Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Parsimonious Model of the Antecedents and Consequence of Online Trust: An Uncertainty Perspective

ABSTRACT Online trust is an important issue in e-commerce. Recent research has indicated that online trust, or the absence of online trust, is a key inhibitor in an individual consumer's acceptance of e-commerce. In an uncertain and complex environment such as e-commerce, online trust is an important mechanism for consumers to reduce uncertainty. Uncertainty inhibits these individuals from making online purchases and becoming loyal customers of e-commerce organizations. We developed and tested a model of online trust that addresses the major sources of e-commerce uncertainty and consumer loyalty. We found that website usability, expected product performance, security, and privacy collectively explained 70% of the variance in online trust. The strongest predictors were consecutively security, website usability, expected product performance, and privacy. We also found that online trust and privacy explain 50% variance in consumer loyalty.
Influenza immunization during pregnancy: Benefits for mother and infant

ABSTRACT The serious consequences of influenza infection during pregnancy have been recognized for almost a century. In this article, we reviewed the evidence on the immunogenicity, safety and impact of maternal influenza immunization for both mother and child. After vaccination, pregnant women have similar protective titers of anti-influenza antibodies as non-pregnant women, demonstrating that pregnancy does not alter the trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine immune response. Studies from the United States, Europe and resource-constrained regions demonstrate that maternal vaccination is associated with increased anti-influenza antibody concentrations and protection in the newborn child as well as the immunized mother. Given the acceptable safety profile of influenza vaccines and the World Health Organization's recommendation for its use in pregnant women, maternal vaccination with inactivated influenza vaccine is a cost-effective approach to decrease influenza disease in newborns. However, as seen for influenza immunization in the elderly, the protective efficacy of current inactivated vaccines in protection of newborns is 50% at best, indicating significant room for vaccine improvement, which could potentially be achieved by addition of a safe and effective adjuvant. Thus, global deployment of inactivated influenza immunization during pregnancy would have substantial and measurable health benefits for mothers and their newborns.
The Financial Crisis and the Choice of College Major

Economic conditions may affect educational choices. In this paper we investigate the impact of the recent financial crisis in Greece on college applications. In particular, we ask how the financial turmoil has reshaped the demand for particular college majors. The paper uses a difference-in-difference approach for the pre and during crisis era to disentangle preferences over twenty one broad major categories and over college city amenities. We find that job insecurity turns college applicants away from academically demanding college majors, while options with better job prospects become more popular.
Gestão da Inovação Tecnológica: Estudo de Cinco PMEs Portuguesas

This article presents the results of an exploratory, in-depth research carried out to know the managerial practices of five Portuguese innovative SMEs. The purpose of this research was the identification and the assessment of the managerial and organizational factors which contribute to technological innovation success. The results obtained can be also useful to identify inadequate practices or even managerial shortcomings, and thus, areas of improvement. There is a set of organisational and managerial factors which ought to work together to create and reinforce the kind of environment that enables technological innovation to succeed. The state-of-the-art regarding each of those factors, as well as their application to the firms under scrutiny, are presented in this article. Two important barriers against innovation were found. On the one hand, a lack of qualified human resources was identified. On the other hand, such lack is not compensated by the establishment of external linkages with the sources of knowledge, such as universities and research centres.
Volatility and co-movement: an analysis of stock markets behavior of selected emerging and developed countries

Financial markets around the world suffer significantly during the GFC and European debt crisis. Although the GFC is over, but the after-effect is still visible in most of the developed and emerging countries and stock markets remained volatile. In this paper, we analyse historical stock market volatility and co-movement behavior of three emerging markets and three developed economies from January 2001 to December 2012. We investigate whether the stock market volatilities and co-movement behaviors are correlated and affected by the GFC during the observation period. Our analysis of stock market behavior and co-movement analysis includes the standard historical volatility model and R-square estimates. We use the standard historical volatility model followed by Jones et al. (1998), Andersen and Bollerslev (1997) and Andersen and Bollerslev (1998); and the R-square metrics were suggested by Morck et al. (2000), Khandaker and Heaney (2009) and Alves et al. (2010). The selection criteria for the developed economies include geographical location, availability of stock return data and size of the equity market; and emerging markets are taken from the emerging Asian markets based on their recent market performance, growth rate and market capitalisation. We find evidence that the sample of emerging markets, exhibits higher stock market volatility during the sample period and these volatilities increases during the GFC. There is also evidence that the sample emerging countries exhibit a higher level of stock market co-movement behavior, and these markets were highly synchronous during the GFC. For example, China exhibits higher stock return co-movement behavior and, this behavior increase during the GFC. Further, we do not find any evidence of a statistically significant correlation coefficient between the volatility measures and stock return co-movement measures for our sample developed countries. However, these measures are statistically significant for the emerging country group. The example includes China and Malaysia. Our result provides evidence that stock market co-movement behavior or the R-squared matrix captures somewhat different aspects of stock market behavior other than the stock market volatility for the developed economies. Therefore, it is concluded that both these market models capture somewhat different aspects of stock market behavior and should be carefully used.
Military Expenditures and Human Development: Guns and Butter Arguments Revisited: A Case Study from Egypt

This study theoretically and empirically tests the relationship between military spending and social spending in Egypt using data from 1987–2005. The theoretical results show that the crowding-out of social spending is ambiguous, unless the government is fully allocating its tax receipts to the military. The crowding-out of social spending by military spending lacks theoretical and empirical justification.
Intravaginal misoprostol reduces intraoperative blood loss in minimally invasive myomectomy: a randomized clinical trial.

PURPOSE OF INVESTIGATION We performed a randomized clinical trial to estimate whether preoperative use of misoprostol may reduce intraoperative blood loss of patients treated by minimally invasive surgery (MIS), such as laparoscopic (LM) or laparoscopically assisted myomectomy (LAM). METHODS Sixty-seven menstruating patients with three or less myomas of a maximum diameter of 90 mm, scheduled for MIS, were randomly allocated to receive a preoperative single dose of intravaginal misoprostol or placebo. Sixty-four patients remained in the final analysis: 30 in the misoprostol (I) and 34 in the placebo group (II). Estimated blood loss (EBL), decline of postoperative hemoglobin (Hb) and side-effects of administered agent were the outcomes of main interest. RESULTS The EBL was significantly higher in the placebo versus misoprostol group (217 +/- 74 vs 126 +/- 41, respectively). Similarly, the decline of postoperative Hb was significantly higher in group II (1.6 +/- 0.43) compared to group I (1 +/- 0.33). The operative time was comparable in both groups, while the rate of side-effects was similar between groups. CONCLUSION The preoperative use of misoprostol in patients with uterine fibroids managed by minimally invasive surgery significantly reduces intraoperative blood loss. Misoprostol might be useful for the prevention of postoperative anemia in more extended minimal invasive interventions, such as myomectomy of large fibroids or laparoscopic hysterectomy.
Driving Characteristics of a High-Efficacy AC PDP With an Auxiliary Electrode

A new driving waveform was proposed in order to stabilize the driving characteristics of a high-efficacy AC plasma-display panel (PDP) with a coplanar gap of 200 mum and an auxiliary electrode. To stabilize the reset and address discharge, an erase pulse was applied to the auxiliary electrode instead of the sustain electrode after the sustain period. The write pulse was applied to the scan electrode, and a reset discharge was induced between the scan and auxiliary electrodes. As a result, the minimum address voltage could be reduced to a level similar to that achieved with a conventional ac PDP with a coplanar gap of 80 mum. Furthermore, the address-discharge time lag of the ac PDP with a coplanar gap of 200 mum was improved to a level that is comparable with that of the ac PDP with a coplanar gap of 80 mum.
The role of localization of bicoid RNA in organizing the anterior pattern of the Drosophila embryo.

The organization of the anterior pattern in the Drosophila embryo is mediated by the maternal effect gene bicoid. bcd has been identified in an 8.7‐kb genomic fragment by germ line transformants that completely rescue the mutant phenotype. The major transcript of 2.6 kb includes a homeobox with low homology to previously known homeoboxes, a PRD‐repeat and a M‐repeat. In situ hybridizations reveal that bcd is transcribed in the nurse cells. The mRNA is localized at the anterior tip of oocyte and early embryo until the cellular blastoderm stage. The localization of the transcript requires the function of the maternal effect genes exuperantia and swallow while transcript stability is reduced by functions depending on posterior group genes.
Some Applications of Tree-based Modelling to Speech and Language

Several applications of statistical tree-based modelling are described here to problems in speech and language. Classification and regression trees are well suited to many of the pattern recognition problems encountered in this area since they (1) statistically select the most significant features involved (2) provide "honest" estimates of their performance, (3) permit both categorical and continuous features to be considered, and (4) allow human interpretation and exploration of their result. First the method is summarized, then its application to automatic stop classification, segment duration prediction for synthesis, phoneme-to-phone classification, and end-of-sentence detection in text are described. For other applications to speech and language, see [Lucassen 1984], [Bahl, et al 1987].
Cyclical Dynamics of the Turkish Economy and the Stock Market

Abstract We analyze the cyclical dynamics of the Turkish economy and the stock market as well as their interactions. We use hidden Markov models that are robust to parameter instability arising from major shifts in economic policy, which have been typically observed in the Turkish economy. These models provide estimates of turning points for the growth, business, and stock market cycles. We identify three states of growth cycles and two states of business cycles in Turkey characterized by different mean estimates. We find that the economy went through five recessions since 1987. Crises are characterized by sharp drops in economic activity and are preceded by slowdowns. These crises are typically followed by strong recoveries during which the economy grows above its long-run average rate. We show that the Turkish stock market goes through three regimes having distinct risk-return dynamics. Bear markets associated with negative returns precede every recession with an average lead time of three quarters, suggesting that the stock market may be a useful forward-looking indicator of the Turkish economy.
Biochemical Characterization and N-terminomics Analysis of Leukolysin, the Membrane-type 6 Matrix Metalloprotease (MMP25)

Background: Neutrophil-specific membrane-type 6 matrix metalloproteinase (MT6-MMP)/leukolysin has seven known substrates. Results: We identified 72 new MT6-MMP substrates by proteomics and family-wide chemokine screens. Cell membrane-bound vimentin chemoattracts macrophages, whereas MT6-MMP-cleaved vimentin is an “eat-me” signal greatly increasing phagocytosis. Conclusion: MT6-MMP substrates indicate a role for clearance of apoptotic neutrophils. Significance: MT6-MMP cleaves many bioactive proteins important in innate immunity. The neutrophil-specific protease membrane-type 6 matrix metalloproteinase (MT6-MMP)/MMP-25/leukolysin is implicated in multiple sclerosis and cancer yet remains poorly characterized. To characterize the biological roles of MT6-MMP, it is critical to identify its substrates for which only seven are currently known. Here, we biochemically characterized MT6-MMP, profiled its tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase inhibitory spectrum, performed degradomics analyses, and screened 26 chemokines for cleavage using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. MT6-MMP processes seven each of the CXC and CC chemokine subfamilies. Notably, cleavage of the neutrophil chemoattractant CXCL5 activates the chemokine, thereby increasing its agonist activity, indicating a feed-forward mechanism for neutrophil recruitment. Likewise, cleavage also activated CCL15 and CCL23 to increase monocyte recruitment. Utilizing the proteomics approach proteomic identification of cleavage site specificity (PICS), we identified 286 peptidic cleavage sites spanning from P6 to P6′ from which an unusual glutamate preference in P1 was identified. The degradomics screen terminal amine isotopic labeling of substrates (TAILS), which enriches for neo-N-terminal peptides of cleaved substrates, was used to identify 58 new native substrates in fibroblast secretomes after incubation with MT6-MMP. Vimentin, cystatin C, galectin-1, IGFBP-7, and secreted protein, acidic and rich in cysteine (SPARC) were among those substrates we biochemically confirmed. An extracellular “moonlighting” form of vimentin is a chemoattractant for THP-1 cells, but MT6-MMP cleavage abolished monocyte recruitment. Unexpectedly, the MT6-MMP-cleaved vimentin potently stimulated phagocytosis, which was not a property of the full-length protein. Hence, MT6-MMP regulates neutrophil and monocyte chemotaxis and by generating “eat-me” signals upon vimentin cleavage potentially increases phagocytic removal of neutrophils to resolve inflammation.
Targeting Rural Tourists in the Internet: Comparing Travel Motivation and Activity-Based Segments

ABSTRACT This study aims to compare activity-based segmentation and travel motivation segmentation from the perspective of information search behavior and online use behavior by comparing segment heterogeneity. The data were collected from users of three Finnish rural tourism websites with 1754 completed and usable questionnaires to create segmentation solutions based on travel activities and motivations using hierarchical cluster analysis and then comparing the results. The results indicate that travel activities are more useful than travel motivations in finding heterogeneous segmentation solutions, making the travel activity segments more heterogeneous than travel motivation segments as regards their information search behavior and Internet use. The results suggest that in this era of Internet marketing, travel activities are a better segmentation base than travel motivations in order to target different market segments as activities form more heterogeneous segmentation solutions.
Erratum for “Who Killed the Inner Circle? The Decline of the American Corporate Interlock Network”

U.S. corporations shared members of their boards of directors since the early 1900s, creating a dense interlock network in which nearly every major corporation was connected through short paths, and elevating a handful of well-connected directors to an influential “inner circle. ” This network remained highly-connected throughout the 20th century, serving as a mechanism for the rapid diffusion of information and practices, and promoting elite cohesion. Some of the most well-established findings in the sociology of networks sprang from this milieu. In the 2000s, however, board recruiting practices changed: we find that well-connected directors became less preferred. As a result, the inner circle disappeared and companies became less connected to each other. Revisiting three classic studies, on the diffusion of corporate policies, on corporate executives’ political unity, and on elite socialization, shows that established understandings of the effects of board interlocks on U.S. corporations, directors, and social elites no longer hold.
Judging the Relevance of Fair Value for Financial Instruments

ABSTRACT: We conduct three experiments to test if investors' views about fair value are contingent on whether the financial instrument in question is an asset or liability, whether fair values produce gains or losses, and whether the item will or will not be sold/settled soon. We draw on counterfactual reasoning theory from psychology, which suggests that these factors are likely to influence whether investors consider fair value as providing information about forgone opportunities. The latter, in turn, is predicted to influence investors' fair value relevance judgments. Results are generally supportive of the notion that judgments about the relevance of fair value are contingent. Attempts to influence investors' fair value relevance judgments by providing them with information about forgone opportunities are met with mixed success. In particular, our results are sensitive to the type of information provided and indicate the difficulty of overcoming investors' (apparent) strong beliefs about fair value.
The allele burden of JAK2 mutations remains stable over several years in patients with myeloproliferative disorders

This study shows that mutant allele burden remains stable overall several years in patients with JAK2 (V617F)-positive myeloproliferative disorders. In a retrospective single center study we determined the time course of the JAK2-V617F or JAK2 exon 12 allele burden in DNA from purified granulocytes from 48 patients with myeloproliferative disorders. The percentage of change between the first and last sample in JAK2-V617F positive patients without cytoreductive therapy (n=16) was only +9% during a follow-up of 36±13 months, reflecting a remarkably stable mutant allele burden. When treatment with hydroxyurea was initiated during the course of the study, we observed a significant decrease of the JAK2-V617F allele burden (n=6). However, in JAK2-V617F positive patients who were already on hydroxyurea treatment before the first blood sampling (n=14), we observed stable allelic ratios with a variance of only +3% during a follow-up of 34±16 months. Our data suggest that in untreated myeloproliferative disorders patients, from whom samples at diagnosis are not available, the JAK2 allele burden determined at later stages could be equally informative.
The Maine Women's Health Study: II. Outcomes of Nonsurgical Management of Leiomyomas, Abnormal Bleeding, and Chronic Pelvic Pain

Objective: To assess the effect of nonsurgical management of leiomyomas, abnormal uterine bleeding, and chronic pelvic pain on symptoms and quality of life. Methods: We performed a prospective cohort study of women receiving nonsurgical management (n = 380) or hysterectomy (n = 311) for leiomyomas, abnormal uterine bleeding, or chronic pelvic pain. Patients recruited from the practices of 63 physicians throughout Maine were interviewed at the outset of treatment and 3, 6, and 12 months later. The principal outcome measures were frequency and severity of physical and psychological symptoms, and quality of life as measured by validated indices of mental and general health and physical activity. Results: Medical therapy for abnormal bleeding and chronic pelvic pain produced significant improvements in symptoms and quality of life. However, almost one‐quarter of patients initially treated nonsurgically subsequently underwent hysterectomy; of patients continuing nonsurgical therapy, 25% with abnormal bleeding and 50% with chronic pelvic pain reported substantial levels of symptoms after 1 year. There were no significant changes in symptoms and quality of life in patients treated nonsurgically for leiomyomas. New problems including tiredness, hot flashes, weight gain, and depression developed in 10% or less of women who did not report these symptoms preoperatively. A logistic regression analysis controlling for age, reproductive history, and severity of symptoms showed that hysterectomy was the factor most highly correlated with a positive outcome at 1 year for all three conditions. Conclusions: Many women with leiomyomas, abnormal bleeding, and chronic pelvic pain report improved symptoms over time with nonsurgical management. Hysterectomy remains an important alternative when conservative treatment fails. (Obstet Gynecol 1994;83:566‐72)
Patterns of Succession and Continuity in Family-Owned Businesses: Study of an Ethnic Community

This paper examines ways in which patriarchalqfamilistic cultural systems condition responses to the kinds of social and economic changes that challenge family-owned businesses. Using a case study of an ethnic enclave in the southeastern United States, the paper looks at intergenerational succession, paying particular attention to how small firms manage to transfer control within the family. Key to successful transfer is the presence of trust and the utilization of social capital as well as the ability of successive generations to acquire skills that enable them to identify new market niches. The manuscript also discusses how firms manage conflict between old and new ideas, develop informal mechanisms for incorporating new ideas, and maintain the flexibility necessary for market survival.