rates and peri-operative complications.
Facilitating Exploration Alliances in Multiple Dimensions: The Influences of Firm Technological Knowledge Breadth

Whereas prior studies suggest that strategic alliances offer powerful tools for firms to explore business opportunities and alliances may explore in technology and organization dimensions, firms tend to compensate for exploration in one dimension by engaging in exploitation in the other dimension. The question of how firms can explore at a higher level in multiple dimensions of alliances remains unanswered. This study proposes that a firm's broad technological knowledge base may help facilitate exploration alliances in multiple dimensions. Data from the biopharmaceutical industry reveal that not only does a broad technological knowledge base support exploration in the technology and organization dimensions individually, but it also relaxes the firm's resource constraints; thus, the firm is less likely to compensate for exploration in one dimension with exploitation in the other. Instead, it can explore at a higher level in both dimensions simultaneously. This insight is particularly important in light of the increasing research interest in the fundamental enablers of and barriers to exploring new technological opportunities.
Changing Times, Changing Values: A Historical Analysis of Sectors within the Us Stock Market 1872-2013

We construct a price, dividend, and earnings series for the Industrials sector, the Utilities sector, and the Railroads sector from the beginning of the 1870s until the beginning of the year 2013 from primary sources. To infer about mispricings in the sector markets over more than a century, we investigate the forecasting power of the Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings (CAPE) ratio for these sectors. With regard to the CAPE ratio, which has originally been devised and employed by Campbell and Shiller (1988, 1998, 2001) as well as Shiller (2005), we define a methodological improvement to this ratio to not only be robust to inflationary changes, but also to changes in corporate payout policy. We then update the original evidence from Campbell and Shiller (1998, 2001) of the return predictability of the CAPE ratio for the overall stock market and furthermore extend this evidence to the three forementioned sectors individually. Whereas this part of our analysis focuses on each sector of the US economy in isolation, we subsequently construct an indicator from the CAPE ratio that enables us to perform valuation comparisons across sectors. In addition to establishing the prediction of subsequent return differences based on differences in the CAPE-based valuation indicator, we also suggest a hypothetical, historical, and simple value investment strategy that rotates between the three sectors based on the valuation signals derived from the CAPE-based indicator, generating slightly more than 1:09% annualized, inflation-adjusted excess total return over the market benchmark during a period of nearly 110 years.
Informal opportunity among SMEs: an empirical study of Denmark’s underground economy

Based on interviews with (legal and illegal) immigrants to Denmark, meetings with stakeholders and with experts in the field, this article addresses issues regarding the underground economy. Our findings show that, in Denmark, the existence of an underground economy makes it possible for semi-compliant and non-compliant immigrants to make a living. We suggest that the underground economy in Denmark will continue to provide networks of illegal residents with opportunities for informal economic activities as trust allows entrepreneurs to function below the radar, by owning enterprises registered using the names of people who are legally in this country.
Johnson binomial trees

Rubinstein developed a binomial lattice technique for pricing European and American derivatives in the context of skewed and leptokurtic asset return distributions. A drawback of this approach is the limited set of skewness and kurtosis pairs for which valid stock return distributions are possible. A solution to this problem is proposed here by extending Rubinstein's Edgeworth tree idea to the case of the Johnson system of distributions which is capable of accommodating all possible skewness and kurtosis pairs. Numerical examples showing the performance of the Johnson tree to approximate the prices of European and American options in Merton's jump diffusion framework and Duan's GARCH framework are examined.
Functional assembly of engineered myocardium by electrical stimulation of cardiac myocytes cultured on scaffolds

The major challenge of tissue engineering is directing the cells to establish the physiological structure and function of the tissue being replaced across different hierarchical scales. To engineer myocardium, biophysical regulation of the cells needs to recapitulate multiple signals present in the native heart. We hypothesized that excitation–contraction coupling, critical for the development and function of a normal heart, determines the development and function of engineered myocardium. To induce synchronous contractions of cultured cardiac constructs, we applied electrical signals designed to mimic those in the native heart. Over only 8 days in vitro, electrical field stimulation induced cell alignment and coupling, increased the amplitude of synchronous construct contractions by a factor of 7, and resulted in a remarkable level of ultrastructural organization. Development of conductive and contractile properties of cardiac constructs was concurrent, with strong dependence on the initiation and duration of electrical stimulation.
Tax Policy for Economic Progress

Abstract. Developing countries, in constructing modern tax systems, would do well to adopt policies based on proven economic principles so that fiscal instruments do not perpetuate stagnant economies and underemployment of labor and resources. To achieve growth and jobs and ever higher levels of living, they should avoid the mistakes of the United States and many other industrially developed countries in burdening business—enterprises production—with heavy and obstrusive taxes. They, and developed countries as well which are committed to progressive change based on tax reform, like the United States, should use land values where possible to finance local governments so as to avoid taxing the other factors of production. And where necessary taxes should be levied on consumption, for taxes on business income misallocate resources and hamper market discipline in promoting output and efficiency.
Institutional Pressures for Adopting New Cost Accounting Systems in Finnish Hospitals: Two Longitudinal Case Studies

In the 1990's, a large number of Finnish hospitals began implementing new cost accounting systems, which were aimed at pricing hospital outputs at full cost. Often the method of choice was activity-based costing, which was in the process of being transferred from the manufacturing industry to health care service production. The aim of this paper is to analyse the motivations and rationale of this phenomenon in the light of two longitudinal case studies. The first case study is archival, using documents produced between 1996 and 2002. In the second case study, the data consists mainly of research diaries and personal observation and covers a hospital district activity-based costing and pricing project of 2000-2001. Institutional theory is used to interpret the findings in the two case studies. The theoretical framework used in analysing the data draws on Oliver's (1991) ideas, according to which an organisation may react to institutional pressure by emphasising either the economic efficiency or social efficiency (legitimacy) of its actions. The results indicate that while institutional theory leads us to believe that managerial accounting systems may be converging due to the pressures from the institutions, the convergence in the two case hospitals has been a convergence of names of accounting systems rather than of the methods, which, although called activity-based costing, have remained in essence characteristically different.
Vidi, vini, vinci: External ophthalmomyiasis infection that occurred, and was diagnosed and treated in a single day: A rare case report

Ophthalmomyiasis is an infestation of eye with larvae or maggots of certain flies. Oestrus ovis (sheep nasal botfly) belonging to family Oestridae is the most common cause of human myiasis. We describe here an acute presentation of a case of external ophthalmomyiasis, i.e., infestation of conjunctiva due to first instar larvae of Oestrus ovis. In this case report the occurrence, diagnosis and treatment all took place in the setting of a single day. Prompt treatment by removal of larvae mechanically followed by instillation of antibiotic and steroid eye drops helped to prevent serious complications. The taxonomic identification of fly is also important as some fly species are capable of penetrating deeper tissues of eyes, which is sight threatening.
Detection of Cytotoxic Activity of Lectin on Human Colon Adenocarcinoma (Sw480) and Epithelial Cervical Carcinoma (C33-A)

Lectins comprise a heterogeneous class of proteins that recognize the carbohydrate moieties of glycoconjugates with high specificity. Numerous studies have shown that lectins are capable of recognizing specific carbohydrate moieties displayed by malignant cells or tissues. The present work was performed to investigate the effects of tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius) lectins on proliferation, colony formation, and alteration of DNA synthesis of human malignant cells. Tepary bean lectin showed dose dependent effects on the inhibition of viability as well as on colony formation in two human malignant cells lines (C33-A, Sw480); By contrast, tepary bean lectin only showed significant effects on DNA synthesis on Sw480 cells. Our results provide evidence of the anti- proliferative and cytotoxic effects of the tepary bean lectins on C33-A and Sw480 cells lines.
Fluvastatin Inhibits Hepatitis C Replication in Humans

BACKGROUNDHepatitis C viral (HCV) infection is the leading cause of death due to liver disease in the United States. Currently, pegylated interferon and ribavirin produce sustained viral remission in only 50% of patients. Additional agents are needed to increase the cure rate. In vitro experiments show strong antiviral effects of fluvastatin against HCV.OBJECTIVES:To assess the safety and antiviral effects of fluvastatin in chronic HCV carriers.METHODS:31 veterans with chronic HCV were prospectively given oral doses of fluvastatin, 20 to 320 mg/day, for 2–12 weeks with weekly monitoring of HCV RNA and liver tests. Reductions of viral load (P < 0.01) versus a control group were considered suppressive.RESULTS:With 80 mg a day or less, 11/22 (50%) patients responded by lowering HCV RNA. The first lowering occurred within 4 weeks (9/11, 82%). The greatest weekly change in HCV RNA level was a 1.75 log10 reduction. When lowered in responders, the viral load remained relatively constant for 2–5 weeks (7/9, 78%), or on the next test rebounded immediately to a non-significant change from, baseline (n = 2). Continued lowering of virus was seen in 2/19 (22 %) patients when the study ended. We found no evidence of liver tests worsening.CONCLUSIONS:FLV used as monotherapy in vivo showed suppressive effects of HCV clinically that are modest, variable, and often short-lived. These findings support “proof-of-concept” for pilot trials combining fluvastatin with standard therapy. Statins and fluvastatin, in particular, appear to be safe for use in hepatitis C.
Outward Currents in Smooth Muscle Cells Isolated from Sheep Mesenteric Lymphatics

1 The patch‐clamp technique was used to measure membrane currents in isolated smooth muscle cells dispersed from sheep mesenteric lymphatics. Depolarizing steps positive to −30 mV evoked rapid inward currents followed by noisy outward currents. 2 Nifedipine (1 μM) markedly reduced the outward current, while Bay K 8644 (1 μM) enhanced it. Up to 90% of the outward current was also blocked by iberiotoxin (Kd= 36 nM). 3 Large conductance (304 ±15 pS, 7 cells), Ca2+‐ and voltage‐sensitive channels were observed during single‐channel recordings on inside‐out patches using symmetrical 140 mM K+ solutions (at 37 °C). The voltage required for half‐maximal activation of the channels (V½) shifted in the hyperpolarizing direction by 146 mV per 10‐fold increase in [Ca2+]i. 4 In whole‐cell experiments a voltage‐dependent outward current remained when the Ca2+‐activated current was blocked with penitrem A (100 nM). This current activated at potentials positive to −20 mV and demonstrated the phenomenon of voltage‐dependent inactivation (V½=−41 ± 2 mV, slope factor = 18 ± 2 mV, 5 cells). 6 Tetraethylammonium (TEA; 30 mM) reduced the voltage‐dependent current by 75% (Kd= 3.3 mM, 5 cells) while a maximal concentration of 4‐aminopyridine (4‐AP; 10 mM) blocked only 40% of the current. TEA alone had as much effect as TEA and 4‐AP together, suggesting that there are at least two components to the voltage‐sensitive K+ current. 7 These results suggest that lymphatic smooth muscle cells generate a Ca2+‐activated current, largely mediated by large conductance Ca2+‐activated K+ channels, and several components of voltage‐dependent outward current which resemble ‘delayed rectifier’ currents in other smooth muscle preparations.
An empirical study of the relationship between corruption and FDI: with sample selection error correction

The aims of this paper will be threefold. First we will analysis the overall eect of non-discriminatory and discriminatory corruption on MNEs’ incentives to undertake FDI in a particular country. Then, we will try to determine the direction and magnitude of the eect of corruption on the level of FDI invested in the host country, after MNEs have decided to actually invest there. In particular, we show that the assumption of the independence between the MNEs’s location and level of investment decisions that was made by the majority of the empirical studies in the literature might be incorrect. Therefore We take the location selection process of the MNEs into account when studying the relationship between corruption and the level of FDI in a host country by analysing these two decisions simultaneously using Heckman’s model.