Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measurement of tourist satisfaction with restaurant services: A segment-based approach

It is widely recognised that the tourist market is not homogeneous. Yet segment-specific satisfaction analysis has received inadequate attention both from researchers and managers. Focusing on tourists’ dining experiences, this study investigated whether tourists could be grouped into distinct segments; whether the composition of variables determining customer satisfaction differed among the identified segments; and whether market segmentation strategy could contribute to more parsimonious satisfaction prediction models. Factor analysis was performed to determine dimensions that are likely to influence tourist restaurant selection and evaluations, whereas cluster analysis was employed to identify homogeneous groups of respondents. Multiple regression analyses were then employed to examine the relative importance of service dimensions in determining satisfaction judgments of each segment. Based on the analyses, five distinct dining segments were identified. Different sets of service dimensions appeared to affect satisfaction judgments. Greater variation in satisfaction was explained when analysis was undertaken at market segment level compared to aggregate market level. Management and marketing implications of the study are discussed.
Measurement distortion of graphs in corporate reports: an experimental study

Graphs in corporate annual reports are a double‐edged sword. While they offer the potential for improved communication of accounting information to users, the preparers of the annual reports can easily manipulate the graphs for their own interests. For over a decade, the empirical financial graphics literature has focused on examining company reporting practices. A particular concern has been measurement distortion, which violates a fundamental principle of graph construction. Unfortunately, it is not yet known whether observed levels of measurement distortion are likely to affect users’ perceptions of financial performance. This study uses an experimental approach to address this issue. Pairs of graphs are shown to establish the level of difference that is just noticeable to graph readers. Six levels of “distortion” are investigated (5 per cent, 10 per cent, 20 per cent, 30 per cent, 40 per cent and 50 per cent). Results indicate that if financial graphs are to avoid distorting the perceptions of users, then no measurement distortions in excess of 10 per cent should be allowed. Users with lower levels of financial understanding appear to be most at risk of being misled by distorted graphs. Further research will be necessary to investigate whether this impact upon perceptions subsequently affects users’ decisions in specific contexts.
Patents and standards : a modern framework for IPR-based standardisation

• A submitted manuscript is the author's version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.
A collaborative approach for research paper recommender system

Research paper recommenders emerged over the last decade to ease finding publications relating to researchers’ area of interest. The challenge was not just to provide researchers with very rich publications at any time, any place and in any form but to also offer the right publication to the right researcher in the right way. Several approaches exist in handling paper recommender systems. However, these approaches assumed the availability of the whole contents of the recommending papers to be freely accessible, which is not always true due to factors such as copyright restrictions. This paper presents a collaborative approach for research paper recommender system. By leveraging the advantages of collaborative filtering approach, we utilize the publicly available contextual metadata to infer the hidden associations that exist between research papers in order to personalize recommendations. The novelty of our proposed approach is that it provides personalized recommendations regardless of the research field and regardless of the user’s expertise. Using a publicly available dataset, our proposed approach has recorded a significant improvement over other baseline methods in measuring both the overall performance and the ability to return relevant and useful publications at the top of the recommendation list.
Long-Run IPO Performance Analysis of German and Spanish Family-Owned Businesses

This article examines the long-run stock market performance of German and Spanish initial public offerings (IPOs) between 1990 and 2000. We distinguish between family-and nonfamily-owned business IPOs by using the power subscale of the F-PEC. Buy-and-hold-abnormal returns (BHAR) are calculated in order to determine abnormal returns. Our results show that three years after going public, investors, on average, realized an abnormal return of −32.8% for German and −36.7% for Spanish IPOs. In both countries, nonfamily business IPOs perform insignificantly better. Regression analyses show that for the whole sample there is a positive company size effect. In family-owned businesses, strong family involvement has a positive impact on the long-run stock market performance, whereas the age of the firm has a negative influence.
Identification of putative insect brush border membrane-binding molecules specific to Bacillus thuringiensis delta-endotoxin by protein blot analysis

Binding sites for insecticidal toxins of Bacillus thuringiensis are located in the brush border membranes of insect midguts. Two approaches were used to investigate the interactions of B. thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki HD-73 CryIA(c) toxin with brush border membrane vesicles from sensitive and naturally resistant insects: 125I-toxin-vesicle binding assays and protein blots probed with 125I-CryIA(c) toxin. In bioassays, Manduca sexta and Heliothis virescens larvae were highly sensitive, Helicoverpa zea larvae were moderately sensitive, and Spodoptera frugiperda larvae were resistant to CryIA(c) toxin. Studies of binding of 125I-CryIA(c) toxin to brush border membrane vesicles from the larval midguts revealed that all insects tested had high-affinity, saturable binding sites. Significantly, S. frugiperda larvae bind but are not killed by CryIA(c) toxin. Labeled CryIA(c) toxin incubated with protein blots identifies a major binding molecule of 120 kDa for M. sexta and 148 kDa for S. frugiperda. H. virescens and H. zea are more complex, containing 155-, 120-, 103-, 90-, and 63-kDa proteins as putative toxin-binding molecules. H. virescens also contains a minor toxin-binding protein of 81 kDa. These experiments provide information that can be applied toward a more detailed characterization of B. thuringiensis toxin-binding proteins.
Flying Performance on the Advanced Simulator for Pilot Training and Laboratory Tests of Vision

Simulator flying performance was compared with the results of sensory visual tests for student pilots, instructor pilots, and fighter pilots, and aircraft flying grades were compared for student pilots. Simulator tasks were formation flight, low-level flight, bombing, and restricted-visibility landing; visual tests were super-threshold velocity discrimination of a radially expanding flow pattern, manual tracking of both motion in depth and motion in the frontal plane, motion thresholds and contrast thresholds for a moving square, and a static sinewave grating. Landing and formation-flight performance correlated with both manual tracking and expanding flow pattern test results. Pilots who were better able to discriminate different rates of expansion of the test flow pattern achieved a greater percentage of hits and near misses in the low-level flight and bombing task. Aircraft flying grades for student pilots correlated with expanding flow pattern test results and with manual tracking of motion in depth. These findings suggest that tests of visual sensitivity to super-threshold motion might usefully be added to current selection tests for flying personnel. They also emphasize the importance of accurate, artifact-free representation of motion in simulator visual displays.
From inns to hotels: the evolution of public houses in Colonial Victoria

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine travellers' experiences with public houses in Colonial Victoria, to determine how the hospitality industry in the colony was transformed from primitive hospitality provision to sophisticated, well managed hotels in a relatively short time.Design/methodology/approach – The article reviews public records, newspapers of the period, eye‐witness accounts and key texts to chart the development of the hospitality industry in Colonial Victoria and to demonstrate how primitive inns became modern hotels within the space of three decades.Findings – This paper highlights how the discovery of gold in 1851 prompted an unprecedented influx of travellers whose expectations of hospitality provision led to the transformation of existing hostelries from crude and primitive inns to modern, sophisticated hotels.Research limitations/implications – The research is confined to Colonial Victoria and therefore, not necessarily a reflection of the colonies in general or general tren.
Cross-Listing, Bonding Hypothesis and Corporate Governance

This paper examines the relationship between cross-listing and corporate governance for Canadian firms, that were cross-listed on US stock exchanges during the period 1997-2003. We find that cross-listed firms have more independent boards and audit committees after the listing relative to a non-cross-listed matched sample of firms and relative to the pre-listing period. Moreover, cross-listed firms experience changes in their ownership structure after the listing. Finally, we provide evidence that the sensitivity of the relation between cross-listed firm valuation with audit committee independence and ownership structure becomes more important after the listing. The results are robust after adjusting for various firm risk characteristics. Overall, the results are consistent with the literature on the bonding role of cross-listings on US stock exchanges. Copyright 2007 The Authors Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
ON BRÓDY'S CONJECTURE: THEORY, FACTS AND FIGURES ABOUT INSTABILITY OF THE US ECONOMY

Bródy's conjecture regarding the instability of economies is submitted to an empirical test using input–output flow tables of varying size for the US economy, for the benchmark years 1997 and 2002, as well as for the period 1998–2011. The results obtained using input–output tables of various dimensions lend support to the view of increasing instability (in the sense of Bródy) of the US economy over the period considered. Furthermore, our analysis shows that only a few vertically integrated industries are enough to shape the behaviour of the entire economy in the case of a disturbance. These results may usefully be contrasted with those derived in a parallel literature on aggregate fluctuations from microeconomic ‘idiosyncratic’ shocks.
Trade in Producer Services and Returns Due to Specialization under Monopolistic Competition

This paper demonstrates that liberalizing trade in services, while yielding efficiency gains associated with comparative advantage, may yield additional gains for both importing and exporting countries because of an increased division of labor. A model is developed in which producer services coordinate and control the specialized members of complex production processes. The model is used to analyze trade in services and its effect on the division of labor and the realization of returns from specialization. This differs from the recent literature on traded services and specialization because of the explicit role introduced for services in the specialization process.
The injury iceberg: an ecological approach to planning sustainable community safety interventions.

ISSUE ADDRESSED A systematic ecological framework in which to design sustainable, community-based, safety promotion interventions is presented. METHOD A literature review was undertaken of English-language articles addressing the topics of 'ecological injury prevention or safety promotion', 'ecological health promotion', 'sustainable economic, health or ecological systems' and 'steady state', with 143 articles retrieved and reviewed. RESULTS Injury prevention is a biomedical construct, in which injury is perceived to be a physical event resulting from the sudden release of environmental energy producing tissue damage in an individual. This reductionist perspective overlooks the importance of psychological and sociological determinants of injury. Safety has physical, psychological and sociological dimensions. It is inherently an ecological concept. Interventions aiming to achieve long-term improvements in community safety must seek to develop sustainable safety promoting characteristics within the target community. CONCLUSION To reduce a community's risk of injury and sustain this lowered risk, the community 'ecological system' must have access to the resources necessary to maintain the desired outcome and the ability to mobilise these resources.
Vasorelaxant activities of the putative endocannabinoid virodhamine in rat isolated small mesenteric artery

Virodhamine is a recently identified novel endocannabinoid. Cannabinoids may evoke vasorelaxation through novel receptors in the vasculature and/or through release of vasodilator peptides from sensory nerve endings. Virodhamine induced endothelium‐dependent relaxation in the rat isolated small mesenteric artery mounted in a myograph and precontracted with methoxamine. Desensitization of vanilloid receptors by capsaicin did not affect relaxation responses to virodhamine. The CB1 receptor antagonist SR 141716A (3 μM), but not the more CB1‐selective blocker AM 251 (1 μM), attenuated the response, while two CB2 receptor antagonists, SR 144528 (1 μM) and AM 630 (10 μM), had no effect. The novel antagonist for the putative endothelial ‘abnormal‐cannabidiol receptor’, O‐1918 (30 μM), inhibited virodhamine relaxations. Hence virodhamine may activate this novel receptor, which might also recognize SR 141716A. Inhibition of nitric oxide synthase (L‐NAME 300 μM) did not affect relaxation to virodhamine but the responses were markedly reduced when tone was induced with 60 mM KCl, suggesting a role for the activation of K+ channels. The Ca2+‐activated K+ channel (KCa) blockers, apamin (50 nM) and charybdotoxin (50 nM), inhibited virodhamine vasorelaxation. Combination of these blockers with SR 141716A (3 μM) caused no further inhibition. It was concluded that virodhamine relaxes the rat small mesenteric artery by endothelium‐dependent activation of KCa, perhaps via the putative abnormal‐cannabidiol receptor.
Is Liquidity Symmetric? A Study of Newly Listed Internet and Technology Stocks

Imbedded in liquidity measures is an implicit assumption of symmetry. Although market microstructure models rely on this assumption, there may be directional pressure that creates differences in buy and sell liquidity. This paper develops methods of assessing asymmetric liquidity and empirically examines a sample of newly listed Internet and technology stocks that are hypothesized to be especially subject to asymmetry due to the rapid inflation and deflation of the Internet bubble. Evidence of asymmetric liquidity is observed and the level of asymmetry is found to change over time. These findings suggest that the assumption of symmetry is inconsistent with more precisely constructed market liquidity measures.
Gauging the Quality of Relevance Assessments using Inter-Rater Agreement

In recent years, gathering relevance judgments through non-topic originators has become an increasingly important problem in Information Retrieval. Relevance judgments can be used to measure the effectiveness of a system, and are often needed to build supervised learning models in learning-to-rank retrieval systems. The two most popular approaches to gathering bronze level judgments - where the judge is not the originator of the information need for which relevance is being assessed, and is not a topic expert - is through a controlled user study, or through crowdsourcing. However, judging comes at a cost (in time, and usually money) and the quality of the judgments can vary widely. In this work, we directly compare the reliability of judgments using three different types of bronze assessor groups. Our first group is a controlled Lab group; the second and third are two different crowdsourcing groups, CF-Document where assessors were free to judge any number of documents for a topic, and CF-Topic where judges were required to judge all of the documents from a single topic, in a manner similar to the Lab group. Our study shows that Lab assessors exhibit a higher level of agreement with a set of ground truth judgments than CF-Topic and CF-Document assessors. Inter-rater agreement rates show analogous trends. These finding suggests that in the absence of ground truth data, agreement between assessors can be used to reliably gauge the quality of relevance judgments gathered from secondary assessors, and that controlled user studies are more likely to produce reliable judgments despite being more costly.
The ability of Nordic countries to adapt to climate change: assessing adaptive capacity at the regional level

Adaptation to the impacts of climate change has become a concern in the Nordic countries. Regional responses to climate change impacts are considered to be crucial since they are likely to target specific vulnerabilities with concrete and feasible adaptation measures. The ability of the region to respond to climate change is determined to a large extent by its adaptive capacity that consists of economic, social and political capacity, as well as infrastructure and technological potential. This paper assesses the generic adaptive capacity of Nordic regions by using a set of indicators that reflect five determinants of adaptive capacity. The results of the assessments are presented in maps that illustrate that Nordic regions have high capacity but there are also significant differences between and within countries. Finally, this article also discusses arguments for and against the use of these kinds of assessments in policy-making, and the implications of this for the Nordic countries.
EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS ON ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND OPERATIONS

To date, it is unclear as to how Environmental Management Systems (EMS) are implemented and what effects these systems have on other environmental and operational practices. This study reports empirical insights to EMS practices based on the largest EMS survey of manufacturing firms in the United States. The objective of the study is to test for a relationship between environmental management systems and perceived operations performance while considering direct and indirect effects of various environmental practices. The results of this study are supported by several field studies and provide a new source of information regarding EMS theory development. The results also indicate a positive relationship between an EMS, the environmental practices a firm engages, and operations performance measures.
African Trypanosomes: Intracellular Trafficking of Host Defense Molecules 1

ABSTRACT. Trypanosoma brucei brucei is the causative agent of Nagana in cattle and can infect a wide range of mammals but is unable to infect humans because it is susceptible to the innate cytotoxic activity of normal human serum. A minor subfraction of human high‐density lipoprotein (HDL), containing apolipoprotein A‐I (APOA1), apolipoprotein L‐I (APOL1) and haptoglobin‐related protein (HPR) provides this innate protection against T. b. brucei infection. Both HPR and APOL1 are cytotoxic to T. b. brucei but their specific activities for killing increase several hundred‐fold when assembled in the same HDL. This HDL is called trypanosome lytic factor (TLF) and kills T. b. brucei following receptor binding, endocytosis, and lysosomal localization. Trypanosome lytic factor is activated in the acidic lysosome and facilitates lysosomal membrane disruption. Lysosomal localization is necessary for T. b. brucei killing by TLF. Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense, which is indistinguishable from T. b. brucei, is resistant to TLF killing and causes human African sleeping sickness. Human infectivity by T. b. rhodesiense correlates with the evolution of a human serum resistance associated protein (SRA) that is able to ablate TLF killing. When T. b. brucei is transfected with the SRA gene it becomes highly resistant to TLF and human serum. In the SRA transfected cells, intracellular trafficking of TLF is altered and TLF mainly localizes to a subset of SRA containing cytoplasmic vesicles but not to the lysosome. These findings indicate that the cellular distribution of TLF is influenced by SRA expression and may directly determine susceptibility.
Immunostimulant Activity of a Novel Polysaccharide Isolated from Lactarius deliciosus (L. ex Fr.) Gray

More and more fungal polysaccharides have been reported to exhibit a variety of biological activities, including antitumor, antioxidant and immunostimulant activity. The non-starch polysaccharides have emerged as an important class of bioactive natural products. In this study, the immune activities of a novel polysaccharide (LDG-A) isolated from Lactarius deliciosus (L. ex Fr.) Gray were investigated at 20, 40 and 80 mg/kg dose levels. The inhibitory rate in mice treated with 80 mg/kg LDG-A can reach 68.422%, being the highest in the three doses, which may be comparable to mannatide. Histology of immune organs showed that the tissues were arranged in more regular and firm pattern, but the tumor tissue arranged looser in LDG-A group than those in control group. Meanwhile, there was no obvious damage to other organs, such as heart, lung, and kidney. The antitumor activity of the LDG-A was usually believed to be a consequence of the stimulation of the cell-mediated immune response because it can significantly promote the lymphocyte and macrophage cells in the dose range of 50-200 μg/ml and 100-400 μg/ml in vitro, respectively. The level of cytokines (IL-6, TNF-α, and NO) of macrophage cells induced by LDG-A treatment was similar to lipopolysaccharides at different concentrations. The expression of all these genes studied (TNF-α, IL-6, and iNOS mRNA) in the untreated macrophage was little, but increased dramatically in a dose-dependent manner in the LDG-A-treated cells. The results obtained in the present study indicated that the purified polysaccharide of L. deliciosus (L. ex Fr.) Gray is a potential source of natural immune-stimulating substances.
Development of Low Rigidity β-type Titanium Alloy for Biomedical Applications

The low rigidity type titanium alloy, Ti–29Nb–13Ta–4.6Zr was designed, and then the practical level ingot of the alloy was successfully fabricated by Levicast method. The mechanical and biological compatibilities of the alloys were investigated in this study. The following results were obtained. The mechanical performance of tensile properties and fatigue strength of the alloy are equal to or greater than those of conventional biomedical Ti–6Al–4V ELI. Young’s modulus of the alloy is much lower than that of Ti–6Al–4V ELI, and increases with the precipitation of α phase or ω phase in the β matrix phase. The compatibility of the alloy with bone of the alloy is excellent. Low rigidity of the alloy is effective to enhance the healing of bone fracture and remodeling of bone. The bioactive coating layer of hydroxyapatite can be formed on the alloy.