Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities of International Business Majors

Abstract To compete in a global environment, firms need people with the appropriate international knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA). Undergraduate international business (IB) majors may not be taught the specific KSA that match those business needs. This study surveyed the most active international companies in Minnesota (USA) that had recently hired new employees into IB positions. Top hiring requirements were general skills followed by five specific IB-related KSA: direct sales (exporting/distributorships); importing (sourcing/purchasing); global sales contracts/negotiations; global transportation/logistics, and strategic planning. Business needs for IB-related KSA differ from the content of typical textbook-guided IB courses taught at colleges and universities, the implication being that more practical aspects of day-to-day operations of firms engaged in IB should be included in the curriculum.
Reflections on the evolution of health technology assessment in Europe

Abstract Health technology assessment (HTA) has assumed an increasing role in health systems in recent years, with many countries establishing agencies or programmes to evaluate health technology and other interventions to inform policy decisions and clinical practice. This paper reflects upon its development and evolution in Europe over the last decade, with a focus on England, France, Germany and Sweden. In particular, we explore how HTA has evolved over time as well as its impact on policy and practice. While countries share many of the same objectives, there are differences in the way HTA agencies and programmes are organised, operate, and influence decision making. Despite these differences, all systems are faced with opportunities and challenges related to stakeholder involvement and acceptance, the suitability and transparency of assessment requirements and methods, balancing evidence and values in decision making, and demonstrating impact.
Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism

Tourism-one of the world's largest industries-has long been appreciated for its economic benefits, but in this volume tourism receives a unique systematic scrutiny as a medium for cultural exchange. Modern developments in technology and industry, together with masterful advertising, have created temporarily leisured people with the desire and the means to travel. They often in turn effect profound cultural change in the places they visit, and the contributors to this work all attend to the impact these "guests" have on their "hosts. " In contrast to the dramatic economic transformations, the social repercussions of tourism are subtle and often recognized only by the indigenous peoples themselves and by the anthropologists who have studied them before and after the introduction of tourism. The case studies in Hosts and Guests examine the five types of tourism-historical, cultural, ethnic, environmental, and recreational-and their impact on diverse societies over a broad geographical range
Corporate Relationship Marketing in Developing Economies: Sustainability Tonic for Nigerian Banks

Banking is fundamentally characterized by systemic dynamism and industrial volatility. Forward moving practitioners, therefore, are not relenting in their resolve to be more sensitive, appreciative and proactive in the market place. This essentially challenges them to strategically leverage on contemporary research outputs to blaze the trail in service innovation and overall corporate profitability redefinition. This study critically showcases corporate relationship marketing (CRM) as multi-auspicious and efficacious new sensation to drive Nigerian banks to topmost heights with utmost sustainability. This competition – friendly vantage pathway is conceptually projected in this work as the relationship marketing – performance causality (REMPEC) diagnostic connect. Key Words : Bank profitability, Institutional sustainability, Nigerian economy, Relationship Marketing
Is There a Future for Chemoprevention of Prostate Cancer?

The outcome of the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial, demonstrating harm and no preventive activity of selenomethionine and α-tocopherol for prostate cancer, and the lack of approval by the FDA for the use of 5α-reductase inhibitors to prevent prostate cancer have cast doubt about the future of chemoprevention of prostate cancer. This article attempts to critically assess whether the notion that chemoprevention of prostate cancer has no future is warranted. Risk of prostate cancer is modifiable and chemoprevention of prostate cancer, particularly fatal/lethal cancer, is both needed and possible. However, the approach to prostate cancer–chemopreventive agent development has not followed a rational and systematic process. To make progress, the following steps are necessary: (i) identification of intermediate biomarkers predictive of fatal/lethal disease; (ii) development of a rational approach to identification of candidate agents, including high-throughput screening and generation of information on mechanism and biology of candidate agents and potential molecular targets; and (iii) systematic evaluation of the predictive value of preclinical models, phase II trials, and intermediate biomarkers for the outcome of phase III trials. New phase III trials should be based on adequate preclinical and phase II studies. Cancer Prev Res; 9(8); 642–7. ©2016 AACR.
Developing consensus: reflections on a model‐supported decision process

Focuses on consulting experiences utilizing simulation approaches that capture decision‐making processes in formulations that are transparent to the general manager. Examines the dual benefit of modelling in terms of not only providing forecasts and an objective framework for quantitative evaluations, but also in the softer sense of building consensus in management teams. Casts these experiences against theories of effective group decision making, and other decision support examples which focus on the use of models. Reconciles the circumstances of the case with the conditions specified for effective group working and suggests that the greatest contribution may be made to consensus decision making when the whole modelling approach, not just access to model outputs, is integrated into the decision‐making process, and where the model complexity is commensurate with the task complexity and the task familiarity of the management group.
Delivering trust: impartiality and objectivity in the digital age

In today’s environment of democratised mass digital media questions of truth, trust, bias, partisanship, and verification are as important as ever. However, the ideas of impartiality and objectivity – at the heart of serious news journalism for most of the last century – are now under pressure and even attack in the digital age. Invented in an age of information scarcity, their relevance in an age of information abundance is now being questioned. Today, in the digital age of plenty, notions of special responsibilities being placed on those with a public voice, and different approaches for print and broadcasting, are rapidly breaking down. As the disciplines of impartiality and objectivity disintegrate, there are increased signs of propaganda, entertainment and fiction seeping into journalism. Broadcasters, regulators, politicians, and journalists are struggling to make the solutions of the last century fit the changed media characteristics and conditions in the new century. This paper is a brief review of the current arguments and some of the proposed solutions in the context of the US and UK market. It proposes three principles to help retain the heart of these norms without being tethered to approaches now seen as anachronistic. These suggest a new premium on: evidence-led newsgathering, diversity of opinion, transparency about methods and values.
Political Comedy Shows and Public Participation in Politics

the ascension of [Jon] Stewart and The Daily Show into the public eye is no laughing matter . Stewart’s daily dose of political parody characterized by asinine alliteration leads to a ‘holier than thou’ attitude toward our national leaders. People who possess the wit, intelligence, and self-awareness of viewers of The Daily Show would never choose to enter the political fray full of ‘buffoons and idiots. ’ (Kalin, , p. A)
A new closed-form solution as an extension of the Black–Scholes formula allowing smile curve plotting

In this paper, as a generalization of the Black–Scholes (BS) model, we elaborate a new closed-form solution for a uni-dimensional European option pricing model called the J-model. This closed-form solution is based on a new stochastic process, called the J-process, which is an extension of the Wiener process satisfying the martingale property. The J-process is based on a new statistical law called the J-law, which is an extension of the normal law. The J-law relies on four parameters in its general form. It has interesting asymmetry and tail properties, allowing it to fit the reality of financial markets with good accuracy, which is not the case for the normal law. Despite the use of one state variable, we find results similar to those of Heston dealing with the bi-dimensional stochastic volatility problem for pricing European calls. Inverting the BS formula, we plot the smile curve related to this closed-form solution. The J-model can also serve to determine the implied volatility by inverting the J-formula and can be used to price other kinds of options such as American options.
Structural Instability of Decisive Majority Rules

We study social aggregation rules that satisfy a Pareto and a decisive majority condition. A rule satisfies the decisive majority condition if whenever the voters can be divided into two internally homogeneous groups (ie. groups within which all individuals agree about all possible choices) and these groups have opposite preferences, then the majority's preference is respected. No assumption are made about the outcome when the individuals have more than two different preferences even when a majority agree on a choice x being preferable to another y. Therefore a decisive majority condition does not imply, ie. is strictly weaker than, majority rules. The main result is that Pareto decisive majority rules are necessarily structurally unstable. in the tense that the outcome preference, which is a vector field, will undergo major changes in the structure in response to small change in the underlying parameters. The importance of structural instability derives from the fact that small errors of observation will lead to drastically different answers. An example of the result for three voters and with a two-dimensional choice space ia also given.
Measuring the Sustainability of the Food Supply Chain: A Case Study of the UK

Abstract This paper provides a critical analysis of the UK food supply chain and its implications for the economy, society and the environment, using a sustainability assessment model. A set of sustainability indicators is proposed to measure the effects of the food supply chain, comprising stages of agriculture, food processing, food wholesaling, food retailing and food catering. The paper tests the assessment model using the empirical data for chicken and potato supply chains in the UK; indicators are scored and presented using spider diagrams to illustrate the sustainability effects within these supply chains. The paper also analyses the chicken and potato supply chains using the proposed assessment and discusses the implications of its application.
Changing China, Changing Africa: Future Contours of an Emerging Relationship

type="main"> Current China–Africa relations have been statically framed: China invests in the continent and exports resources extracted by its state-owned enterprises and fuelled by aid flows, while simultaneously undercutting African industry through cheap exports. We frame this debate, then explore how the framework could adjust in response to changing economic realities in China, centered on the “rebalancing” of the growth model toward domestic consumption. We argue that a new wave of private sector-led, low-cost manufacturers may find its way to selected African shores, in the process transforming those economies and the way in which China interacts with them, both for the better.
Tax Policy and Consumer Spending: Evidence from Japanese Fiscal Experiments

This paper studies the extent to which the impact of tax policy on consumer spending differs between temporary and permanent, as well as anticipated and unanticipated tax changes. To discriminate between them, we use institutional information such as legal distinction between temporary and permanent tax changes, as well as timing of policy announcement and implementation. We find that the impact of temporary changes is significantly smaller than the impact of permanent changes. We also find that more than 80 per cent of Japanese consumers, including those who distinguish between temporary and permanent tax changes, respond to tax changes at the time of their implementation and not at the time of a policy announcement. We suggest an interpretation that these consumers follow a near-rational decision rule.
On the ubiquity and phylogeny of Wolbachia in lice

Wolbachia are intracellular bacteria that occur in an estimated 20% of arthropod species. They are of broad interest because they profoundly affect the reproductive fitness of diverse host taxa. Here we document the apparent ubiquity and diversity of Wolbachia in the insect orders Anoplura (sucking lice) and Mallophaga (chewing lice), by detecting single or multiple infections in each of 25 tested populations of lice, representing 19 species from 15 genera spanning eight taxonomic families. Phylogenetic analyses indicate a high diversity of Wolbachia in lice, as evidenced by the identification of 39 unique strains. Some of these strains are apparently unique to lice, whereas others are similar to strains that infect other insect taxa. Wolbachia are transmitted from infected females to their offspring via egg cyto‐plasm, such that similar species of lice are predicted to have similar strains of Wolbachia. This predicted pattern is not supported in the current study and may reflect multiple events of recent horizontal transmission between host species. At present, there is no known mechanism that would allow for this latter mode of transmission to and within species of lice.
Direct payments and the social model of disability

Despite learning about the social model of disability in social work training, it is difficult to see how new workers can apply this model in practice in a care management system that seems so service-rather than needs-led. Against this background, the advent of direct payments is a major opportunity to promote choice, control and independent living at the heart of twenty-first century social care. While direct payments can seem like a challenge to the role and professional expertise of qualified social workers, they are a unique chance to deliver genuine empowerment and personcentred, needs-led approaches in a system that all too often does not let its workers strive to achieve these goals.
The Effect of State Antitakeover Laws on the Firm's Bondholders

We examine how state antitakeover laws affect bondholders and the cost of debt, and report four findings. First, bonds issued by firms incorporated in takeover-friendly states have significantly higher at-issue yield spreads than bonds issued by firms in states with restrictive antitakeover laws. Second, firms in takeover friendly states have significantly higher leverage than their counterparts in restrictive law states. Third, bond issues are associated with negative average stock price reactions among firms in takeover-friendly states, but positive stock price reactions among firms in restrictive law states. Fourth, existing bond values increase, on average, upon the introduction of Business Combination antitakeover law. These results indicate that state antitakeover laws tend to decrease bond yields and increase bond values, which is the opposite of their effect on equity values. This, in turn, implies that state laws help mitigate the agency cost of debt by shielding bondholders from expropriation in takeovers. Overall, the empirical evidence suggests that the effect of antitakeover provisions on firm value must take into account the impacts of both bondholders and stockholders.
Contribution of the Heme Oxygenase Pathway to the Maintenance of the Hypothalamic Blood Flow during Diminished Nitric Oxide Synthesis

The cerebrovascular effects of the heme oxygenase–carbon monoxide pathway were studied in the rat hypothalamus. Intraperitoneal administration of the heme oxygenase inhibitor zinc deuteroporphyrin 2,4-bis glycol (ZnDPBG, 45 μmol/kg) had no significant effect on the resting cerebral blood flow, but increased hypothalamic nitric oxide synthase activity by 67% without changing the CSF cyclic GMP concentration. After pharmacologic inhibition of nitric oxide synthase, the diminished cerebral blood flow was further reduced by 22% after administration of ZnDPBG, and the effect showed direct correlation with the baseline perfusion level. Therefore, endogenous carbon monoxide may significantly contribute to the cerebral vasoregulation under resting conditions and in pathophysiologic states associated with diminished nitric oxide synthesis.
THE SUPPLY OF MONEY AND COMMON STOCK PRICES: COMMENT

IN A RECENT PAPER' Homa and Jaffee present a forecasting and simulation model in which they (a) predict the Standard and Poor's 500 stock index on a quarterly basis from a regression equation employing the supply of money and its growth rate, and (b) use the predicted values of the SP index to simulate an investor's strategy choice between buying Treasury bills, buying stock or buying stock on margin. They posit that the SP index in period t depends on the supply of money in the same period as well as on the contemporaneous and once lagged growth rate in the supply of money. In order to make their model operational they need a forecast for the supply of money one quarter ahead. They achieve the best results in terms of the investor's rate of return when they assume perfect foresight with respect to the money supply and obtain somewhat inferior results when they predict the money supply on the basis of other variables such as the unemployment rate, the rate of inflation, etc. The rates of return for both techniques, however, are better than could be achieved by the simple buy-and-hold strategy. The purpose of this note is two-fold. First, we propose an alternative model, based more on fiscal rather than on monetary variables for explaining stock prices. Secondly, we emphasize that devising investment strategies by these techniques is, under the best of circumstances, a most hazardous undertaking.
Glass Interposer Electromagnetic Bandgap Structure for Efficient Suppression of Power/Ground Noise Coupling

In this paper, we propose glass interposer electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure to efficiently suppress power/ground noise coupling. We designed, fabricated, measured, and analyzed a glass interposer EBG structure for the first time. Glass interposer EBG structure test vehicles were fabricated using a thin-glass substrate, low-loss polymer layers, and periodic metal patches with through glass vias (TGVs) in glass interposer power distribution network. Using the dispersion characteristics, we thoroughly analyzed and derived <italic>f</italic><sub>L</sub> and <italic>f</italic><sub>U</sub> of the glass interposer EBG structure. We experimentally verified that the proposed glass interposer EBG structure achieved power/ground noise suppression (below –40 dB) between <italic>f</italic> <sub>L</sub> of 5.8 GHz and <italic>f</italic><sub>U</sub> of 9.6 GHz. Derived <italic>f</italic><sub>L</sub> and <italic>f</italic><sub>U</sub> based on dispersion analysis, full three-dimensional electromagnetic (3-D-EM) simulation and measurement achieved good correlation. In the glass interposer EBG structure, tapered structure of the TGV and thickness of the low-loss polymer used for metal-layers lamination affected the noise suppression bandgap significantly. The effectiveness of the proposed glass interposer EBG structure on suppression of the power/ground noise propagation and coupling to high-speed TGV channel was verified with 3-D-EM simulation. As a result, the proposed glass interposer EBG structure successfully and efficiently suppressed the power/ground noise propagation and improved eye-diagram of the high-speed TGV channel.
Material and mechanical characterization of PECVD deposited a-SiC:H with H2 dilution

In this paper, we report optical and mechanical properties of low temperature plasma enhanced chemical vapor-deposited (PECVD) amorphous hydrogenated silicon carbide (a-SiC:H) thin films. Initial screening of this process using hydrogen-dilution was performed with a two-level, three-parameter design of experiments (DOE) with eight samples. In this process regime, it was determined that the main parameters affecting silicon carbide (SiC) deposition were the RF power and the hydrogen flow rate. Based on the DOE results, a further set of four samples was prepared to modulate deposition rate and stoichiometry. Material characterization of these samples using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photolectron spectroscopy (XPS), surface profilometry and ellipsometry is presented. Further, to determine the mechanical properties, cantilevers were fabricated and characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV). Based on the resonant frequency measurement and film density, the Young's modulus for the films was determined.
Observation on Estrous Synchronization Following Treatment with Prostaglandin in Crossbred Gilts

There exist a paucity of information on the usefulness of prostaglandins in the control of the pig's estrous cycle, perhaps, due to the brevity of the sensitive phase of its corpora lutea (CL). This study investigated the effects of three shot injections of 5mg, 7.5mg and 10mg prostaglandin F2 alpha (Lutalyse®) at 7-day interval on induction of standing heat, as well as changes in vulva biometry and electrical conductance of vaginal mucus, in eighteen cycling crossbred gilts in three equal but separate groups (i.e. A, B and C). Two gilts in each group (i.e. control) received 2 ml phosphate buffered saline, while group-mates in A, B and C received 5mg, 7.5mg and 10mg Lutalyse®, respectively. Following the first; second; and third shots of Lutalyse®, 0%, 100% and 0% in group A, 50%, 50% and 0% in group B and, 0%, 50% and 0% in group C of gilts exhibited standing estrus. Similarly, 83.3% and 66.7% and 16.7% and 33.3% of treated and of control gilts showed and did not show estrus, respectively. The mean vulva area of gilts decreased (P<0.05) from 13.71±2.96cm to 10.16±1.46cm during proestrus to diestrus, respectively. The electrical conductance of vaginal 2 2 mucus changed (P<0.05) from 331.25±66.03U to 418.13±34.53U and 397.50±80.07U during proestrus, estrus and diestrus, respectively. These results indicated that prostaglandins can synchronize estrus in pigs and two shots of 5mg Lutalyse® achieved the best (100%) synchronization. Similarly, evaluation of electrical conductance of vaginal mucus was more useful in staging estrous in gilts than vulva biometry.