Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Tylosin Use on Erythromycin Resistance in Enterococci Isolated from Swine

ABSTRACT The effect of tylosin on erythromycin-resistant enterococci was examined on three farms; farm A used tylosin for growth promotion, farm B used tylosin for treatment of disease, and farm C did not use tylosin for either growth promotion or disease treatment. A total of 1,187 enterococci were isolated from gestation, farrowing, suckling, nursery, and finishing swine from the farms. From a subset of those isolates (n = 662), 59% (124 out of 208), 28% (80 out of 281), and 2% (4 out of 170) were resistant to erythromycin (MIC ≥ 8 μg/ml) from farms A, B, and C, respectively. PCR analysis and Southern blotting revealed that 95% (65 out of 68) of isolates chosen from all three farms for further study were positive for ermB, but all were negative for ermA and ermC. By using Southern blotting, ermB was localized to the chromosome in 56 of the isolates while 9 isolates from farms A and B contained ermB on two similar-sized plasmid bands (12 to 16 kb). Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis revealed that the isolates were genetically diverse and represented a heterogeneous population of enterococci. This study suggests that although there was resistance to a greater number of enterococcal isolates on a farm where tylosin was used as a growth promotant, resistant enterococci also existed on a farm where no antimicrobial agents were used.
A Multi-Theoretical Model of Knowledge Transfer in Organizations: Determinants of Knowledge Contribution and Knowledge Reuse

Knowledge has become one of the most important sources of competitive advantage for firms in many industries, particularly those in which firms provide knowledge services to their clients. Many knowledge intensive firms have spent enormous amounts of time and money trying to find ways to better manage their knowledge resources. Effective leveraging of knowledge resources through the transfer and reuse of existing knowledge is an important aspect of most knowledge management systems. In this study we argue that the effectiveness of intrafirm knowledge transfer based on the reuse of existing knowledge depends on two key factors: (1) the willingness of individuals to contribute their knowledge to the system; and (2) the rate at which individuals access and reuse knowledge within the system. Here we use social exchange theory to develop a model of the factors that will impact the frequency with which individuals contribute their knowledge to the system. Additionally, we use expectancy theory to develop a model of the factors that lead to knowledge reuse. Results of hypothesis tests using data collected from a multinational services firm support our multi-theoretical model, and suggest ways in which the model might be refined. We discuss the implications of these findings for further theory building and for managers engaged in the development and improvement of knowledge management systems.
Pleistocene Volcanism and Glacial Initiation

During the past 2 million years, major Northern Hemisphere eruptions occurred within 0.01 million years before 22 of 24 maximum-temperature dates which preceded the ten European glacial stages and 42 of 60 maximum-temperature dates which preceded the 22 cooling episodes. Massive eruptions were even more closely associated with the glacial stages and the cooling episodes. Within the errors of Pleistocene dating, major eruptions apparently occurred at the crucial moments to have triggered each of the ice ages.
The Heart Recovery Marketing Campaign

SUMMARY Crisis communication plans and marketing recovery campaigns are a key component of destination recovery after crises or disasters. Despite increasing researcher and practitioner interest in crisis and disaster management, further analysis of these components of recovery is warranted. This article contributes to this growing body of research by analysing the advertising components of a recovery marketing campaign developed and implemented immediately after bushfires in the Australian Capital Territory in 2003. The findings are drawn from relevant documents, marketing collateral and in-depth interviews with government agencies, professional associations and businesses. Despite a lack of relevant plans, the marketing campaign was an effective exercise in crisis communication under temporal and resource constraints and demonstrated application of research, rapid response, financial support, consistency of messages, honest and open communication and evaluation. Planning, training and further analytical case study research is recommended.
Increased Instruction Hours and the Widening Gap in Student Performance

Do increased instruction hours improve the performance of all students? Using PISA scores of students in ninth grade, we analyse the effect of a German education reform that increased weekly instruction hours by two hours (6.5 percent) overalmost five years. In the additional time, students are taught new learning content. On average, the reform improves student performance. However, treatment effects are small and differ across the student performance distribution. While low-performing students do not benefit, high-performing students benefit the most. The findings suggest that increases in instruction hours can widen the gap between low- and high-performing students.
Testing the Ohlson Model: V or Not V, that is the Question

This paper tests the sharply differing predictions that emerge in Ohlson? s (1995) model from two assumptions about other information v that is reflected in a firm? s equity market value but not in its current financial statements. We find that neither assumption cleanly fits the data. If v is assumed to be zero, the regression multiple relating dividends to equity market value is reliably positive when it is predicted to be negative. Alternatively, if v impacts future abnormal earnings via Ohlson? s modified AR(1) information dynamic, then the signs on the multiples on current period net income and net capital stock outflows are positive and negative, respectively, when they should be the opposite. Our explanation for these anomalies is that dividends play a profitability-signaling role that is ruled out by Ohlson? s model. Consistent with this, we find that the multiple relating dividends to equity market value is more positive for loss firms, and that Ohlson? s information dynamics are violated in that larger dividends are associated with larger future abnormal earnings, especially for loss firms. Surprisingly, holding constant this profitability-signaling role of dividends, equity market values appear reasonably consistent with v being zero. This implies that the role of information outside key aggregate accounting numbers in current financial statements in setting prices may be more limited than previously thought. Equivalently, current accounting rules may capture the economic information reflected in stock prices in a more timely manner than is typically thought.
Suppression of level fluctuation without extinction ratio degradation based on output saturation in higher order optical parametric interaction in fiber

Optical limiting operation based on output saturation in higher order parametric interaction in dispersion-shifted fiber is reported. The output powers in a parametric amplifier configuration were measured as a function of the signal input power, with the result that new-wavelength light is efficiently generated in addition to the pump, signal, and idler, resulting from a higher order parametric process, and its output power initially increases quadratically and then saturates as the input power increases. By utilizing this output property of the higher order parametric light, suppression of level fluctuation with an improved extinction ratio was demonstrated.
Farm Foreclosure Moratorium Legislation: A Lesson from the Past

and the calls for legislation to prevent farm foreclosures are not without precedent. Farm foreclosures were high throughout the 1920's and 1930's, in large part because farmers had to make mortgage payments fixed in nominal dollars while their earnings were falling. ' In response, many state legislatures sought to aid farmers by passing legislation that postponed foreclosure by creditors. Scholars have given little attention to these various state emergency measures and their impact on creditors and debtors.2 This article is a step toward filling this void. The first section contains a general description of the moratorium legislation, and hypotheses about the causes of moratorium legislation are proposed and tested. In Section II, the economic consequences of moratorium legislation are addressed and the hypotheses are formally specified and tested.
Prospect Theory, the Disposition Effect, and Asset Prices

We build a general equilibrium model to examine the implications of prospect theory for the disposition effect, asset prices, and trading volume. Diminishing sensitivity predicts a disposition effect, price momentum, a reduced return volatility, and a positive return-volume correlation. Loss aversion generally predicts the opposite. In calibrated economies, there is a nontrivial range of preference parameters for prospect theory to simultaneously explain the disposition effect, the momentum effect, and the equity premium puzzle. Our model is helpful for understanding a wide range of financial phenomena and it also suggests new testable predictions.
Two-Sided Platforms: Product Variety and Pricing Structures

"This paper provides a new modeling framework to analyze two-sided platforms connecting producers and consumers. In contrast to the existing literature, indirect network effects are determined endogenously, through consumers' taste for variety and producer competition. Three new aspects of platform pricing structures are derived. " "First, the optimal platform pricing structure shifts towards extracting more rents from producers relative to consumers when consumers have stronger demand for variety, since producers become less substitutable. With platform competition, consumer preferences for variety, producer market power, and producer economies of scale in multihoming also make platforms' price-cutting strategies on the consumer side less effective. This second effect on equilibrium pricing structures goes in the opposite direction relative to the first one. " "Third, variable fees charged to producers can serve to trade off producer innovation incentives against the need to reduce a platform holdup problem. " Copyright (c) 2009, The Author(s) Journal Compilation (c) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The financial impact of a withdrawn ISO 9001 certificate

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess to what extent the loss of the ISO 9001 certification affects the decertified firms’ financial performance. Design/methodology/approach – Using standard event-study methods, this paper matches a sample of 143 Portuguese companies that lost their ISO 9001 certification with similar non-event counterpart firms (according to return-on-assets and size) and compares the performance of these two groups of firms using financial data collected from the AMADEUS database. Findings – Results show no statistical significant differences in the financial performance (as measured by return-on-assets, return-on-sales, and sales growth) between companies that lost their ISO 9001 certification and their matched firms. Although the literature suggests that certification improves firms’ performance and that the benefits of certification may last over long periods of time, this paper’s results suggest that, after decertification, companies do not exhibit over or underperformance in their operations vis-a-vis comparable firms that do not undergo the same event. Originality/value – As far as the authors are aware, this is the first study assessing the impact of ISO 9001 certificate withdrawal on the decertified firms’ financial performance.
The integraton by trade and FDI of emerging economies: The ASEAN example*

The paper investigates the role of regionalization and regional identity in the endeavours of emerging economies to connect successfully to the global world economy. It addresses the question of whether the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with its loose institutional integration framework, has contributed to the global integration of its very heterogenous members in the first decade of the 21st century – and, if so, what are the drivers behind this. The paper summarizes connecting theories, using a multidisciplinary approach, and uses descriptive statistical analysis to identify the achievements of the ASEAN-6 countries within global trade and foreign direct invesment (FDI) flows in the given time period. We suggest that ASEAN countries, with their efforts to initiate interconnecting regional organizations in Asia, most specifically the ASEAN+3 (APT) construction, did contribute to greater integratedness of member countries; and they have created a regional image with a common market and production base. Such achievements, however, can be in great part attributed to the micro-level activities of international and regional firms wishing to establish cross-border production networks in these countries.
Temporal causality and the dynamics of foreign direct investment and trade in Vietnam

Our article investigates the temporal causation between foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade in Vietnam for the period 1990–2007. We first employ Granger causality tests in a co-integration framework, where the order of lags for each variable is selected by the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and the Schwarz Bayesian Information Criterion (SBIC). Granger causality tests are then performed in both bi- and multi-variate models. In the short-run, we find evidence of bi-directional Granger causality between FDI and exports and between FDI and imports. Our analysis also establishes the existence of long-run unidirectional Granger causality running from FDI to exports and to imports.
Intrinsic epileptogenicity of human dysplastic cortex as suggested by corticography and surgical results

Cortical dysplastic lesions (CDyLs) are often associated with severe partial epilepsies. We describe the electrographic counterpart of this high degree of epileptogenicity, manifested by continuous or frequent rhythmic epileptogenic discharges recorded directly from CDyLs during intraoperative electrocorticography (ECoG). These ictal or continuous epileptogenic discharges (I/CEDs) assumed one of the following three patterns: (1) repetitive electrographic seizures, (2) repetitive bursting discharges, or (3) continuous or quasicontinuous rhythmic spiking. One or more of these patterns were present in 23 of 34 patients (67%) with intractable partial epilepsy associated with CDyLs, and in only 1 of 40 patients (2.5%) with intractable partial epilepsy associated with other types of structural lesions. I/CEDs were usually spatially restricted, thus contrasting with the more widespread interictal ECoG epileptic activity, and tended to colocalize with the magnetic resonance imaging–defined lesion. Completeness of excision of cortical tissue displaying I/CEDs correlated positively with surgical outcome in patients with medically intractable seizures; i.e., three‐fourths of the patients in whom it was entirely excised had favorble surgical outcome; in contrast, uniformly poor outcome was observed in those patients in whom areas containing I/CEDs remained in situ. We conclude that CDyLs are highly and intrinsically epileptogenic, and that intraoperative ECoG identification of this intrinsically epileptogenic dysplastic cortical tissue is crucial to decide the extent of excision for best seizure control.
Pricing multi-asset barrier options

We obtain closed-form expressions for the exact no-arbitrage prices, as well as estimates, of some types of multivariate barrier options. A novelty for the estimates is that we combine ideas of convex analysis with tools of stochastic theory. The common aspect of all options herein is that the associated multivariate barriers are generated by hyperplanes placed on the collection (or vector) of stock prices, and not individually on each stock.
The relationship between systemic iron homeostasis and erythropoiesis

Red blood cell production (erythropoiesis) is the single largest consumer of iron in the body; this need is satisfied by maintaining a sensitive regulation of iron levels. The level of erythropoietic demand regulates the expression of the iron hormone hepcidin and thus iron absorption. Erythropoiesis-mediated regulation of hepcidin is an area of increasing importance and recent studies have identified a number of potential regulatory proteins. This review summarizes our current knowledge about these candidate erythroid regulators of hepcidin and the relation between transferrin receptors and erythropoiesis.
The Voluntary Restructuring of Large Firms in Response to Performance Decline

Much of the research on corporate restructuring has examined the causes and aftermath of extreme changes in corporate governance such as takeovers and bankruptcy. In contrast, we study restructurings initiated in response to product market pressures by "normal" corporate governance mechanisms. Such "voluntary" restructurings, motivated by the discipline of the product market and internal corporate controls, will play a relatively more important role in the 1990s due to a weakening in the discipline of the takeover market. Our data suggest that the firms retrenched quickly and, on average, increased their focus. There is no evidence of abnormally high levels of forced turnover in top managers. There is, however, a significant and rapid cut of 5% in the labor force. Further, the cost of goods sold to sales and labor costs to sales ratios both decline rapidly, more than 5% in the first two years after the negative earnings. The firms cut research and development, increased investment, and also reduced their debt/asset level by over 8% in the first year after the negative earnings. We also document the reasons management and analysis reported for the negative earnings. Overwhelmingly the firms blame bad economic conditions and, to a lesser extent, foreign competition.
FREE-RANGING WILD BOAR: A DISEASE THREAT TO DOMESTIC PIGS IN SWITZERLAND?

The risk of transmission of pathogens from free-ranging wild boars (Sus scrofa scrofa) to outdoor domestic pigs (S. scrofa domesticus) is of increasing concern in many European countries. We assess this risk, using Switzerland as an example. We estimated 1) the prevalence of important pathogens in wild boars and 2) the risk of interactions between wild boars and outdoor pigs. First, we tested 252 wild boars from selected areas between 2008 and 2010 for infection with Brucella spp. Bacterial prevalence was estimated to 28.8% (confidence interval [CI] 23.0–34.0) when using bacterial culture (B. suis Biovar 2) and real-time polymerase chain reaction. Antibody prevalence was 35.8% (CI 30.0–42.0), which was significantly higher than in previous studies in Switzerland. We also tested 233 wild boars for porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV). Antibody prevalence was 0.43% (CI 0.01–2.4) for EU-PRRSV and real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction results were negative. These findings suggest that B. suis is increasingly widespread in wild boars and PRRSV is currently not of concern. Second, we documented the spatial overlap between free-ranging wild boars and outdoor piggeries by mapping data on their respective occurrence. Wild boars are most widespread in the mountain range along the western and northern Swiss borders, while most piggeries are located in central lowlands. A risk of interaction is mainly expected at the junction between these two bioregions. This risk may increase if wild boars expand eastward and southward beyond anthropogenic barriers believed to limit their range. Therefore, we evaluated the potential of expansion of the wild boar population. Population trends suggest a continuous increase of wild boars for the past 15 yr. Surveillance of selected wildlife passages using cameras on highways and main roads indicates that these barriers are permeable (average of up to 13 wild boar crossings per 100 days). Thus an increase of wild boar range should be considered. There may be a risk of B. suis spillover from wild boars in Switzerland, which could increase in the future. Data on the occurrence of interactions between pigs and wild boars are needed to assess this risk.
LOWER AND UPPER BOUNDS FOR POSITIVE LINEAR FUNCTIONALS

This paper deals with the problem of finding lower and upperbounds in a set of convex functions to a given positive linear functional; that is, bounds which estimate always below (or above) a functional over a family of convex functions. A new set of upper and lower bounds are provided and their extremal properties are established. Moreover, we show how such bounds can be combined to produce better error estimates. In addition, we also extends many results from [7], which hold true for simplices, to results for any convex polytopes. Particularly, we use our result to obtain multivariate versions of some inequalities first given, respectively, by Favard in [3] and Hammer in [14], over any convex polytope. For smooth (nonconvex) twice continuously differentiable functions, we will also show how both the lower and upper bounds could be improved. Finally, we establish a general result concerning error estimates. This seems to suggest a more unified and effective approach for problems of this sort.
Complementarities, Multiplicity, and Supply Information

If traders can obtain private information about the payoff and the supply of a stock then there can exist (i) complementarity in information acquisition and (ii) multiple equilibria in the financial and information markets. The additional dimension of supply information increases coordination possibilities in the financial market, leading to multiple equilibria. The existence of two information sources can lead to information acquisition being complementary. The multiplicity of equilibria is suggestive of excess volatility and crashes. The different financial market equilibria imply differing patterns of cost of capital and volume of trade. (JEL: D82, D83, G14) (c) 2009 by the European Economic Association.
Foreign Direct Investment, Exports and Real Exchange Rate Linkages in Vietnam: Evidence from a Co-Integration Approach

Several studies, either theoretical or empirical, have analysed the possible connection either between foreign direct investment (FDI) and real exchange rates (RER) or between exports and RER. It is surprising, however, that the triangular relationship between exports, FDI and RER has not been thoroughly investigated. Using data from Vietnam, this paper attempts to fill this gap by econometrically investigating the linkages between these three variables in a co-integration framework. We find, firstly, that RER may directly affect the relative price of export goods and, secondly, that RER indirectly influences Vietnam’s exports through FDI.
Market orientation and its antecedents in the Polish local governments

Purpose – Over the past few years there have been several attempts to reform the structure and functioning of the Polish local government units (LGU). Therefore, it is worth analyzing the application of the marketing concept in this context. More specifically the purpose of this paper is to determine the present level of market orientation (MO) of the Polish LGU, and indicate some factors stimulating the MO development.Design/methodology/approach – A survey with use of CATI technique was conducted among 450 local government officials in Poland. Based on the gathered data a set of hypotheses related to MO level and its antecedents was examined by multiple regression analysis and analysis of variance procedures.Findings – The overall MO level of the Polish LGU is moderate, 21 percent of the units can be considered as truly market‐oriented according to Western standards. The MO scores are diversified with respect to LGU types. Especially, they are significantly lower in smaller municipalities and districts a.