Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Value of Pricing Control in Export Channels: A Governance Perspective

In this article, the authors expand traditional channel control models to investigate the value of absorbing pricing decisions within an exporter's decision-making domain. From a governance perspective, pricing control is considered a structured continuum driven by factors both internal and external to the firm. More specifically, the authors investigate the organizational and environmental influences driving pricing control decisions and the impact of pricing control on both the economic and strategic performance of the firm. Using linear and moderated regression analysis, the authors find that both the strategic perspectives and the organizational characteristics of exporters significantly influence pricing control, yet in ways counterintuitive to traditional thinking. Similarly, the performance implications add new insight to the value of pricing control in dynamic overseas environments. The authors discuss managerial and research implications.
Distributed Extremum Seeking for Constrained Networked Optimization and Its Application to Energy Consumption Control in Smart Grid

In this paper, a distributed extremum seeking scheme is proposed to find the solution of a nonmodel-based distributed optimization problem among networked agents. The agents are supposed to have measurements of the local cost functions and constraint functions. However, no explicit expressions on the cost functions, the constraint functions, or their gradients are available. The design of the distributed extremum seeking scheme is based on the saddle point dynamics. Stability analysis is conducted via using averaging analysis, Lyapunov stability analysis, and the concept of saddle point. It is shown that the solution to the distributed optimization problem is semiglobally practically asymptotically stable under the proposed extremum seeking law. An application of the proposed extremum seeking method to energy consumption control for the electricity consumers in smart grid is discussed. Simulation results on energy consumption control of a network of heating ventilation and air conditioning systems are provided to validate the proposed distributed extremum seeker.
Varieties of capitalisms and varieties of performances: accounting for inequality in post‐Soviet Union transition economies

We partition post‐Soviet Union Transition Economies into two groups: European Union New Member States and countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States or the South Eastern Europe area. Both groups started the 1980s with low levels of inequality, but in the early 2000s the latter group reached a level of inequality seven percentage points higher. We review various factors of inequality and examine whether these had differential effects in the two groups. Foreign Direct Investments and trade flows with the EU had a bigger inequality‐enhancing effect in New Member States. We interpret this as evidence of technological catching‐up and productivity improvements taking place in this region. Other specific reforms, such as privatisation and price liberalisation, had similarly strong effects in the two groups. We also find some evidence of an inequality‐decreasing effect of an indicator of Voice and Accountability in countries outside the EU, and that countries with higher government effectiveness experienced lower levels of inequality. This supports the relevance of institutional capacity in tackling inequality. Finally, we speculate over the effects of the current global crisis on future economic performance.
The Quantity Theory of the Value of Money

I894), p. 43. QUANTITY THEORY OF TIE VALUE OF MONEY I63 I89I to 470.9 per cent. , and in I892 to 50I per cent. of their amount in i86o. ' The growth of the clearing-house system for the country as a whole has been even more marked. In i86o only five of these institutions were in operation.2 In I89I fiftyseven reported to the Secretary of the Treasury. In that year the total clearings for the United States were over 57 billion
Soft Load Shedding: An Efficient Approach to Manage Electricity Demand in a Renewable Rich Distribution System

Matching demand and supply of electricity generation is difficult in a renewable-rich system. This is partly due to the long-term variability and short-term uncertainty of wind and solar. Utilities use several approaches to deal with the variations of renewable generation. Some of these include having extra fossil fuel based peaker plants, managing flexible loads using demand-side management, real-time pricing etc. In this paper, we present another approach to manage supply variations by introducing semi-flexible loads at the demand side. These semi-flexible loads are residential loads that cannot be shut down or be moved completely to another hour but have the possibility to shed a small percentage of their load for a short time. This approach called soft load shedding is challenging as residential customers have the multitude of energy usage patterns. In this paper we compare and contrast three soft load shedding techniques and discuss their strengths and shortcomings in matching the demand with available supply.
Modeling the impact of interaction on pedestrian group motion

Abstract Mobile social robots aimed at interacting with and assisting humans in pedestrian areas need to understand the dynamics of pedestrian social interaction. In this work, we investigate the effect of interaction on pedestrian group motion by defining three motion models to represent (1) interpersonal-distance, (2) relative orientation and (3) absolute difference of velocities; and model them using a dataset of 12000+ pedestrian trajectories recorded in uncontrolled settings. Our contributions include: (i) Demonstrating that interaction has a prominent effect on the empirical distributions of the proposed joint motion attributes, where increasing levels of interaction lead to more regular behavior (ii) Developing analytic motion models of such distributions and reflect the effect of interaction on model parameters (iii) Detecting the social groups in a crowd with almost perfect accuracy utilizing the proposed models, despite the constant flow direction in the environment which causes unrelated pedestrians to move in a correlated way, and thus makes group recognition more difficult (iv) Estimating the level of intensity with considerable rates utilizing the proposed models Graphical Abstract
Employers' preference and assessment of the qualities of fresh business graduates: empirical evidence from Malaysia

This paper examines the qualities of fresh graduates in business from the perspectives of employers. Three main research questions are addressed: 1) What are the qualities preferred among fresh business graduates? 2) What ratings do employers give to the qualities of fresh business graduates? 3) Are the employers satisfied with the qualities of fresh business graduates? Data was collected from a questionnaire-based survey done on a sample of 127 human resource managers in Malaysia. The qualities of the fresh graduates include knowledge, skills, abilities, and others (experience, behaviour and attitudes), or KSAOs. Analyses on the mean scores indicate various aspects of KSAOs that employers seek in fresh business graduates. Even though the employers are generally satisfied with the graduates' qualities, the preference-assessment comparison reveals significant gaps in the graduates' skills and abilities. The findings are discussed and interpreted to provide important implications to employers, graduates and educational institutions.
The Annuity Puzzle Revisited

There is a pressing need for a better understanding of how access to various types of financial products can impact retirement behavior, especially if this access comes from a change in the incentive scheme through a reform of the current Social Security system. This is especially important if we are to provide useful policy recommendations regarding reform to the current social insurance system. In this paper I focus on the “annuity puzzle,” the question as to why the annuity market is so narrow. I present a model that endogenizes the annuity decision along with the consumption/saving and labor supply decisions. This research enhances our understanding of how annuities work in a life cycle model with more realistic characterizations of the choices and incentives that individuals face. My results show that the low rates of annuitization can be the product of optimal decision making by individuals in a life cycle model which endogenizes the labor/leisure decision and accounts for Social Security. The government should pay particular attention to the rules regarding withdrawal of benefits through annuities or lump-sums when introducing individual retirement accounts or other privatization schemes, given the interaction between retirement incentives and the attractiveness of annuities.
Quantifying Cognitive Reserve in Older Adults by Decomposing Episodic Memory Variance: Replication and Extension

Abstract The theory of cognitive reserve attempts to explain why some individuals are more resilient to age-related brain pathology. Efforts to explore reserve have been hindered by measurement difficulties. Reed et al. (2010) proposed quantifying reserve as residual variance in episodic memory performance that remains after accounting for demographic factors and brain pathology (whole brain, hippocampal, and white matter hyperintensity volumes). This residual variance represents the discrepancy between an individual's predicted and actual memory performance. The goals of the present study were to extend these methods to a larger, community-based sample and to investigate whether the residual reserve variable is explained by age, predicts longitudinal changes in language, and predicts dementia conversion independent of age. Results support this operational measure of reserve. The residual reserve variable was associated with higher reading ability, lower likelihood of meeting criteria for mild cognitive impairment, lower odds of dementia conversion independent of age, and less decline in language abilities over 3 years. Finally, the residual reserve variable moderated the negative impact of memory variance explained by brain pathology on language decline. This method has the potential to facilitate research on the mechanisms of cognitive reserve and the efficacy of interventions designed to impart reserve. (JINS, 2013, 19, 1–9)
Updated variable-radius measures of hospital competition.

OBJECTIVE To calculate variable-radius measures of hospital market size and create measures of competition for hospitals' markets. DATA SOURCES Discharge abstracts from the 1997 State Inpatient Databases of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) linked with the American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey, Area Resource File (ARF), InterStudy Regional Market Analysis database, and Medicare's Prospective Payment System Impact Files. STUDY DESIGN Hospital radii capturing 75 and 90 percent of hospital admissions regressed against hospital and health care market characteristics and other local area characteristics, where the specification was designed to maximize predictive ability. The number of competing hospitals and the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) of competition were calculated for each hospital's market. DATA COLLECTION METHODS Discharge abstracts were used to create actual radii for hospitals in nine states. These data were linked with other data describing hospital, health care market, and other characteristics. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We explained 44.7 and 9.6 percent of the variation among urban and rural hospitals, respectively, in radii that capture 90 percent of patients, and slightly less of the variation in radii that capture 75 percent of patients. Population density; number of other hospitals in the local area; and hospital characteristics such as medical school affiliation, percentage of admissions that are Medicaid, case mix, and service offerings are important correlates of a hospital's market size. CONCLUSIONS Predicted radii and associated competition measures were created (matched to AHA hospital identifiers) for all nonfederal, short-term, general medical/surgical hospitals in the continental United States for which complete data were available in 1997 (N=4,806) and are available from the authors.
Comparing the clinical outcomes of young-onset and adult-onset ulcerative colitis: a multi-center Korean Association for the Study for Intestinal Diseases study

Background/Aims The aim of this study was to compare the clinical features and outcomes of ulcerative colitis (UC) according to the age of onset in Korea. Methods A total of 1,141 patients who were diagnosed with UC between July 1987 and November 2013 at 11 tertiary hospitals were enrolled. The baseline disease characteristic and disease state at onset, treatment during the disease course were retrospectively reviewed among patients with young-onset (YO, < 20 years) and adult-onset (AO, ≥ 20 years). Severe outcome was defined as use of intravenous (IV) steroids, infliximab, immunosuppressant, or UC-related operation. Results There were 55 YO patients (mean age, 17.8 ± 2.4) and 1,086 AO patients (mean age, 43.0 ± 13.6). High Mayo scores (7.7 ± 3.0 vs. 5.6 ± 2.7, p = 0.000), extensive UC (52.7% vs. 25.8%, p = 0.000) and IV steroid (41.8% vs. 18.0%, p = 0.000), immunosuppressant (47.3% vs. 26.9%, p = 0.002), and infliximab (20.0% vs. 7.2%, p = 0.001) use were more frequent in the YO than in the AO group. According to multivariate analysis, severe outcomes were related to YO disease (hazard ratio [HR], 2.18; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.27 to 3.71), body mass index < 23 kg/m2 (HR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.07 to 2.00), severe (HR, 2.29; 95% CI, 1.36 to 3.38), and moderate (HR, 2.48; 95% CI, 1.67 to 3.67) disease, extensive UC (HR, 2.90; 95% CI, 1.79 to 4.69), UC-related admission (HR, 63.89; 95% CI, 20.41 to 200.02), and oral steroid use (HR, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.39 to 0.67). Conclusions UC with YO presented with more advanced clinical features at onset and more severe outcomes than the AO. YO cases require careful management and intense treatment strategies.
An integrative theory of attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder based on the cognitive and affective neurosciences

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a behavioral syndrome that arises in early childhood, often co-occurs with conduct disorder and leads, developmentally, to antisocial behavior and substance abuse. Models from cognitive and affective neuroscience have been invoked in an effort to understand the development of ADHD, leading to a broad array of interrelated theories and hypothesized mechanisms. In this paper, we highlight core mechanisms that may cut across several theories and constructs, and thus provide some leverage for further study and conceptualization from a neuroscience perspective. We emphasize the joint operations of frontostriatal and frontocerebellar neural loops in detecting and predicting what and when important events in the environment will occur and their interaction with frontoamygdala loops in assigning emotional significance to these events. We note that weaknesses in the development of these basic operations could lead to decrement in the development of cognitive and affective control and other mental operations mediated by prefrontal cortex during development. In turn, such decrement could lead to many of the phenotypic cognitive and neuropsychological features seen in children with ADHD.This work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grants R01-MH59105 and R01-MH63146 to J.T. N. and NIMH R01 MH63255 and NIDA R21 DA15882 to B.J.C.
Long-run and short-run money demand: which price deflator to use? Some evidence using New Zealand data

When institutional and financial changes are great, findings about the influence of income and opportunity cost variables on money demand, and the stability of any such relationship, may be influenced by how prices are measured. This paper considers the case of New Zealand, which has experienced several large regime shifts in the space of a decade. Using the cointegration/error correction framework, it is found that consumer prices excluding interest costs provide the most meaningful measure of money demand.
Quantifying the Lasting Harm to the US Economy from the Financial Crisis

The financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession left the U.S. economy in an injured state. In 2013, output was 13 percent below its trend path from 1990 through 2007. Part of this shortfall--2.2 percentage points out of the 13--was the result of lingering slackness in the labor market in the form of abnormal unemployment and substandard weekly hours of work. The single biggest contributor was a shortfall in business capital, which accounted for 3.9 percentage points. The second largest was a shortfall of 3.5 percentage points in total factor productivity. The fourth was a shortfall of 2.4 percentage points in labor-force participation. I discuss these four sources of the injury in detail, focusing on identifying state variables that may or may not return to earlier growth paths. The conclusion is optimistic about the capital stock and slackness in the labor market and pessimistic about reversing the declines in total factor productivity and the part of the participation shortfall not associated with the weak labor market.
Prevalence of Streptococcus pneumoniae resistance to penicillin in two hospitals of Caxias do Sul

Streptococcus pneumoniae resistance to penicillin was studied in two hospitals in Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, between May 1998 and November 2001. From the 176 strains of invasive Streptococcus pneumoniae that were identified, 2.28% (CI 0.62-5.74) presented intermediate resistance, and 3.42% (CI 1.26-7.31) presented high-level resistance. The conclusion was that in Caxias do Sul the use of penicillin was still justified as treatment of pneumococcal pneumonia, differently from other centers where penicillin was replaced by other antibiotics. These results confirm the statement of IDSA (Infectious Diseases Society of America) guideline for the management of community-acquired pneumonia in adults, that the choice of antimicrobial drug to treat pneumococcal pneumonia should be guided by local or regional prevalence of resistance to penicillin. (J Pneumol 2003;29(1):15-20)
Economic Growth, Tourism Arrivals and Climate Change

This paper investigates the link between economic growth, tourism arrivals and climate change. In this research, we formulate three equations. The first equation evaluates the correlation between economic growth and tourism arrivals. The second model considers carbon dioxide emissions and tourism arrivals. Finally, we consider the determinants of tourism arrivals. We selected the period 1990-2009 for European economy using the panel data. The equation that evaluates economic growth demonstrates that tourist arrivals, energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and openness trade are positively correlated with economic growth. A large number of studies consider that there is a positive correlation between tourism and climate change. However, some studies show that there is an alternative hypothesis i.e. a negative association between tourist arrivals and climate change. Our results are in this direction. When we apply the fixed effects and GMM-system, the results show that income per capita, and energy consumption present a positive impact on CO2 emissions. The econometric results also demonstrate that tourism arrivals and squared income per capita are negatively correlated with CO2 emissions. The equation that analyses the determinants of tourism arrivals demonstrates that income per capita, openness trade and energy consumption present a positive effect on tourism arrivals.
Mining Event-Oriented Topics in Microblog Stream with Unsupervised Multi-View Hierarchical Embedding

This article presents an unsupervised multi-view hierarchical embedding (UMHE) framework to sufficiently reveal the intrinsic topical knowledge in social events. Event-oriented topics are highly related to such events as it can provide explicit descriptions of what have happened in social community. In many real-world cases, however, it is difficult to include all attributes of microblogs, more often, textual aspects only are available. Traditional topic modelling methods have failed to generate event-oriented topics with the textual aspects, since the inherent relations between topics are often overlooked in these methods. Meanwhile, the metrics in original word vocabulary space might not effectively capture semantic distances. Our UMHE framework overcomes the severe information deficiency and poor feature representation. The UMHE first develops a multi-view Bayesian rose tree to preliminarily generate prior knowledge for latent topics and their relations. With such prior knowledge, we design an unsupervised translation-based hierarchical embedding method to make a better representation of these latent topics. By applying self-adaptive spectral clustering on the embedding space and the original space concomitantly, we eventually extract event-oriented topics in word distributions to express social events. Our framework is purely data-driven and unsupervised, without any external knowledge. Experimental results on TREC Tweets2011 dataset and Sina Weibo dataset demonstrate that the UMHE framework can construct hierarchical structure with high fitness, but also yield topic embeddings with salient semantics; therefore, it can derive event-oriented topics with meaningful descriptions.
Threshold ion parameters of line-type soft-errors in biased thin-BOX SOI SRAMs: Difference between sensitivities to terrestrial and space radiation

Thin-BOX SOI technology is drawing attention for its low soft error sensitivity. Terrestrial radiation tests already demonstrated its further reduction under back-bias conditions. However, recent heavy ion tests with SRAMs exhibited the opposite result, a 100-fold increase accompanying 10-bits-long line-type multi-cell upsets, when they were biased. This work proposes a metal bridge model, suggesting that this difference in response to the back-bias conditioning stems from the difference in ion parameters such as range and linear energy transfer.
Epidemiology of Behcet’s Disease in Taiwan: A Population-Based Study

ABSTRACT Purpose: To study the incidence and epidemiology of Behcet’s disease in Taiwan. Methods: This retrospective cohort study was conducted using the nationwide reimbursement database in Taiwan. One million registered beneficiaries of the Taiwan National Health Insurance system in 2000 were randomly selected. All medical claims of these persons were collected. The definition of having Behcet’s disease was based on diagnostic codes. Persons who had incomplete registry data or diagnoses prior to 2001 were excluded. Annual incidence between 2001 and 2011 was calculated and risk factors for incidence were explored using the Cox proportional regression model. Characteristics of patients with Behcet’s disease with and without uveitis were compared. Results: A total of 236 newly diagnosed patients with Behcet’s disease were found between 2001 and 2011. The average incidence was 2.40 cases per 100,000 person-years (ranging from 1.29 to 3.53). Female patients and those aged between 40 and 65 years were at the highest risk of Behcet’s disease. Only 18.2% of the patients had also suffered from uveitis. The subspecialties of doctors making initial diagnoses and the number of prescribed immunomodulatory agents differed significantly between the patients with and without uveitis (p < 0.001 and <0.05, respectively). Conclusion: Incidence of Behcet’s disease was not high in Taiwan and relatively few of the patients developed uveitis. Patients of working age or who were female were more likely to have Behcet’s disease. However, age of onset and clinical severity differed between patients with and without uveitis.