Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Documenting business-to-consumer (B2C) communications on Facebook: What have changed among restaurants and consumers?

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to document how restaurant’s business-to-consumer communication strategies evolved on Facebook over time and how consumers’ reactions to a variety of Facebook messages changed over time. Design/methodology/approach – This study analyzed 2,463 Facebook messages posted by seven quick-service restaurant chains and three casual-dining restaurant chains in the fourth quarter of 2010, 2012 and 2014. ANOVA and post hoc t-test were used to compare the differences among four media types (photo, status update, video and hyperlink) in terms of their usage by companies and Facebook users’ reactions to these messages (measured by number of “Likes”, number of comments and number of shares). Findings – Over the three periods of time under observation, there is a substantial decrease of status updates by restaurants and a dramatic increase of photo updates. Photo remained as the most “popular” media type, receiving most “Likes”, comments and shares from consumers. Video was not cons.
Effect of Plant Spacing on Onion (Allium cepa L.) Seeds Quality

This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of plant spacing on onion seed quality, The experiments were executed at the nursery of Horticulture Administration, Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources and the labouratory of the Agricultural Research Station , Northern State, Sudan, in two successive seasons (2010 -2011and 2011-2012). In the nursery the bulbs of cultivar "Bafetaim (s)" were planted on both sides of 70cm ridges at 2.5, 5, 10 and 12.5 cm within ridge spacing. The cultural practices were followed as recommended till seed harvest. The experimental units were in completely randomized block design with four replications. After harvest the seeds were tested directly for germination (germination percentage, rate and uniformity) in petri dishes and emergence(emergence percentage, rate and uniformity) in soil in plastic seeds were again tested for germination after one and two years storage in paper bags at room temperature. All seed tests experiments were in completely randomized design with three replications. The results showed that the widest spacing had positive effects on germination and emergence percentage and rate. The closest spacing had positive effects on germination and emergence uniformity as well as ageing or deterioration rate. It could be concluded that closer plant spacing has no significant effect on onion seed quality moreover, it may reduce ageing rate during storage under normal storage conditions. However, the closest within row spacing (2.5 and 5cm) might be tedious and labourious compared to medium ones (10 cm). So medium within row spacing (10 cm) could be recommended for high onion seed yield (data not shown) and quality in the Northern State, Sudan and areas of similar environmental conditions.
Philosophy, ethics, medicine and health care: the urgent need for critical practice.

Reader in Applied Philosophy, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, MMU Cheshire, Crewe, UK Director, University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, USA Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Do Candidates Seek Personal Votes on the Internet? Constituency Candidates in the 2009 German Federal Elections

The Internet provides new opportunities for political communication. How strategic are constituency candidates in exploiting these new opportunities and what are the contexts driving their choices? This paper envisions the Internet as a means for personal vote-seeking on the campaign trail adopted by those candidates electorally motivated in this regard. It aims to explore this argument in theoretical and empirical ways and in light of survey data resulting from the 2009 German Candidate Study (GCS 2009). These data cover 38 per cent (N = 790) of all constituency candidates running in the 2009 campaign and enclose numerous questions on their campaign activities online.
Subsurface photodisruption in human sclera: wavelength dependence.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Approximately 105 million people worldwide have glaucoma, and approximately 5 million are blind from its complications. Current surgical techniques often fail because of scarring of the conjunctival tissue, Tenon's tissue, or both. Femtosecond lasers can create highly precise incisions beneath the surface of a tissue, as previously demonstrated in the transparent cornea. Because the sclera is a highly scattering subsurface, photodisruption has not been previously possible. MATERIALS AND METHODS To overcome scattering, a laser operating at 1,700 nm was used to make subsurface cuts in human sclera in vitro via photodisruption. RESULTS Sub-10-microm width incisions were created beneath the surface without collateral tissue effects, something not possible with shorter wavelengths used to date in corneal applications with the femtosecond laser. CONCLUSION Completely subsurface photodisruptions can be accomplished in human sclera in vitro. In vivo studies are required to evaluate the potential use of this technology for scleral applications.
A Day-End Transaction Price Anomaly

A large mean price change is observed on the last daily NYSE transaction. This suggests that closing prices may not consistently represent stock values. Transaction prices are studied to further characterize the day-end price rise and to determine whether it is due to any limited subsample of stocks or dates. The results indicate that the phenomenon is pervasive over most firms and days. Some evidence suggests that it is caused by a change in the frequency of ask prices at day-end.
Sufficient oxygen for animal respiration 1,400 million years ago

Significance How have environmental constraints influenced the timing of animal evolution? It is often argued that oxygen first increased to sufficient levels for animal respiration during the Neoproterozoic Eon, 1,000 million to 542 million years ago, thus explaining the timing of animal evolution. We report geochemical evidence for deep-water oxygenation below an ancient oxygen minimum zone 1,400 million years ago. Oceanographic modeling constrains atmospheric oxygen to a minimum of ∼4% of today’s values, sufficient oxygen to have fueled early-evolved animal clades. Therefore, we suggest that there was sufficient atmospheric oxygen for animals long before the evolution of animals themselves, and that rising levels of Neoproterozoic oxygen did not contribute to the relatively late appearance of animal life on Earth. The Mesoproterozoic Eon [1,600–1,000 million years ago (Ma)] is emerging as a key interval in Earth history, with a unique geochemical history that might have influenced the course of biological evolution on Earth. Indeed, although this time interval is rather poorly understood, recent chromium isotope results suggest that atmospheric oxygen levels were <0.1% of present levels, sufficiently low to have inhibited the evolution of animal life. In contrast, using a different approach, we explore the distribution and enrichments of redox-sensitive trace metals in the 1,400 Ma sediments of Unit 3 of the Xiamaling Formation, North China Block. Patterns of trace metal enrichments reveal oxygenated bottom waters during deposition of the sediments, and biomarker results demonstrate the presence of green sulfur bacteria in the water column. Thus, we document an ancient oxygen minimum zone. We develop a simple, yet comprehensive, model of marine carbon−oxygen cycle dynamics to show that our geochemical results are consistent with atmospheric oxygen levels >4% of present-day levels. Therefore, in contrast to previous suggestions, we show that there was sufficient oxygen to fuel animal respiration long before the evolution of animals themselves.
Homemaking and women’s well-being in Europe. Effect of divorce risk, selection and dominating gender-role attitudes

Whereas it is known that employment affects individual well-being, the literature on the effect of homemaking is so far inconclusive. The paper investigates the effect of being a housewife on well-being of women, using European Values Study data for 36 European countries (year 2008) and multilevel regression methodology. Results show that the effect of homemaking on well-being is overall positive and it varies across countries. Three possible explanations of this variation are examined. First hypothesis concerns traditional gender-role attitudes in a country. Results confirm that in more traditional countries homemakers have higher wellbeing, but only in western Europe. Effect of individual norms is strong: housewives with traditional gender-role attitudes declare higher well-being. Second hypothesis refers to the economic risk of specialization to homemaking, and states that higher divorce risk decreases well-being of housewives. Contrary to expectations, higher divorce risk in a country is accompanied by higher well-being of housewives. I interpret this as a sign of equality concerns incorporated into legal divorce procedures. Third hypothesis concerns positive and negative selection to homemaking. Results show that the relationship between prevalence of homemaking and the well-being of housewives is curvilinear. Highest well-being gains from homemaking occur in countries with lowest and highest prevalence of homemaking.
A Correlation Based Analysis for Approximate MAP Detectors and Iterative Receivers

In this paper, we consider two approximate maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) detectors for code division multiple access (CDMA) systems. We show that if the sum of multiple access interferences (MAI) is Gaussian (with certain mean and variance from the extrinsic information), the (well-known) minimum mean square error (MMSE) detector with soft interference cancellation (SIC), called the MMSE-SIC detector, becomes the MAP detector. Thus, for a large number of users, the MMSE-SIC detector becomes asymptotically the MAP detector. In addition, we consider a correlation based analysis for the iterative detection with the approximate MAP detectors to see the performance limit. Then, the correlation analysis is further generalized to analyze the performance of the iterative receiver consisting of an approximate MAP detectors and channel decoders for coded signals
How did Financial Reporting Contribute to the Financial Crisis?

We scrutinize the role financial reporting for fair values, asset securitizations, derivatives and loan loss provisioning played in the Financial Crisis. Because banks were at the center of the Financial Crisis, we focus our discussion and analysis on the effects of financial reporting by banks. We conclude fair value accounting played little or no role in the Financial Crisis. However, transparency of information associated with asset securitizations and derivatives likely was insufficient for investors to assess properly the values and riskiness of bank assets and liabilities. Although the FASB and IASB have taken laudable steps to improve disclosures relating to asset securitizations, in our view, the approach for accounting for securitizations in the IASB's Exposure Draft that would require banks to recognize whatever assets and liabilities they have after the securitization is executed better reflects the underlying economics of the securitization transaction. Regarding derivatives, we recommend disclosure of more disaggregated information, disclosure of the sensitivity of derivatives' fair values to changes in market risk variables, and implementing a risk-equivalence approach to enable investors to understand better the leverage inherent in derivatives. We also conclude that because the objectives of bank regulation and financial reporting differ, changes in financial reporting needed to improve transparency of information provided to the capital markets likely will not be identical to changes in bank regulations needed to strengthen the stability of the banking sector. We discuss how loan loss provisioning may have contributed to the Financial Crisis through its effects on procyclicality and on the effectiveness of market discipline. Accounting standard setters and bank regulators should find some common ground. However, it is the responsibility of bank regulators, not accounting standard setters, to ensure the stability of the financial system.
Deep Multimodal Learning for Affective Analysis and Retrieval

Social media has been a convenient platform for voicing opinions through posting messages, ranging from tweeting a short text to uploading a media file, or any combination of messages. Understanding the perceived emotions inherently underlying these user-generated contents (UGC) could bring light to emerging applications such as advertising and media analytics. Existing research efforts on affective computation are mostly dedicated to single media, either text captions or visual content. Few attempts for combined analysis of multiple media are made, despite that emotion can be viewed as an expression of multimodal experience. In this paper, we explore the learning of highly non-linear relationships that exist among low-level features across different modalities for emotion prediction. Using the deep Bolzmann machine (DBM), a joint density model over the space of multimodal inputs, including visual, auditory, and textual modalities, is developed. The model is trained directly using UGC data without any labeling efforts. While the model learns a joint representation over multimodal inputs, training samples in absence of certain modalities can also be leveraged. More importantly, the joint representation enables emotion-oriented cross-modal retrieval, for example, retrieval of videos using the text query “crazy cat”. The model does not restrict the types of input and output, and hence, in principle, emotion prediction and retrieval on any combinations of media are feasible. Extensive experiments on web videos and images show that the learnt joint representation could be very compact and be complementary to hand-crafted features, leading to performance improvement in both emotion classification and cross-modal retrieval.
Voluntary disclosure of intellectual capital in New Zealand annual reports and the “hidden value”

Purpose – The paper's purpose is to describe the extent and type of voluntary disclosure of intellectual capital (IC) in New Zealand, and to test for a relationship between “hidden value” (difference between firm's market and book value), and its relationship to voluntary IC disclosure in the annual reports of New Zealand companies. The study aims to incorporate the effect of revaluations and growth expectations.Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis of 70 publicly listed New Zealand firms, and database retrieval of independent variable data. Correlation and regression analysis is undertaken.Findings – Only revaluing firms show a significant positive relationship between their levels of hidden value and their voluntary disclosure of IC and its components of external and internal structure. Explanatory power is increased when an interaction term involving hidden value and growth expectations is introduced.Research limitations/implications – Further developments in the growth expectation and market .
Replication of association of IL1 gene complex members with ankylosing spondylitis in Taiwanese Chinese

Objective: To test the association of interleukin 1 (IL1) gene family members with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), previously reported in Europid subjects, in an ethnically remote population. Methods: 200 Taiwanese Chinese AS patients and 200 ethnically matched healthy controls were genotyped for five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and the IL1RN.VNTR, markers previously associated with AS. Allele, genotype, and haplotype frequencies were compared between cases and controls. Results: Association of alleles and genotypes of the markers IL1F10.3, IL1RN.4, and IL1RN.VNTR was observed with AS (p<0.05). Haplotypes of pairs of these markers and of the markers IL1RN.6/1 and IL1RN.6/2 were also significantly associated with AS. The strongest associations observed were with the marker IL1RN.4, and with the two-marker haplotype IL1RN.4–IL1RN.VNTR (both p = 0.004). Strong linkage disequilibrium was observed between all marker pairs except those involving IL1B-511 (D′ 0.4 to 0.9, p<0.01). Conclusions: The IL1 gene cluster is associated with AS in Taiwanese Chinese. This finding provides strong statistical support that the previously observed association of this gene cluster with AS is a true positive finding. These authors contributed equally to the study.
Catching‐Up or Leapfrogging in the Indian IT Service Sector: Windows of Opportunity, Path‐Creating, and Moving Up the Value Chain

type="main"> Indian IT service firms are successfully competing with world leaders and research on the industry is emerging. Providing analysis at firm rather than industry level, this article identifies the windows of opportunity open to Indian firms, with the following findings: (i) the catching-up process by Indian IT firms can be classified as a three-stage ‘body shopping–offshoring–global delivery model’, comparable with the three steps in original equipment, own-design and own-brand manufacturing; (ii) the window of opportunity for Indian firms was primarily the techno-economic paradigm shift, and secondarily the government's regulation and support of the industry; and (iii) Indian firms initially partially re-invented their own path by offshoring and created their own global delivery model, gradually moving to higher value-added services.
Global Production Networks and Information Technology: The Case of Taiwan

Recent developments have called into question the extent to which local agglomeration adequately encapsulates the dynamics of Taiwan's information technology industry. Under the pressure of globalization, global production networks have come to the fore of Taiwan's industrial strategy. By means of in-depth case studies on a PC and an IC firm, this paper sets to explore issues as to the Taiwanese firms' position within these global production networks and the way in which IT is used to facilitate the Taiwanese firms' participation in the global production networks. On balance, the use of IT in conjunction with the reshuffling of business models can help the Taiwanese firms to strengthen their position within the global production networks. In particular, the essence of IT application is to facilitate networked firms participating in setting the rules of the game for industrial competition, preferably in the international arena.
The generalized Fisher hypothesis in the Asian markets

This paper investigates the generalized Fisher hypothesis for nine equity markets in the Asian countries. It states that the real rates of return on common stocks and the expected inflation rate are independent and that nominal stock returns vary in a one‐to‐one correspondence with the expected inflation rate. The regression results indicate that stock returns in general are negatively correlated to both expected and unexpected inflation, and that common stocks provide a poor hedge against inflation. However, the results of the VAR model indicate the lack of a unidirectional causality between stock returns and inflation. It also fails to find a consistent negative response neither of inflation to shocks in stock returns nor of stock returns to shocks in inflation in all countries. It appears that the generalized Fisher hypothesis in the Asian markets is as puzzling as in the developed markets.
Host Protective Immunity to Fungal Infections-Recent Advances

Fungi cause different disease types, from common superficial infections to invasive or deep-seated severe infections. Host defense mechanisms determine the clinical outcome of fungal infections, either being inadequate and failing to control infection, being too exuberant and contributing to tissue damage or failing to resolve properly leading to persistent inflammation and fibrosis. The recognition pathways of the innate immune systems, the phagocytes and other immune effector cells, cytokines and other molecules work together to control and contain fungal infections. Recently discovered intracellular receptors are the NLR- NLRP3 inflammasomes and Damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). It has been shown of recent that Neutrophils extracellular traps (NETS) aid in the killing of fungi and Macrophage migration inhibition factor (MIF) plays a role in resistance to fungal infection. In the past, protective immunity to fungi has been known to be by Th- 1 response driven by the 1L-12-IFNγ axis. Recently, other pathways of cytokines and T-cells have been implicated in the immunity to fungal infections; these are Th-17 cells and IL-17, IL23, and IL22. Central to the formation of different T-cell subsets and cytokines, is the discovery that Dendritic cells exhibit plasticity on exposure to different forms of fungi, using different recognition receptors. Keywords - Cytokines,Fungi,Phagocytes,Toll-like receptors,T-Lymphocytes.
THE ROLE OF COMPLEMENTARY ACTORS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF INNOVATION IN SMALL FIRMS

This study examines the findings of a survey of small, high innovator firms and their assessment of the risks and benefits of forming strategic alliances with third party "complementors". The study found that the entrepreneurs of these small innovator firms were willing to form strategic alliances where such collaboration would assist in reducing customer perceptions of risk in the adoption of their innovation, while also enhancing the customer's understanding of the innovation. However, the entrepreneur of the small firm also needed to be confident that the alliance would allow him or her to retain control over the quality of the final outcome to their customer. These findings suggest that education of the entrepreneur in the development and management of strategic networks may be a useful enhancement to the process of innovation in small firms.
Identification and treatment of a waste stream at a bleached‐kraft pulp mill that depresses a sex steroid in the mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus)

Changes to indicators of reproductive performance have been documented in fish exposed to some bleached kraft pulp mill effluents (BKPMEs). However, responses are not consistent across mill types or processes. It is not clear where the sources of the effects are within mills, what the causative compounds are, or what process changes are effective to remove these sources. Our previous studies suggested that condensates were a source of compounds that reduced plasma testosterone in the mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus). Results also suggested that reverse osmosis (RO) treatment of condensates removed this source. The objective of this study was to use a toxicity identification evaluation approach and expose mummichog to various waste streams in the laboratory to identify the effluent source that depressed plasma testosterone in the mummichog and the effects of RO treatment. In 7‐ and 21‐d exposures, mummichog were exposed to dilutions of RO feed condensate, RO permeate, combined mill effluent (CME), and final effluent. Results confirmed that condensates depressed plasma testosterone in mummichog. Chemical characterization of the condensate indicated that plant phytosterols were likely not the responsible compounds. Results also confirmed that RO treatment removed the potential of the condensates to depress plasma testosterone in mummichog at environmentally relevant concentrations of final mill effluent (1%).