Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A multidimensional view of intellectual capital: the impact on organizational performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore intellectual capital (IC) from a multidimensional perspective and its relationship with organizational performance (OP) within Iranian public listed companies. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data from Chief Financial Officers in 128 companies within Tehran Stock Exchange were collected and analyzed using partial least squares regressions. Findings – The findings suggest that organizational culture plays a significant role in developing human capital and structural capital while trust is a major determinant of all the IC components, namely human, structural, relational, and social capital. The results also confirm that the investment in human, structural, and relational capital could potentially bring about OP improvement in Iranian public listed companies. Practical implications – A synthesis of various sub-elements of IC supports executives in detecting, capturing, and assessing the different kinds of knowledge resources which must be ta.
TyeA of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is involved in regulation of Yop expression and is required for polarized translocation of Yop effectors

Type III secretion‐dependent translocation of Yop (Yersinia outer proteins) effector proteins into host cells is an essential virulence mechanism common to the pathogenic Yersinia species. One unique feature of this mechanism is the polarized secretion of Yops, i.e. Yops are only secreted at the site of contact with the host cell and not to the surrounding medium. In vitro, secretion occurs in Ca2+‐depleted media, a condition believed to somehow mimic cell contact. Three proteins, YopN, LcrG and TyeA have been suggested to control secretion and mutating any of these genes results in constitutive secretion. In addition, in Y. enterocolitica TyeA has been implied to be specifically required for delivery of a subset of Yop effectors into infected cells. In this work we have investigated the role of TyeA in secretion and translocation of Yop effectors by Y. pseudotuberculosis. An in frame deletion mutant of tyeA was found to be temperature‐sensitive for growth and this phenotype correlated to a lowered expression of the negative regulatory element LcrQ. In medium containing Ca2+, Yop expression was somewhat elevated compared to the wild‐type strain and low levels of Yop secretion was also seen. Somewhat surprisingly, expression and secretion of Yops was lower than for the wild‐type strain when the tyeA mutant was grown in Ca2+‐depleted medium. Translocation of YopE, YopH, YopJ and YopM into infected HeLa cells was significantly lower in comparison with the isogenic wild‐type strain and Yop proteins could also be recovered in the tissue culture medium. This indicated that the tyeA mutant had lost the ability to translocate Yop proteins by a polarized mechanism. In order to exclude that the defect in translocation seen in the tyeA mutant was a result of lowered expression/secretion of Yops, a double lcrQ/tyeA mutant was constructed. This strain was de‐repressed for Yop expression and secretion but was still impaired for translocation of both YopE and YopM. In addition, the low level of YopE translocation in the tyeA mutant was independent of the YopE chaperone YerA/SycE. TyeA was found to localize to the cytoplasm of the bacterium and we were unable to find any evidence that TyeA was secreted or surface located. From our studies in Y. pseudotuberculosis we conclude that TyeA is involved in regulation of Yop expression and required for polarized delivery of Yop effectors in general and is not as suggested in Y. enterocolitica directly required for translocation of a subset of Yop effectors.
The Role of Chinese Students as Tourists and Hosts for Overseas Travel

With more visas being granted and application processes streamlined, more Chinese students are studying abroad. These students have an influential and continuing effect on the host country's tourism industry over and above their own education-related activities and expenditures because they attract family members and friends to visit the countries where they study. Unfortunately, the research on the role of Chinese students as hosts for overseas travel is quite limited. Therefore, this paper provides some insights into this issue by looking at the influence of students' satisfaction on their role as hosts for the friends and family sector while also providing some data on the students' own holiday motives and assessments of New Zealand. The data were derived from 504 self-completed surveys by Chinese students from four universities in North Island, New Zealand. Evidence was found of students fulfilling a number of roles as guides, sources of information and acting as hosts, but the relationships between their own holiday experiences and satisfaction and the degree to which they fulfilled these roles was weak at best, indicating, therefore, the importance of other variables.
The role of intercollegiate athletics in the retention of first-time, first-year students at NCAA Division III institutions with football

The retention of first-time, first-year students to their sophomore year is important to institutions of higher education because this retention predicts the students' persistence through graduation at their institutions (Bean, 1990; Tinto, 1993). Tinto (1993) suggested that academic integration and social integration lead students to persist. One aspect of the social milieu that has received little attention in retention research is intercollegiate athletics. The purpose of this study was to determine the role of intercollegiate athletics in the retention of first-time, first-year students and to determine how intercollegiate athletics are incorporated in the retention practices of institutions with NCAA Division III athletic programs with football. Within the social milieu of an institution are practices that foster a sense of community in the institution (Braxton & Hirschy, 2004); a sense of belonging to the institution (Freeman, Anderman, & Jensen, 2007; Hausmann, Schofield, & Woods, 2007; Tinto, 1987, 1993); a social support system within the institution (Tinto, 1993); student interactions with faculty (Tinto, 1993); student interactions with staff (Tinto, 1993); and student interactions with peers (Tinto, 1993). Through an online questionnaire, student affairs professionals from NCAA Division III institutions with football rated the extent to which intercollegiate athletics contribute to the social integration of first-time, first-year students and to the six variables that lead to social integration using a 5-point rating scale. Respondents described how intercollegiate athletics contribute to the six variables on their campuses. The respondents described retention practices of their institutions that intentionally incorporate intercollegiate athletics and rated the effectiveness of those practices using a 5-point rating scale. Respondents rated the effectiveness of their overall intercollegiate athletics programs and ten sports in retaining students. Findings indicated that the role of intercollegiate athletics in the retention of first-time, first-year students at institutions sponsoring Division III athletics with football is focused on the athletes. Most of the described retention practices were focused on assisting the athletes with their social integration on their campuses. Athletes at the respondents' institutions made up as much as 59% of the total enrollment; thus, specific retention practices focused on athletes at these institutions may influence the overall retention of first-time, first-year students at the institutions. Effective retention practices incorporating intercollegiate athletics are discussed and recommended.
Earnings Dispersion, Low Pay and Household Poverty in Italy, 1977-1998

The paper presents estimates on the dispersion of earnings and the proportion of low-paid employees in Italy in the period 1977-1998, and it measures the differential impact of low pay and employment status on householdsi? ½ poverty. The estimates are computed from the micro-data of the Historical Archive of the Bank of Italyi? ½s Survey of Household Income and Wealth. The distribution of net earnings narrowed from the late 1970s until the end of the 1980s, abruptly widened in the early 1990s and experienced little modification in the rest of the decade. The trend in the share of low-paid workers evolved in parallel with that of earnings inequality. Finally, the probability of being in poverty is more closely correlated with the number of household members employed, particularly other than the head, than with low pay.
German Business Angels in International Comparison

The amount of funding that business angels provide is thought to be large, but varies widely by geography, industry, and custom. This article reviews the practice of business angels in Germany and details their age, income levels, net worth, and motivation. The use of various exit channels such as IPO, management buyout, sale to other investors, and trade (or strategic) sales are also tabulated. These data are compared with published studies of angels in the U.K., U.S., and Sweden. Different types of portfolio companies are reviewed and compared with companies in other countries.
Benchmarking risk-adjusted adult antibacterial drug use in 70 US academic medical center hospitals.

BACKGROUND Antimicrobial stewardship programs are advised to measure and risk-adjust antimicrobial use to facilitate interhospital comparisons, a process called benchmarking. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate a new benchmarking strategy for antibacterials. METHODS Hospital-wide adult antibacterial drug use in 2009 was measured as days of therapy (DOT) and length of therapy (LOT) from billing records in 70 US academic medical centers (AMCs). Patients were assigned to 1 of 35 clinical service lines (CSL) based on their Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group. Expected (E) use was determined by indirect standardization and compared with observed (O) use. RESULTS Of 1,791 ,180 discharged adults, 63.7% received antibacterial drugs; the range by CSL was 14.3% (psychiatry) to 99.7% (lung transplant). Mean ± SD hospital-wide use was 839 ± 106 DOTs (range, 594-1109) and 536 ± 53.0 LOT (range, 427-684) per 1000 patient-days. The ventilator support CSL had the most DOT per discharge, 39.4 ± 9.4 days; the LOT was 21.5 ± 4.5 days. The hospital-wide O/E ratio range was 0.7-1.45; in 5 AMCs the ratio exceeded the 90% confidence interval (CI) and was below the 90% CI in 6. Variability in use was explained by the proportion of treated patients within each CSL and mean LOT and DOT per discharge. CONCLUSIONS Adult antibacterial drug use was benchmarked to expected use adjusted for patient mix, and outlier hospitals were identified. Differences between expected and observed use reflect usage patterns that were benchmarked and are targets for evaluation and intervention.
The Economics of Polygyny in Sub-Saharan Africa: Female Productivity and the Demand for Wives in Côte d'Ivoire

Polygyny is still practiced throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, with important social consequences. This paper makes the first attempt to link African polygyny directly to the productivity of women in agriculture using micro data. I develop a structural model of the demand for wives that disentangles wealth and substitution effects. Using a large household survey from Côte d'Ivoire, I find that marked geographic diversity in cropping patterns leads to regional variation in female labor productivity. I also find that, conditional on wealth, men do have more wives when women are more productive, that is, cheaper. This substitution effect may explain why polygyny declined in rural areas of Côte d'Ivoire during agricultural development
Experiential marketing in sport spectatorship services: a customer perspective

Research question: Services play a growing role in modern sport industries. Relatively little is known about the impact of experiential marketing strategy on consumer behaviour and within the context of sporting events industry in particular. The study seeks to start addressing this gap in knowledge and to better examine the subjectively based aspects of extra-ordinary experiences, which define experiential marketing, in sporting events lived by consumers, and their impact in terms of consumer behaviour and experiential and branding strategies. Research methods: A series of in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with Stade de Français' spectators who witnessed what is considered as extra-ordinary experiences. The 26 interviewees were aged between 18 and 56 years old (M age = 24.7), and were comprised of 18 males and 8 females. Results and findings: It was found that the pricing issue, which highlighted the presence of opportunistic behaviour, was probably as important as the experiential marketing strategy. Moreover, if experiential marketing influenced brand awareness and brand associations, those associations were not always perceive positively particularly from the most committed and connoisseur fans. Finally, this marketing strategy did not seem to have any conspicuous positive result in terms of brand loyalty. Implications: An explanation relying on the tribal marketing approach, which emphasises the link between consumers rather than between consumers and the brand, could be put forward estimating that the consumers attracted by the extraordinary experiences provided are more interested in the link with the other consumers than the brand and the service offered.
Adversarial Goal Generation for Intrinsic Motivation

Generally in Reinforcement Learning the goal, or reward signal, is given by the environment and cannot be controlled by the agent. We propose to introduce an intrinsic motivation module that will select a reward function for the agent to learn to achieve. We will use a Universal Value Function Approximator, that takes as input both the state and the parameters of this reward function as the goal to predict the value function (or action-value function) to generalize across these goals. This module will be trained to generate goals such that the agent's learning is maximized. Thus, this is also a method for automatic curriculum learning.
The Changing Tenant Profile of Dutch Social Rented Housing

This article deals with the changes in the tenant profile of the social rented stock in the Netherlands. It is inspired by the question whether the sector may be subject to a residualisation trend. The wider importance of such a phenomenon is that of the social marginalisation of the people concerned in general. Moreover, if the position of the social rented stock can be shown to be deteriorating, it would also illustrate a tendency to social polarisation in the redefined welfare state. Social and income polarisation in Western societies has been extensively investigated but, so far, polarisation tendencies in housing have largely been ignored. This article seeks to show that this omission should be rectified because changes in tenant profiles reveal wider developments. It also aims to uncover the impact of policy in this respect. The analysis of the changing position of the social rented sector during the period leading up to and following the housing policy reform of 1989 constitutes the core of the paper. The aim of that policy change was to improve the match between the tenants' ability to pay and the cost of housing as a means of reducing the burden of rent subsidies on the state. The reform has been hailed as an example of the effectiveness of policy-making. However, the analysis shows that the role of the social rented sector had already been shifting during the 1980s, well before the announcement of the overhaul of housing policy. This result illustrates that policy may simply codify decisions made in a network of actors rather than initiate change on its own accord.
The Effects of Personalization on Purchase Intentions for Online News: An Experimental Study of Different Personalization Increments

The media industry has been struggling to create sustainable business models for news content in the digital era. While the collapse of the traditional business models can be largely attributed to the rise of information technology, it can also assist in creating new once. Technological advances allow online merchants to offer a variety of personalization features, enabling them to tailor their offerings ever more accurately to the needs and tastes of individual users. We have taken a systematic experimental approach using an online news aggregator to answer the question of how different levels of personalization can affect users’ intentions to pay for news content. Results show that only personalization features that allow the users to constantly adapt the content to their needs yield a significant increase in purchase intention. Furthermore, supplementary design personalization may even decrease users’ intentions to purchase. Results of a post-hoc study with industry experts confirm the practical contribution of our research, demonstrating that some of our key findings are counterintuitive to professionals. Our findings contribute to the literature on web personalization and media management by experimentally demonstrating the value-add of different levels of personalization and by revealing counterintuitive implications for the media industry.
Interparental Violence and its Effect on the Children: A Study of 50 Families in General Practice

It should be recognized that there is always an accepted amount of aggression in families. Society accepts this state of aggression within the family unit as part of everyday life and behaviour. N o doubt it is essential to the development of the children and to the evolution of the family as a whole. When this aggression exceeds the limits society has accepted, violence begins, and assumes a new dimension outside the realm of accepted family behaviour. This ingredient of un­ restrained physical hostility sprinkled upon the fertile soil of family life produces the ugly weeds of fear, hatred and despair. Its con­ tinuance may indeed have sinister sequelae upon the family. It was decided to study 50 families in which it was known that interparental violence took place, and to study the manner in which the children of these families were at risk.
Simvastatin induces osteogenic differentiation of murine embryonic stem cells

Statins are potent inhibitors of cholesterol synthesis. Several statins are available with different molecular and pharmacokinetic properties. Simvastatin is more lipophilic than pravastatin and has a higher affinity to phospholipid membranes than atorvastatin, allowing its passive diffusion through the cell membrane. In vitro studies on bone marrow stromal cells, osteoblast‐like cells, and embryonic stem cells have shown statins to have cholesterol‐independent anabolic effects on bone metabolism; alas, statins were supplemented in osteogenic medium, which does not facilitate elucidation of their potential osteoinductive properties. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs), derived from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, are unique in that they enjoy perpetual self‐proliferation, are pluripotent, and are able to differentiate toward all the cellular lineages composing the body, including the osteogenic lineage. Consequently, ESCs represent a potentially potent cell source for future clinical cellular therapies of various bone diseases, even though there are several hurdles that still need to be overcome. Herein we demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, that simvastatin induces murine ESC (mESC) differentiation toward the osteogenic lineage in the absence of osteoinductive supplements. Specifically, we found that a simvastatin concentration in the micromolar range and higher was toxic to the cells and that an effective concentration for osteoinduction is 0.1 nM, as shown by increased alizarin red staining as well as increased osteocalcin and osetrix gene expression. These results suggest that in the future, lipophilic simvastatin may provide a novel pharmacologic agent for bone tissue engineering applications. © 2010 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Who's greener? Comparing urban and suburban residents' environmental behaviour and concern

While various studies have compared metropolitan and rural residents' displays of environmentalism, recent shifts in the housing and energy markets make intra-metropolitan differences in urban and suburban attitudes and actions more interesting. The housing market crash and accompanying rise in fuel costs are prompting a return of centralisation to many communities and, it is believed, are drawing environmentally conscious residents downtown closer to work and play. Past research has found that this trend – demonstrated by a re-centralising housing market – was already underway, pre-crash, in Louisville, Kentucky over the “boom” period from 2000 to 2006. Drawing on original 2006 survey data for Louisville, this study regresses two components of environmentalism (behaviour and concern) on socio-demographics and residence. Findings show urbanites in Louisville are indeed significantly more environmentally friendly in their behaviour but not in their concern. Countering some claims, residents of single-family homes also exhibit significantly higher levels of environmental behaviour and concern than those residing in apartments and condominiums. Finally, in a surprise finding, recent movers from the suburbs to the city do not differ in their behaviour and are significantly less concerned about the environment than urbanites, suburbanites, and all metropolitan residents.
Empirical relevance of efficient contract theory: inter-firm contracts

Although there has been enormous development of the theory of efficient contracts in the last 20 years, empirical tests were slow to come. However, over the last 10 years, a considerable body of evidence has accumulated, particularly in relation to contracts between firms. This paper develops a simple, integrated theoretical framework to illustrate 11 testable hypotheses. The contract theories covered include risksharing, principal-agent incentive models, transaction cost and incomplete contract models with specific investment, and the theory of relational contracting. The problems associated with empirical work on contracts are discussed before setting the hypotheses against a wide range of econometric and other empirical evidence (including work on franchising, sharecropping, subcontracting, contract duration, private institutions, experimental evidence, and a wide range of case studies). Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.
Economics in the Former Soviet Union

One of the most notable, but least discussed, aspects of the halting attempts during the past six years to reform the economies of the Soviet Union, and now those of its successor states, has been the prominent role played by professional economists. Not since the mid-1920s has the Soviet political leadership felt so strongly the need to draw upon the expertise of the economics profession to help determine its course of action. In this paper, we attempt to characterize the current state of economics in the former Soviet Union, investigate the implications that the condition of Soviet economics has for reform, and suggest possible future directions for the discipline. Our information comes from four main sources: professional publications of Soviet and Western economists, published remarks by Soviet economists, personal interviews and discussions which we conducted with young Soviet economists in the summers of 1990 and 1991, and a questionnaire administered to Soviet economists and graduate students in the Soviet Union.