Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel ACO-Based Fault-Tolerant Routing Algorithm in Hypercube Networks

This paper proposes an ACO (ant colony optimization)-based fault-tolerant routing algorithm (AFTR) to capture the optimal and sub-optimal routing path in hypercube networks. To reduce the computing complexity in solving AFTR, it also introduces the concept of relay node technique which is derived from RIP protocol. According to the high regularity of hypercube networks, an optimized distributed algorithm (RT-AFTR) for AFTR is proposed, whose computing complexity can fill the requirements of the actual networks. The simulation results indicate that effectiveness of the algorithm can be improved drastically using Opt-AFTR.
Recombination of Globally Circulating Varicella-Zoster Virus

ABSTRACT Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) is a human herpesvirus, which during primary infection typically causes varicella (chicken pox) and establishes lifelong latency in sensory and autonomic ganglia. Later in life, the virus may reactivate to cause herpes zoster (HZ; also known as shingles). To prevent these diseases, a live-attenuated heterogeneous vaccine preparation, vOka, is used routinely in many countries worldwide. Recent studies of another alphaherpesvirus, infectious laryngotracheitis virus, demonstrate that live-attenuated vaccine strains can recombine in vivo, creating virulent progeny. These findings raised concerns about using attenuated herpesvirus vaccines under conditions that favor recombination. To investigate whether VZV may undergo recombination, which is a prerequisite for VZV vaccination to create such conditions, we here analyzed 115 complete VZV genomes. Our results demonstrate that recombination occurs frequently for VZV. It thus seems that VZV is fully capable of recombination if given the opportunity, which may have important implications for continued VZV vaccination. Although no interclade vaccine-wild-type recombinant strains were found, intraclade recombinants were frequently detected in clade 2, which harbors the vaccine strains, suggesting that the vaccine strains have already been involved in recombination events, either in vivo or in vitro during passages in cell culture. Finally, previous partial and complete genomic studies have described strains that do not cluster phylogenetically to any of the five established clades. The additional VZV strains sequenced here, in combination with those previously published, have enabled us to formally define a novel sixth VZV clade. IMPORTANCE Although genetic recombination has been demonstrated to frequently occur for other human alphaherpesviruses, herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2, only a few ancient and isolated recent recombination events have hitherto been demonstrated for VZV. In the present study, we demonstrate that VZV also frequently undergoes genetic recombination, including strains belonging to the clade containing the vOKA strain.
Audit Programs and Audit Risk: A Study of Japanese Practice

The current paradigm in audit practice for evidential planning is the Audit Risk Model. However, the notion of relevant risks has broadened with the adoption in recent years of holistic audit approaches encompassing business and process risks and an increased focus on fraud risks. This study examines whether audit planning is 'risk adjusted' using archival data from 235 clients from a well-established audit firm in Japan. We address all four aspects of audit planning (nature, extent, timing and staffing) and examine a wider variety of client risks than prior archival studies in order to reflect the current holistic audit approaches of global auditing firms. The main results indicate that although audit planning is based on the level of and change in assessments of many audit risk variables, the associations between client risks and audit plans are rather modest. In this respect, our findings are consistent with those from prior research. We also find that client risks that comprise business risk and fraud risk affect audit planning to some extent. Finally, we report exploratory results suggesting a substitution effect between audit planning judgments in response to higher client risks such as increasing the extent of validity tests while decreasing the extent of confirmations.
Vibriophages and Their Interactions with the Fish Pathogen Vibrio anguillarum

ABSTRACT Vibrio anguillarum is an important pathogen in aquaculture, responsible for the disease vibriosis in many fish and invertebrate species. Disease control by antibiotics is a concern due to potential development and spread of antibiotic resistance. The use of bacteriophages to control the pathogen may offer a non-antibiotic-based approach to reduce vibriosis. A detailed understanding of the phage-host interaction is needed to evaluate the potential of phages to control the pathogen. In this study, we examined the diversity and interactions of 11 vibriophages, 24 V. anguillarum strains, and 13 Vibrio species strains. Together, the host ranges of the 11 phages covered all of the tested 37 Vibrio sp. host strains, which represented considerable temporal (20 years) and geographical (9 countries) differences in their origins of isolation. Thus, despite the occurrence of unique susceptibility patterns of the individual host isolates, key phenotypic properties related to phage susceptibility are distributed worldwide and maintained in the global Vibrio community for decades. The phage susceptibility pattern of the isolates did not show any relation to the physiological relationships obtained from Biolog GN2 profiles, demonstrating that similar phage susceptibility patterns occur across broad phylogenetic and physiological differences in Vibrio strains. Subsequent culture experiments with two phages and two V. anguillarum hosts demonstrated an initial strong lytic potential of the phages. However, rapid regrowth of both phage-resistant and phage-sensitive cells following the initial lysis suggested that several mechanisms of protection against phage infection had developed in the host populations.
Perceived service quality in Ethiopian retail banks

This study uses the SERVQUAL method to assess perceived service quality in selected Ethiopian banks based on customer surveys conducted in three private and the largest public bank in Addis Ababa. For all banks, service expectations were not matched by perceived performance. While there were only a few differences in service expectations between public and private banks, private banks were perceived to be relatively better in delivering service. The findings also indicate that perceived service quality falls short of customer expectations in all the five dimensions of service quality—tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy—with the largest perception-expectation gap observed for the empathy dimension. As the banking sector becomes increasingly more competitive in Ethiopia, these findings can provide valuable insight to bank managers regarding the specific customer service issues that they need to address in their ongoing effort to attract and retain more customers. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Comparative Social Capital: Networks of Entrepreneurs and Investors in China and Russia

Most studies on entrepreneurs? networks incorporate social capital and networks as independent variables that affect entrepreneurs? actions and its outcomes. By contrast, this article examines social capital of the Chinese and Russian entrepreneurs and venture capitalists as dependent variables, and it examines entrepreneurs? social capital from the perspectives of institutional theory and cultural theory. The empirical data are composed of structured telephone interviews with 159 software entrepreneurs, and the data of 124 venture capital decisions in Beijing and Moscow. The study found that social networks of the Chinese entrepreneurs are smaller in size, denser in structure, and more homogeneous in composition compared to networks of the Russian entrepreneurs due to the institutional and cultural differences between the two countries. Furthermore, the study revealed that dyadic (two-person) ties are stronger and interpersonal trust is greater in China than in Russia. The research and practical implications are discussed.
Small firm responses to employment regulation

Examines the impact of employment regulation on owner‐manager approaches to the employment relationship at the level of the individual firm. While there was no reported principled opposition to extending employment rights as suggested by a number of earlier studies, the cumulative effect of recent legislation was perceived by owner‐managers to be reducing their competitiveness by placing costly and time‐consuming demands on the smaller business. The case study companies were increasingly formalising their employment processes largely to defend their decisions against potential litigation. Despite certain acknowledged benefits, this increasing proceduralisation was held to be detrimental to the informality and flexibility viewed as essential to effective working relationships in the smaller enterprise. Continuing recruitment difficulties combined with the costs associated with expanding regulation led the majority of the case study companies to identify an investment in automation and labour‐saving equipment as a preferable long‐term option to the expansion of the workforce.
Cultural Values of Trees, Woods and Forests

Forest managers have to take account of cultural values as one of the central themes of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM). These are accounted for in sustainability appraisals (e.g. the European Commission’s Impact Assessment process), and also increasingly in monitoring systems such as the Montreal Process and the Pan European Indicators of the Ministerial Conference for the Protection of Forests in Europe. This study explored the existing and potential role of cultural values in forest planning, and included field work and interviews conducted over a 6 month period in 2009 2010. Recommendations include focusing on the role of cultural values in forest planning and community engagement.
Asset pricing in economies with frictions

This paper examines how proportional transaction costs, short-sale constraints, and margin requirements affect inferences based on asset return data about intertemporal marganil rates of substitution (IMRSs). Small transaction costs greatly reduce the required variability of IMRSs, suggesting that the low variability of many parametric, aggregate consumption based IMRSs need not be inconsistent with asset return data. Euler inequalities for a transaction cost economy with power utility are tested using aggregate consumption data and returns on stocks and U.S. Treasury bills. In the majority of cases, there is little evidence against power utility specifications with a low risk-aversion parameter. Copyright 1996 by The Econometric Society.
Regulated autonomy or autonomous regulation? Collective bargaining and academic workloads in Australian universities

The recommendations of the ‘Bradley Review’ of higher education in Australia identified a clear need for examination of the academic labour market and the limited attractiveness of academia as a profession. Reasons for the lack of attractiveness include increased academic workloads, as evidenced by larger class sizes and staff–student ratios. This article examines the relevant academic workload clauses from collective bargaining agreements, operating in a cross-section of ‘public’ universities in Australia. Our findings challenge a common belief that workload clauses in university collective agreements are regulating academics' autonomy as they are largely unregulated and hence left to the domain of managerial prerogative. We suggest that this situation serves the needs of university managers, but not necessarily the needs of students, staff and policy makers.
The communal roots of entrepreneurial–technological growth – social fragmentation and stagnation: reflection on Atlanta's technology cluster

Why do some entrepreneurial high-technology industrial clusters grow and prosper, while others stagnate? Even after several decades of research, we have yet to find a definitive answer. One of the main debates in the literature revolves around the importance of societal variables, such as the growth of a cohesive community, versus the importance of factor availability, such as the supply of highly educated labour. Employing a critical case study design to analyse the technology industry in metropolitan Atlanta, this article shows that although the availability of certain factors might be necessary, it is not sufficient without the crystallization of a cohesive social structure. More specifically, we argue that unless a local high-technology industry develops rich multiple, locally centred social networks, which embed companies in the region, cluster development will stagnate. This is true even if the region is extremely rich in all the factors identified as growth-inducing in the literature.
Managing sustainability performance through the value‐chain

Purpose – Environmental management has not kept pace with the challenges of globalization. Case studies show that life‐cycle management (LCM) can be an important alternative approach in managing sustainability, performance of products and materials along the value‐chain.Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyzes case study models for LCM used in different circumstances. It compares the new forms of governance along the life‐chain, and the coordination of environmental management tools already in widespread use. Strengths and weaknesses are discussed with respect to other CSR methods in current use. The role of life‐cycle assessment (LCA) in prioritizing sustainability issues is highlighted.Findings – Business focuses on supply‐chain management to achieve its sustainability goals. Governments give emphasis to communication rather than legislation. Community and NGO pressure on the commodity resource sector has led to important multi‐stakeholder life‐cycle‐management. These approaches are most effecti.
Institutional Developments in the Dutch Waste-Collection Market

We analyse the Dutch waste-collection market for 1998–2005. We show that municipalities with unit-based pricing (UBP) or waste collection by private companies have lower costs. However, this cost advantage decreases over time as competition decreases, because of the introduction of the VAT-compensation fund, and because of contamination of waste streams. The cost advantage of private provision is shown to be much larger in the first years, while a longer duration of private production results in lower efficiency. An important conclusion from this study is that UBP, although its effectiveness deteriorates over time, is more effective in reducing cost than is contracting out. Moreover, we show that the effect of contracting out might have been overestimated in the previous literature because there is a correlation between the use of contracting out and UBP. Low incentive UBP systems, based on volume or frequency, are only effective when the municipality does not collect the waste itself.
Reexamining the "Minimal Effects" Model in Recent Presidential Campaigns

Although much recent work suggests that contemporary presidential campaigns have more powerful electoral effects than were seen in previous decades, there has been little research that examines the actual effect of recent campaigns on individual vote choice. Using the 1980 NES panel study, I show that the overwhelming majority of individual votes can be accounted for from attitudes such as party identification and presidential approval that are measured before the political conventions, and that changes in orientations during the campaign had limited effects on individual vote choice and negligible consequences for the electoral outcome. Moreover, models derived from the 1980 panel data can predict with a great deal of accuracy the aggregate outcomes of the 1984 and 1988 presidential contests. I argue that the results support an "activation" model of campaign effects in recent elections: rather than simply reinforcing individuals' preexisting vote intentions, the campaigns served mainly to activate existing political predispositions and make them electorally relevant. At the same time, the results show that campaigns have the potential to exert larger electoral effects, but in recent elections they have not done so.
The energetic cost of domain reorientation in maltose-binding protein as studied by NMR and fluorescence spectroscopy

Maltose-binding protein (MBP) is a two-domain protein that undergoes a ligand-mediated conformational rearrangement from an “open” to a “closed” structure on binding to maltooligosaccharides. To characterize the energy landscape associated with this transition, we have generated five variants of MBP with mutations located in the hinge region of the molecule. Residual dipolar couplings, measured in the presence of a weak alignment medium, have been used to establish that the average structures of the mutant proteins are related to each other by domain rotation about an invariant axis, with the rotation angle varying from 5° to 28°. Additionally, the domain orientations observed in the wild-type apo and ligand-bound (maltose, maltotriose, etc.) structures are related through a rotation of 35° about the same axis. Remarkably, the free energy of unfolding, measured by equilibrium denaturation experiments and monitored by fluorescence spectroscopy, shows a linear correlation with the rotation angle, with the stability of the (apo)protein decreasing with domain closure by 212 ± 16 cal·mol–1 per degree of rotation. The apparent binding energy for maltose also shows a similar correlation with the interdomain angle, suggesting that the mutations, as they relate to binding, affect predominantly the ligand-free structure. The linearity of the energy change is interpreted in terms of an increase in the extent of hydrophobic surface that becomes solvent accessible on closure. The combination of structural, stability, and binding data allows separation of the energetics of domain reorientation from ligand binding. This work presents a near quantitative structure-energy-binding relationship for a series of mutants of MBP, illustrating the power of combined studies involving protein engineering and solution NMR spectroscopy.
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES DOES EDUCATION REDUCE TEEN FERTILITY? EVIDENCE FROM COMPULSORY SCHOOLING LAWS

While less-educated women are more likely to give birth as teenagers, there is scant evidence the relationship is causal. We investigate this possibility using variation in compulsory schooling laws (CSLs) to identify the impact of formal education on teen fertility for a large sample of women drawn from multiple waves of the Canadian Census. We find that greater CSL-induced schooling reduces the probability of giving birth as a teenager by roughly two to three percentage points. We find evidence that education affects the timing of births in a way that strongly implies an “incarceration” effect of education. In particular, we find large negative impacts of education on births to young women aged seventeen and eighteen, but little evidence of an effect after these ages, consistent with the idea that being enrolled in school deters fertility in a contemporaneous manner. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of several province-level characteristics including multiple dimensions of school quality, expenditures on public programs and region-specific time trends. Philip DeCicca Department of Economics 422 Kenneth Taylor Hall McMaster University Hamilton, ON L8S 4M4 CANADA and NBER decicca@mcmaster.ca Harry Krashinsky Harry Krashinsky Centre for Industrial Relations 121 St. George Street University of Toronto Toronto, ON M5S 2E8 Canada harry.krashinsky@utoronto.ca
Fixed Capital in the Industrial Revolution in Britain

The provision of capital is generally recognized to be one of the main problems of countries undergoing the process of industrialization. This is true also of the special case of Great Britain, the first country to experience an industrial revolution. In the British case, however, it is important to note that much capital had been accumulated even before the 1760's, the decade when industrial growth began to accelerate and to change its direction. Most of this earlier capital was invested in commerce, in finance, in farming, and in stocks of manufactured goods and raw materials, and what was noteworthy in the next two generations was, not so much the absolute (and probably also relative) growth in the quantity of capital, but a change in its composition: the emergence, for the first time, of large concentrations of fixed capital.
Powerful CEOs and capital structure decisions: evidence from the CEO pay slice (CPS)

Motivated by agency theory, we explore how powerful CEOs view leverage. Because of the agency conflict, CEOs may adopt sub-optimal leverage levels that promote their own private benefits at the expense of shareholders. Using Bebchuk et al. (2011) CEO pay slice (CPS) to gauge CEO power, we find that powerful CEOs view leverage negatively and avoid high debt. However, CEOs appear to adopt sub-optimal leverage only when their power is sufficiently consolidated. Relatively weak CEOs do not seem to avoid leverage. The effect of CEO power on capital structure decisions is thus nonmonotonic. Our results imply that agency problems lead to self-serving behaviour only when managers command sufficient influence in the company. Finally, we also show that our conclusion is unlikely confounded by endogeneity.
Adrenomedullin is induced by hypoxia and enhances pancreatic cancer cell invasion

Adrenomedullin (ADM) is synthesized by different types of cells and acts by binding calcitonin receptor‐like receptor (CRLR) and members of the receptor activity‐modifying protein (RAMP) family. In this study, the expression and functional role of ADM and its signaling components were investigated in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC). By QRT‐PCR, median mRNA levels of ADM and CRLR were 1.5‐ and 2.4‐fold higher, respectively, in PDAC tissues compared to normal pancreatic tissues. By immunohistochemistry, ADM, CRLR, RAMP1 and RAMP2, but not RAMP3, were expressed in pancreatic cancer cells. ADM serum levels were significantly increased in PDAC patients compared to healthy controls and chronic pancreatitis (CP) patients, with an area under the ROC curve of 0.83 and 0.98, respectively. At a cut‐off level of 30.6 ng/ml, the specificity of ADM to differentiate PDAC from controls and CP patients was 85.5 and 83.6%, with a sensitivity of 80 and 100%. All 5 evaluated pancreatic cancer cells lines expressed ADM, CRLR, RAMP1 and RAMP2, whereas RAMP3 was expressed in only 1/5 pancreatic cancer cell lines. ADM was strongly induced by hypoxia and significantly increased invasiveness in 3/5 human pancreatic cancer cells. Blocking of CRLR decreased invasiveness in 4/5 human pancreatic cancer cells. In addition, rADM slightly up‐regulated vascular endothelial growth factor secretion in 3/5 cell lines. In conclusion, ADM is induced by hypoxia and over‐expressed in PDAC and might therefore serve as a potential tumor marker. Furthermore, ADM increases invasiveness of some pancreatic cancer cells and might influence angiogenesis, suggesting that blocking this pathway might have a therapeutic potential. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.