Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Path to Successful Management of Employee Security Compliance: An Empirical Study of Information Security Climate

Research problem: Although organizations have been exerting a significant effort to leverage policies and procedures to improve information security, their impact and effectiveness is under scrutiny as employees' compliance with information security procedures remains problematic. Research questions: (1) What is the role of information security climate (ISC) in cultivating individual's compliance with security policy? (2) Do individual affective and normative states mediate the effect of ISC to increase security policy compliance intention while thwarting employees' security avoidance? Literature review: Drawing upon Griffin and Neal's safety climate model, which states the effect of safety climate on individual safety behaviors that lead to specific performance outcomes, we develop an ISC model to empirically examine the efficacy of security climate in governing employee's policy compliance. The literature suggests that there could be practical reasons for employees not to observe the security policies and procedures. These go beyond the simple lack of use or negligence, and include rationalizing security violation, particularly in light of the fact that they are under pressure to get something done without delays in daily work. To empirically address such employee behavior, we employed the term, security avoidance in this study-an employee's deliberate intention to avoid security policies or procedures in daily work despite the need and opportunity to do so. Methodology: We surveyed IT users in South Korea about individuals' perception about various organizational/managerial information security practices in the work environment. Results and discussion: The results from 581 participants strongly support the fundamental proposition that the information security climate has a significant positive impact on employee's conformity with the security policy. The study also reveals that the security climate nurtures the employee's affective and cognitive states through affective commitment and normative commitment. These, in turn, mediate the influence of security climate on employee policy compliance by facilitating rule adherence among employees while, at the same time, inspiring self-adjusted behaviors to neutralize their deliberate intents of negligence. Overall, the findings support our view that the creation of strong security climate is the adequate alternative to a sanction-based deterrence to employees' security policy compliance, which limits the presence of security avoidance. The implications to theory are the multidimensional nature of ISC construct and its linkage to a systematic view of individual level information security activities. The implications to practice are the ISC's favorable role of discouraging employee's security avoidance while inducing the security policy compliance intention at the same time, given the limit of sanctions.
Acquisitions reveal the hidden intellectual capital of pharmaceutical companies

Purpose – This paper aims to assess to what extent intellectual capital is revealed once a company is acquired.Design/methodology/approach – The research question was approached by analyzing official accounts of companies, like annual reports and documents provided to stock exchange authorities before and after the acquisition. In its purchase price allocation the acquiring company is providing insight in the total value of the company acquired.Findings – The mean total value of the companies studied increases approximately six fold on acquisition. This increase is mainly due to the increase in intangible assets (including goodwill), which substantially overlap with intellectual capital. The intangible assets specified are mostly connected to rights‐related and technology‐related items, while goodwill shows more “bias” to expertise and customer‐related items. Thus it is hypothesized that a substantial part of the intellectual capital of the company acquired is revealed in the official accounts of the acqu.
Integrating Social-Contextual and Intrapersonal Mechanisms of "Maturing Out": Joint Influences of Familial-Role Transitions and Personality Maturation on Problem-Drinking Reductions.

BACKGROUND "Maturing out" of problem drinking is associated with both role transitions (e.g., getting married) and personality development. However, little is known concerning how these 2 mechanisms jointly influence problem-drinking desistance. This study investigated whether salutary effects of role transitions and personality occur at different points in young-adult development and whether they mediate one another's effects. METHODS Participants were initially recruited as first-year undergraduates, with family history of alcoholism overrepresented by design (N = 489). Using 4 waves of data at roughly ages 21, 25, 29, and 34, cross-lagged panel models estimated prospective relations among familial-role transitions (marriage or parenthood), personality (disinhibition, conscientiousness, and neuroticism), and problem drinking. RESULTS Mixed support was found for the prediction of roles being more strongly associated with earlier maturing out of problem drinking and personality being more strongly associated with later maturing out. Regarding mediation, no evidence was found for the expectation that role effects would be mediated by personality. However, results did support mediation of personality effects by role transitions. Specifically, lower disinhibition and higher conscientiousness in emerging adulthood predicted role adoption, which, in turn, predicted later problem-drinking reductions. Family history of alcoholism also distally influenced these mediation processes. CONCLUSIONS The differential timing of role and personality effects is consistent with the notion of decreasing contextual influences and increasing intrapersonal influences across development. In light of role incompatibility theory, results suggest that, over the course of development, the association of familial roles with problem drinking may increasingly reflect problem-drinking effects on role entry (i.e., role selection) and decreasingly reflect role entry effects on problem drinking (i.e., role socialization). As emerging-adult disinhibition and conscientiousness were associated with an apparent developmental cascade of both direct and indirect effects, findings highlight their potential importance as etiologic mechanisms and intervention targets.
Testing the digital divide: Does access to high-quality use of technology in schools affect student achievement?

Title of Document: TESTING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE: DOES ACCESS TO HIGH-QUALITY USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS AFFECT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT? Gregory Keith Talley, Doctor of Education, 2012 Directed By: Professor Emeritus, Willis D. Hawley, Education Leadership, Higher Education and International Education This study investigates the relationship between access, use of technology and student achievement in public middle schools in Maryland. The objective of this study was to determine whether a digital divide (differences in access and utilization of technology based on student characteristics of race, socioeconomic status, and gender) exists among schools, and whether those differences relate to mathematics and reading achievement. More specifically, the study uses school data on technology access, students’ instructional uses of technology, and teacher technology proficiency from the 2007 Maryland Technology Inventory. This study analyzes student demographic data and assessment results from the 2007 Maryland School Assessments in reading and mathematics obtained from the Maryland State Department of Education. The data analyses use descriptive and multivariate statistics to determine the existence of digital divides and their effects on reading and mathematics achievement. Analysis of these data described patterns of technology access and use in order to determine whether differences in access and use resulted in a digital divide. Differences in access and use were then examined to determine their impact on reading and mathematics achievement levels. Findings indicated that digital divides exist in the student-to-computer ratio and the number of teachers with classroom computers, and digital access was positively associated with eighth-grade mathematics and reading proficiency scores. However, student classroom computer ratios were negatively associated with achievement, controlling for other factors. Digital divides in students’ use of technology for publishing text, organizing information, and communicating information were identified, with access to technology for these tasks/skills and positively associated with mathematics and reading scores, but connecting language to words had a negative impact. Teachers’ use of technology for creating instructional materials had a positive impact on reading scores but a negative impact on mathematics achievement, when the researcher controlled for other factors. Findings suggest that differences exist in several areas of technology access and use when considering student characteristics of race, socioeconomic status, and gender. This study contributes to existing research on the effects of technology on instruction and informs state and local policy on instructional technology implementation and practice. TESTING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE: DOES ACCESS TO HIGH-QUALITY USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS AFFECT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT?
The Rise and Fall of Muhammad Yunus and the Microcredit Model

This paper looks at the microcredit model made famous by Dr. Muhammad Yunus and explains the key reasons why it has failed as a poverty reduction and local development instrument. It also briefly analyses some of the reactions to this failure by the microcredit industry and why many microcredit supporters nevertheless still stand behind the model in spite of its failure.
The VEGF gene polymorphism impacts brain volume and arterial blood volume

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays a critical role in the angiogenesis and proliferation of various types of cells such as neurons, astroglia, and endothelial cells in the brain. A common polymorphism in the VEGF gene (−2578 C/A) is associated with circulating VEGF levels, cancers and Alzheimer's disease. Nonetheless, the effects of this polymorphism on normal human brain volume, arterial blood volume, and blood supply remain unclear. In this study, the effects of this polymorphism on the total gray matter volume (TGMV) and total white matter volume (TWMV) using T1‐weighted structural images and the total arterial blood volume (TABV) and mean cerebral blood flow (mCBF) during rest using arterial spin labeling (ASL) in 765 young adult humans were investigated. Voxel‐by‐voxel whole‐brain analyses of these measures were also performed. Multiple regression analyses with age and sex as covariates revealed that the VEGF genotype (number of C alleles) was significantly and positively correlated with TGMV, TWMV, and TABV as well as with regional gray and white matter volumes in widespread areas and regional arterial blood volume in some areas with high arterial blood volume. However, these regional associations were not seen when the corresponding global signal was included as a covariate in the multiple regression analyses, indicating that we failed to obtain evidence of region‐specific associations between these brain measures and the genotype. The results suggest that the VEGF‐2578C allele, is associated with changes in the vascular system that lead to increased blood volume and larger brain volume. Hum Brain Mapp 38:3516–3526, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Environmental governance and legitimation: State‐community interactions and agricultural land degradation in Australia

Capitalism today is showing an environmentally friendly face. Weyerhaeuser is "the tree growing company" not the "old growth clearcutting company," which it used to be. Proctor and Gamble encloses an environmental leaflet (printed on non-recyclable paper) in packages of its disposable diapers. Corporate publicists point to the benefits that will accrue to horribly polluted Poland and East Germany once Western corporations install modern manufacturing plants. Intellectual support comes from those who argue that the market is the best mechanism for satisfying the wants of individuals — including wants for environmental goods. Neoconservative regulatory reformers, new resource economists, and cornucopian free marketeers all tout the virtues of privatization and decentralization in the environmental political economy.
Performance evaluation of image segmentation algorithms on microscopic image data

In our paper, we present a performance evaluation of image segmentation algorithms on microscopic image data. In spite of the existence of many algorithms for image data partitioning, there is no universal and ‘the best’ method yet. Moreover, images of microscopic samples can be of various character and quality which can negatively influence the performance of image segmentation algorithms. Thus, the issue of selecting suitable method for a given set of image data is of big interest. We carried out a large number of experiments with a variety of segmentation methods to evaluate the behaviour of individual approaches on the testing set of microscopic images (cross‐section images taken in three different modalities from the field of art restoration). The segmentation results were assessed by several indices used for measuring the output quality of image segmentation algorithms. In the end, the benefit of segmentation combination approach is studied and applicability of achieved results on another representatives of microscopic data category – biological samples – is shown.
The Dynamics of Expected Returns: Evidence from Multi-Scale Time Series Modeling

We show that low-order autoregression models for short-term expected returns imply long-term dynamics that have a (too) fast vanishing persistence when compared with the evidence from long-horizon predictive regressions. We then propose a novel modeling framework that exploits the low-frequency information in the predictors as a prior to update the high-frequency distribution of expected returns. Our framework shows that, in order to restore consistency with the empirical evidence from predictive regressions, the short-term dynamics of expected returns need to have long-range dependence. In turn, these long-memory type of dynamics generate first-order effects on forecasting and investment decisions, especially in the long-run. We quantify these effects along several dimensions.
Essays on business taxation and development

This thesis addresses a number of questions on the optimal taxation of ﬁrms, with particular emphasis on the challenges to taxation in developing economies. Chapter 1 exploits bunching of ﬁrms at a tax kink to identify the eﬀect of a tax rate change on investment. Building on the standard bunching framework, I estimate the frequency distribution of ﬁrms around the kink, and the share of bunching ﬁrms with excess investment. I apply this approach to administrative tax returns for ﬁrms in the United Kingdom and ﬁnd that excess investment explains up to 20% of bunch ing. Chapter 2 examines the trade-oﬀ between production eﬃciency and revenue eﬃciency in taxation under imperfect enforcement. We exploit quasi-experimental variation created by a minimum tax scheme, a production ineﬃcient policy used in many developing countries, which consists of taxing ﬁrms on turnover as their proﬁt rate falls below a certain threshold. Using administrative tax records of corporations in Pakistan, we ﬁnd large bunching around the proﬁt rate kink createded by the minimum tax scheme and estimate that the turnover tax reduces evasion by up to 60-70% of corporate income. Chapter 3 analyzes the impact of interventions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on countries’ likelihood of adopting the value added tax (VAT). I discuss how the IMF has promoted VAT adoption by making lending conditional on adoption, providing administrative and technical assistance, and reducing the political costs of adoption. Applying a Cox proportional hazard model to a cross-country panel for the period 1975-2000, I ﬁnd that countries that are under a lending agreement with the IMF are three times as likely to adopt the VAT than are countries not under a lending agreement.
Publication and reporting of clinical trial results: cross sectional analysis across academic medical centers

Objective To determine rates of publication and reporting of results within two years for all completed clinical trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov across leading academic medical centers in the United States. Design Cross sectional analysis. Setting Academic medical centers in the United States. Participants Academic medical centers with 40 or more completed interventional trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov. Methods Using the Aggregate Analysis of ClinicalTrials.gov database and manual review, we identified all interventional clinical trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov with a primary completion date between October 2007 and September 2010 and with a lead investigator affiliated with an academic medical center. Main outcome measures The proportion of trials that disseminated results, defined as publication or reporting of results on ClinicalTrials.gov, overall and within 24 months of study completion. Results We identified 4347 interventional clinical trials across 51 academic medical centers. Among the trials, 1005 (23%) enrolled more than 100 patients, 1216 (28%) were double blind, and 2169 (50%) were phase II through IV. Overall, academic medical centers disseminated results for 2892 (66%) trials, with 1560 (35.9%) achieving this within 24 months of study completion. The proportion of clinical trials with results disseminated within 24 months of study completion ranged from 16.2% (6/37) to 55.3% (57/103) across academic medical centers. The proportion of clinical trials published within 24 months of study completion ranged from 10.8% (4/37) to 40.3% (31/77) across academic medical centers, whereas results reporting on ClinicalTrials.gov ranged from 1.6% (2/122) to 40.7% (72/177). Conclusions Despite the ethical mandate and expressed values and mission of academic institutions, there is poor performance and noticeable variation in the dissemination of clinical trial results across leading academic medical centers.
Consumer Confidence and Stock Returns

Consumer confidence predicts economic activity, but does it also predict stock returns? Do stock returns affect consumer confidence? And what is the relationship between consumer confidence and investor sentiment? Answers to these questions are gained through examination of the consumer confidence measures of the University of Michigan and the Conference Board. Consumer confidence rises with high stock returns, but high consumer confidence is followed by low stock returns. Sentiments of individual investors about the stock market improve with consumer confidence about the economy, as if individuals were unaware that stock prices are a leading indicator of the economy. No relationship is found between changes in the sentiments of institutional investors and consumer confidence, however.
Performance Analysis in Saber

Abstract Aquili, A, Tancredi, V, Triossi, T, De Sanctis, D, Padua, E, D'Arcangelo, G, and Melchiorri, G. Performance analysis in saber. J Strength Cond Res 27(3): 624–630, 2013—Fencing is a sport practiced by both men and women, which uses 3 weapons: foil, épée, and saber. In general, there are few scientific studies available in international literature; they are limited to the performance analysis of fencing bouts, yet there is nothing about saber. There are 2 kinds of competitions in the World Cup for both men and women: the “FIE GP” and “A. ” The aim of this study was to carry out a saber performance analysis to gain useful indicators for the definition of a performance model. In addition, it is expected to verify if it could be influenced by the type of competition and if there are differences between men and women. Sixty bouts: 33 FIE GP and 27 “A” competitions (35 men's and 25 women's saber bouts) were analyzed. The results indicated that most actions are offensive (55% for men and 49% for women); the central area of the piste is mostly used (72% for men and 67% for women); the effective fighting time is 13.6% for men and 17.1% for women, and the ratio between the action and break times is 1:6.5 for men and 1:5.1 for women. A lunge is carried out every 23.9 seconds by men and every 20 seconds by women, and a direction change is carried out every 65.3 seconds by men and every 59.7 seconds by women. The data confirm the differences between the saber and the other 2 weapons. There is no significant difference between the data of the 2 different kinds of competitions.
Anorectal dysfunction in constipated women with anorexia nervosa.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate anorectal and colonic function in a group of patients with anorexia nervosa complaining of chronic constipation. PATIENTS AND METHODS Twelve women (age range, 19-29 years) meeting the criteria for anorexia nervosa and complaining of chronic constipation were recruited for the study. A group of 12 healthy women served as controls. Colonic transit time was measured by a radiopaque marker technique. Anorectal manometry and a test of rectal sensation were carried out with use of standard techniques to measure pelvic floor dysfunction. A subgroup of 8 patients was retested after an adequate refeeding program was completed. RESULTS Eight (66.7%) of 12 patients with anorexia nervosa had slow colonic transit times, while 5 (41.7%) had pelvic floor dysfunction. Colonic transit time normalized in the 8 patients who completed the 4-week refeeding program. However, pelvic floor dysfunction did not normalize in these patients. CONCLUSIONS Patients with anorexia nervosa who complain of constipation have anorectal motor abnormalities. Delayed colonic transit time is probably due to abnormal eating behavior.
Effect of feeding various levels of feather meal as a replacement of fish meal on the growth of broiler.

The present study was carried out in a feeding trial of 42 days, 120 broiler chicks were reared at experimental station were divided into four groups, A, B, C and D for feeding iso-nitrogenous and iso-caloric mash rations, having 0, 33, 67 and 100 % feather meal as replacement of fish meal. The average final live body weight of groups A, B, C and D was 2221.1, 2205, 2196.05 and 2187.15 grams per bird, respectively. The difference of live body weight between the groups was non-significant (P<0.05). Results of feed and water consumption showed similar pattern. Average feed consumed was 3687, 3706, 3728 and 3744 grams per boiler for group A, B, C and D, respectively. Water consumption recorded per boiler was 9270, 9289, 9300 and 9316 ml of group A, B, C and D. The differences in average carcass weight and giblets weight were also non-significant (P<0.05). Carcass weight of group A 1332 grams was heaviest followed by B, C and D, weighing 1322, 1314 and 1300 grams per broiler, respectively. There was no effect of feather meal feeding on broiler mortality. The average per broiler feeding cost of group A, B, C and D was Rs. 162.22, Rs. 159.35, Rs. 156.57 and Rs. 153.50, respectively. After marketing, net profit of Rs. 23.98, Rs. 26.14, Rs. 28.02 and Rs.30. 20 per broiler was earned for group A, B, C and D, respectively. Broiler fed with 100% feather meal as replacement of fish meal proved to be most economically raised, without any negative effect on their performance.