Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Advent of Internet Surveys for Political Research: A Comparison of Telephone and Internet Samples

The Internet offers a number of advantages as a survey mode: low marginal cost per completed response, capabilities for providing respondents with large quantities of information, speed, and elimination of interviewer bias. Those seeking these advantages confront the problem of representativeness both in terms of coverage of the population and capabilities for drawing random samples. Two major strategies have been pursued commercially to develop the Internet as a survey mode. One strategy, used by Harris Interactive, involves assembling a large panel of willing respondents who can be sampled. Another strategy, used by Knowledge Networks, involves using random digit dialing (RDD) telephone methods to recruit households to a panel of Web-TV enabled respondents. Do these panels adequately deal with the problem of representativeness to be useful in political science research? The authors address this question with results from parallel surveys on global climate change and the Kyoto Protocol administered by telephone to a national probability sample and by Internet to samples of the Harris Interactive and Knowledge Networks panels. Knowledge and opinion questions generally show statistically significant but substantively modest difference across the modes. With inclusion of standard demographic controls, typical relational models of interest to political scientists produce similar estimates of parameters across modes. It thus appears that, with appropriate weighting, samples from these panels are sufficiently representative of the U.S. population to be reasonable alternatives in many applications to samples gathered through RDD telephone surveys.
A Scale for Measuring Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Manufacturing Sector

Last decades of 20th century have seen increasing research in the area of beneficial non task behavior of employees. Concepts like organizational citizenship behavior, contextual performance, pro social behavior, extra role behavior, etc. have been developed by researchers from time to time. Despite a good work done by researchers a scale on OCB for manufacturing sector specifically framed for medium scale industries is lacking. The study aims to fill this gap. The research design involved three broad stages: item generation, scale development and assessment of reliability and validity. Middle and top level managers (260) of several manufacturing organizations participated in data collection. Four factors governing OCB have been identified. The paper provides implications for researchers and practitioners.
Public Participation and Environmental Governance in Hong Kong

This paper explores the role of trust in environmental governance and its role in facilitating collective action through public participation in making decisions on environmental policies in Hong Kong. Opinions from key stakeholders with regard to the environmental performance of the Hong Kong government and public participation in Hong Kong were collected. Their opinions help to explain the hypothesized ‘trust defi cit’ in Hong Kong. A trust-based framework was used to identify the appropriate stakeholder participation strategy for environmental governance in Hong Kong. Given that the level of trust in experts, trust between stakeholders and trust in government decision-makers are all low, a deliberation strategy using professional facilitation is recommended in implementing public participation in Hong Kong to rebuild trust. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. Received 25 August 2008; revised 2 January 2009; accepted 19 January 2009
Impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intentions of business and engineering students in Ethiopia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial intentions of undergraduate university students in Ethiopia by making a comparative analysis among different groups of students.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 156 students completed entrepreneurship intention questionnaire. The questionnaire has seven parts extracting information about personal attraction, subjective norm, self‐efficacy, entrepreneurial intention, need for achievement, locus of control, and instrumental readiness. The respondents were asked to state their agreement/disagreement on statements on a seven‐point Likert type scale.Findings – The result identified that students who had undergone entrepreneurship education (business management student in this case) tend to have better entrepreneurial intention than those who had not taken entrepreneurship course (engineering students). Also, it was observed that male management students have higher personal attraction towards entrepreneurial career, subjective norms,.
Northern Initiative for Social Action: an occupation-based mental health program.

Northern Initiative for Social Action (NISA) is a consumer-run, occupation-based, nonprofit organization located in northeastern Ontario, Canada. The NISA organization has grown in response to research revealing few opportunities for participation in personally meaningful and socially valued occupation for persons with mental illness living in the community of study. This article describes a mixed-design research study conducted by the ParNorth Research Unit of NISA and an occupational therapist. The study purposes were to (a) better understand the emerging characteristics of the NISA program and identify which the participants found helpful; (b) evaluate whether participation in NISA improved members' quality of life; and (c) ascertain whether participation reduced members' need for more traditional and costly methods of care (e.g., hospitalization, crisis services). Focus groups, daily participant observation, a quality of life interview, a consumer member survey and objective review of hospitalization data were used for data collection. Qualitative results indicated that NISA helped to meet participants' being, belonging, and becoming needs. Quantitative data indicated that overall, NISA members perceive an improvement in their subjective quality of life and sense of well-being. Their perceptions are supported by minimal use of crisis services and hospitalization, improved socioeconomic status, and several members' success in obtaining paid employment either within or outside NISA. Future challenges include the need to clearly describe the evolving NISA model and to ensure that the growth of this new organization does not exceed secured human or fiscal resources.
Centre-Party Strength and Major-Party Divergence in Britain, 1945–2005

British elections exhibit two patterns contrary to expectations deriving from Duverger and Downs: centrist third parties (Liberals and their successors) win a large vote share; and the two major parties often espouse highly divergent policies. This article explores relations between the Liberal vote and left–right scores of the Labour and Conservative manifestos in the light of two hypotheses: the vacated centre posits that Liberals receive more votes when major parties diverge; the occupied centre proposes a lagged effect in which major parties diverge farther after Liberals do well in the preceding election. Data from elections since 1945 confirm the vacated-centre hypothesis, with Liberals benefiting about equally when the major parties diverge to the left and right, respectively. The results also support the occupied-centre hypothesis for Conservative party positions, but not for Labour’s. After considering explanations for this asymmetry, we identify historical events associated with turning points that our data reveal in post-war British politics.
Effect of oxygen defects on transport properties and Tc of YBa2Cu3O6+x: Displacement energy for plane and chain oxygen and implications for irradiation-induced resistivity and Tc suppression.

The effect of electron irradiation with energy from 20 to 120 keV on the resistivity, Hall coefficient, and superconducting critical temperature {ital T}{sub {ital c}} of YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 6+{ital x}} thin films has been studied. The threshold energy of incident electrons for {ital T}{sub {ital c}} suppression has been found, and the displacement energy for oxygen in CuO{sub 2} planes has been evaluated as 8.4 eV for irradiation along the {ital c} axis. The kinetics of production of the in-plane oxygen vacancies has been studied and found to be governed by athermal recombination of vacancy-interstitial pairs. The evaluated recombination volume constitutes about 21 unit cells. The increase in the {ital T}-linear resistivity slope and Hall coefficient at unchanged {ital T}{sub {ital c}} was observed in irradiations with subthreshold incident energies and was ascribed to the effect of chain oxygen displacements. The upper limit on the displacement energy for chain oxygen has been estimated as 2.8 eV. In {ital x}=0.9 samples the {ital T}{sub {ital c}} suppression by in-plane oxygen defects and increase in residual resistivity have been found to be, respectively, {minus}280 K and 1.5 m{Omega}cm per defect in the unit cell. It is shown that {ital T}{sub {italmore » c}} suppression by in-plane oxygen defects is a universal function of the transport impurity scattering rate and can be described qualitatively by pair-breaking theory for {ital d}-wave superconductors with nonmagnetic potential scatterers. Evaluation of scattering and pair-breaking rates as well as the scattering cross section and potential is given. A comparison of the influence of in-plane oxygen defects on transport properties with that of other in-plane defects, such as Zn and Ni substitutions for Cu, is also made. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society. }« less
A Framework for the Comparative Study of Social Services

Comparative research on welfare states has most focused on social transfers as the depen dent variable. As demographic changes make social services increasingly important ingredi ents of welfare state production, however, it will be necessary to shift the research agenda accordingly, and to take servtces more system atically into account. Building on Stein Rok kan's approach to the study of European political development, this article specifies some tasks for the comparative study of social services. Following a short overview of the topics and phases of comparative welfare state research, it proposes a set of variables for the mapping of variations in service supply as well as a check-list of variables which might help to explain such variations. The new research per spective is then applied to a comparative analysis of services for elderly people in Euro pean countries, which is based on a re-analysis if the country reports for the European Com mission's Observatory on Older People in Europe. Denmark and the Netherlands are shown to have more highly developed levels of social service supply than Germany. Such cross-country variations are related to differ ences in the modes of regulation, of financing, and of service delivery, and to the degree that decision makers at these crucial points are related to consumer interests. A theoretical conclusion relates the proposed new perspec tive to the work of Stein Rokkan. It is argued that variations of social transfer provisions could be analysed in terms of the class cleavage and of the power relations between capital and labour, but that the study of social services requires a shift in the theoretical perspective which puts more emphasis on centre-periphery relations and on church-state relations.
MODELS AND MATHEMATICS: HOW PIGOU CAME TO ADOPT THE IS-LM-MODEL REASONING

The paper investigates how Arthur Pigou came to adopt the reasoning essentially based on the working of the IS-LM model and to admit that money wage cuts are neutral to employment under the liquidity trap. This occurred through his involvement in the controversy with John Maynard Keynes in 1937–38. In the first instance, Pigou used a simple model to oppose Keynes’s assertion on such neutrality. Pigou (and Keynes too) applied verbal logical analysis to the model to derive his conclusions. Submitting a paper to the Economic Journal, Nicholas Kaldor analyzed Pigou’s model in mathematical terms and asserted that Pigou derived inconsistent conclusions from his model. Kaldor’s method eventually convinced Pigou, Keynes, and Dennis Robertson (who participated in the debate in correspondence). The paper thus argues that the controversy was concluded when one form of model analysis replaced another; specifically, when mathematical analysis replaced verbal logical analysis. This study provides a case study to the first category of Mary Morgan’s two functions of economic modeling: models as an object to inquire into and models as an object with which to inquire.
AN INVESTOR EXPECTATIONS STOCK PRICE PREDICTIVE MODEL USING CLOSED‐END FUND PREMIUMS

A LARGE BODY of random walk literature has developed casting doubt upon the major analytical techniques used by stock market practitioners. ' The narrow version of the R.W. hypothesis states that changes in stock prices are independent, and rigorous testing has overwhelmingly supported the contention while simultaneously suggesting technical analysis is worthless.2 The broad R.W. version rests on the principle of an "efficient market" in which news events occur randomly and are discounted immediately to the extent that value analysis, when based upon public information, is unlikely to produce returns above those normally expected for the associated risk class.3 In light of the abundance of R.W. findings, a new approach to stock selection and/or market timing is required if one is to produce superior returns, and in this vein the avenue for theoretical exploration is an examination of investor expectations as recently suggested by Keenan.4 Section II develops a theory of investor expectations. Section III introduces the theoretical behavior of closed-end fund premiums, while a closed-end fund investor expectations model is developed in Section IV. Section V shows the results of various tests of the model, and Section VI presents a summary and the implications of the tests.
The impact of knowledge capabilities on corporate venturing

This study focuses on the role of knowledge capabilities across the startup and growth phases of corporate ventures. Specifically we focus on exploration, exploitation and transformation of (technological) knowledge capabilities as these facilitate birth and growth of corporate ventures. To examine the impact of knowledge capabilities in corporate ventures, in-depth case studies of three knowledge intensive corporate ventures were conducted using semi-structured interviews. Knowledge capabilities were mapped across the startup and growth stages of the ventures.
Audit Committee Quality, Auditor Independence, and Internal Control Weaknesses

Abstract In this paper we investigate the relation between audit committee quality, auditor independence, and the disclosure of internal control weaknesses after the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We begin with a sample of firms with internal control weaknesses and, based on industry, size, and performance, match these firms to a sample of control firms without internal control weaknesses. Our conditional logit analyses indicate that a relation exists between audit committee quality, auditor independence, and internal control weaknesses. Firms are more likely to be identified with an internal control weakness, if their audit committees have less financial expertise or, more specifically, have less accounting financial expertise and non-accounting financial expertise. They are also more likely to be identified with an internal control weakness, if their auditors are more independent. In addition, firms with recent auditor changes are more likely to have internal control weaknesses.
Immunological cross-reactivity of the C-terminal 42-kilodalton fragment of Plasmodium falciparum merozoite surface protein 1 expressed in baculovirus

The roles of allelic and conserved epitopes in vaccine-induced immunity to the C-terminal 42-kDa fragment of the Plasmodium falciparum merozoite surface protein 1 (MSP1) were investigated. The C-terminal fragment of MSP1 was expressed as a baculovirus recombinant protein, BVp42. Rabbits were immunized with BVp42, and antibodies were tested for reactivity to MSP1s of the homologous and heterologous allelic forms, represented by the FUP, FVO, FC27, and Honduras parasite isolates, by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and indirect immunofluorescence antibody assay. Despite the fact that allelic sequences accounted for approximately 50% of the BVp42 molecule, anti-BVp42 antibodies cross-reacted extensively with parasites carrying heterologous MSP1 alleles. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent inhibition assays confirmed that an overwhelming majority of the anti-BVp42 antibodies were cross-reactive, suggesting that determinants within conserved block 17 are dominant B-cell epitopes in the anti-BVp42 response. Moreover, the BVp42 polypeptide could inhibit (> 90%) the cross-reactivity of anti-MSP1 antibodies in animals immunized with the complete native MSP1 protein. Anti-BVp42 antibodies were equally effective in inhibiting the in vitro growth of parasites carrying homologous or heterologous MSP1 alleles. Serotyping by monoclonal antibodies indicated that the immunological and biological cross-reactivities were not caused by identical variant-specific amino acid substitutions within conserved block 17. These results should provide the impetus to develop a vaccine based on the C-terminal conserved region(s) of MSP1 against parasites of diverse genetic makeup.
Price Determination and Demand Flexibilities in the Ex-Vessel Market for Tuna in the Republic of Maldives

This article assesses the relationship between export and ex-vessel prices for tuna fish in the Republic of Maldives. The economic welfare of fishermen depends to a great extent on the price received for fish. The price of fish is set by external factors exogenous to fishermen. It is important in understanding the welfare of fishermen to understand the price links in the fish supply chain and the factors that impact the ex-vessel price of fish. This article uses three models to investigate price determination in the ex-vessel market; ARMAX, inverse demand equation and margin equation. The results provide statistically important price relationships and price flexibilities on asymmetric export price effects.
Training and Productivity: Evidence for Us Manufacturing Industries

We use a panel of two digit manufacturing industries to examine the role of formal training programs in productivity growth and wage growth. We find evidence for positive and decreasing effects of on-the-job training (OJT) in human capital accumulation, and therefore productivity. We find however weak evidence that OJT affects wage growth, suggesting that the firm appropriates most of the benefits from OJT programs. Off-the-job training on the other hand has no effects on industrial productivity or wages. Copyright 2010 Oxford University Press 2009 All rights reserved, Oxford University Press.
Improving Mean Variance Optimization through Sparse Hedging Restrictions

Abstract In portfolio risk minimization, the inverse covariance matrix prescribes the hedge trades in which a stock is hedged by all the other stocks in the portfolio. In practice with finite samples, however, multicollinearity makes the hedge trades too unstable and unreliable. By shrinking trade sizes and reducing the number of stocks in each hedge trade, we propose a “sparse” estimator of the inverse covariance matrix. Comparing favorably with other methods (equal weighting, shrunk covariance matrix, industry factor model, nonnegativity constraints), a portfolio formed on the proposed estimator achieves significant out-of-sample risk reduction and improves certainty equivalent returns after transaction costs.
Endoscopic Sedation in the United States: Results from a Nationwide Survey

OBJECTIVES:The introduction of new sedative agents as well as a desire for improved patient satisfaction and greater efficiency has changed the practice of endoscopic sedation. This survey was designed to provide national and regional data on endoscopic sedation and monitoring practices within the United States.METHODS:A 22-item survey regarding current practices of endoscopy and sedation was mailed to 5,000 American College of Gastroenterology physician members nationwide.RESULTS:A total of 1,353 questionnaires (27.1%) were returned. Respondents performed an average of 12.3 esophagogastroduodenoscopies (EGDs) and 22.3 colonoscopies per wk. Endoscopic procedures were performed within a hospital setting (55.2) more often than at an ambulatory center (35.8%) or private office (8.8%). The vast majority of EGDs and colonoscopies (>98%) were performed with endoscopic sedation. Almost three quarters (74.3%) of the respondents used a narcotic and benzodiazepine for sedation, while propofol was preferred by 25.7%. Sedation practices varied considerably within different geographic regions of the United States. Respondents routinely monitored vital signs and pulse oximetry (99.2% and 98.6%, respectively), and supplemental oxygen was administered to all patients during EGD by 72.7% of endoscopists. Endoscopist satisfaction with sedation was greater among those using propofol than conventional sedation (10 vs 8, p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS:During the past 15 yr, the volume of procedures performed by endoscopists in the United States has increased two- to fourfold. Propofol is currently being used for sedation in approximately one quarter of all endoscopies in the United States. The findings from this survey may help in the formulation of updated policies and practice guidelines pertaining to endoscopic sedation.
Do Mergers Improve the Efficiency of Banks in Taiwan?: Evidence From Stochastic Frontier Approach

Banking consolidation is a global trend, but in Taiwan, after the failure of the Second Financial Reform, it does not have a clear policy for bank mergers. This paper investigates whether mergers influence the cost efficiency of banks in Taiwan, and our results suggest that the government should utilize market mechanism to encourage FHC or large banks’ mergers. We use the method of stochastic frontier approach (SFA) to investigate the uncertain relationship between merger and the cost efficiency of Taiwanese banks. Based on Battese and Coelli (1995), we use maximum likelihood estimation method to estimate the stochastic cost efficiency model and the inefficient model simultaneously. We find that, for Taiwanese banks, technology efficiency increases with time by lowering operation cost; cost efficiency decreases right after merger, and has to wait for three years to regain efficiency. The larger banks and FHC banks benefit more from cost savings than smaller banks.
Application-specific selection of 6T SRAM cells offering superior performance and quality with a triple-threshold-voltage CMOS technology

Conventional six-transistor (6T) memory cell has an intrinsic data stability problem due to directly-accessed storage nodes during a read operation. The data stability issue becomes more severe with increasing variability and decreasing supply voltage in scaled CMOS technologies. Conventional techniques to enhance the data stability of 6T memory cells tend to sacrifice other important figures of merit, such as memory integration density and write ability. 6T SRAM circuits with higher data stability are presented in this paper. An electrical performance metric is evaluated to compare various memory design options targeting different applications. The overall electrical quality is enhanced without increasing the area with a multi-threshold-voltage CMOS technology. A high-threshold-voltage 6T memory cell is recommended for portable devices where lower energy consumption and longer battery lifetime are critically important. Alternatively, a triple-threshold-voltage 6T SRAM cell is recommended for robust memory operation in applications with aggressive speed requirement.