Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The satisfaction of non-family employees with High Involvement HR practices: evidence from family SMEs

ABSTRACT Most family businesses employ more non-family employees than family employees, making them a crucial resource for family small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs). Thus, family SMEs must pay particular attention to developmental needs of such employees. However, there is limited empirical knowledge concerning how Family SMEs can manage and develop their non-family employees. Drawing on organizational justice theory, this study set out to investigate how and why non-family employees are satisfied with the High Involvement HR practices (HIHRPs) adopted by family SMEs. Empirical evidence was drawn from the experiences of 16 non-family employees from six SME family-owned enterprises. Findings suggest that a balance between formal and informal HIHRPs is need among family SMEs for non-family employees to be satisfied with them. Moreover, satisfaction with both formal and informal HIHRPs can encourage non-family employees’ engagement with the enterprise and the development of their skills and capabilities. Findings also suggest that the satisfaction with HIHRPs varies with respect to the organizational positioning of non-family employees. Our findings make a valuable and timely contribution to the human resource development and SME literatures in general.
The Specification of GARCH Models with Stochastic Covariates

A number of studies investigate whether various stochastic variables explain changes in return volatility by specifying the variables as covariates in a GARCH(1, 1) or EGARCH(1, 1) model. The authors show that these models impose an implicit constraint that can obscure the true role of the covariates in the analysis. They illustrate the problem by reconsidering the role of contemporaneous trading volume in explaining ARCH effects in daily stock returns. Once the constraint imposed in earlier research is relaxed, it is found that specifying volume as a covariate does little to diminish the importance of lagged squared returns in capturing the dynamics of volatility. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 28:911–934, 2008
Deep Learning of Robotic Tasks using Strong and Weak Human Supervision

We propose a scheme for training a computerized agent to perform complex human tasks such as highway steering. The scheme is designed to follow a natural learning process whereby a human instructor teaches a computerized trainee. The learning process consists of five elements: (i) unsupervised feature learning; (ii) supervised imitation learning; (iii) supervised reward induction; (iv) supervised safety module construction; and (v) reinforcement learning. We implemented the last four elements of the scheme using deep convolutional networks and applied it to successfully create a computerized agent capable of autonomous highway steering over the well-known racing game Assetto Corsa. We demonstrate that the use of the last four elements is essential to effectively carry out the steering task using vision alone, without access to a driving simulator internals, and operating in wall-clock time. This is made possible also through the introduction of a safety network, a novel way for preventing the agent from performing catastrophic mistakes during the reinforcement learning stage.
Within-Digit Functional Parcellation of Brodmann Areas of the Human Primary Somatosensory Cortex Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging at 7 Tesla

The primary somatosensory cortex (S1) can be subdivided cytoarchitectonically into four distinct Brodmann areas (3a, 3b, 1, and 2), but these areas have never been successfully delineated in vivo in single human subjects. Here, we demonstrate the functional parcellation of four areas of S1 in individual human subjects based on high-resolution functional MRI measurements made at 7 T using vibrotactile stimulation. By stimulating four sites along the length of the index finger, we were able to identify and locate map reversals of the base to tip representation of the index finger in S1. We suggest that these reversals correspond to the areal borders between the mirrored representations in the four Brodmann areas, as predicted from electrophysiology measurements in nonhuman primates. In all subjects, maps were highly reproducible across scanning sessions and stable over weeks. In four of the six subjects scanned, four, mirrored, within-finger somatotopic maps defining the extent of the Brodmann areas could be directly observed on the cortical surface. In addition, by using multivariate classification analysis, the location of stimulation on the index finger (four distinct sites) could be decoded with a mean accuracy of 65% across subjects. Our measurements thus show that within-finger topography is present at the millimeter scale in the cortex and is highly reproducible. The ability to identify functional areas of S1 in vivo in individual subjects will provide a framework for investigating more complex aspects of tactile representation in S1.
Pivotal Role of Call Centre Managers from an Outsourced Telecommunications Company: A Case in Gauteng, South Africa

The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of managers employed in outsourced telecommunications call centres regarding their managerial roles. The study takes the form of a qualitative case study with data having been collected through semi-structured, interviews. Participants were purposively selected through criterion sampling. The results reveal that scientific management principles and continuous improvement are major focus areas in the call centre environment and that call centre managers who deal with internal and external pressures have a dynamic and challenging task. The study focuses on one telecommunications company that has four outsourced call centres in Gauteng, South Africa. The sample consisted of eight participants. The outcome highlights the role played by managers of outsourced organisations and provides suggestions as to how call centre management can be improved by dealing with the challenges being experienced. By means of careful consideration of the contracting process, this research contributes theoretically and practically towards management, continuous improvement and to addressing financial constraints.
Supporting the selection of model-based testing approaches for software projects

Software technologies, such as model-based testing approaches, have specific characteristics and limitations that can affect their use in software projects. To make available knowledge regarding such technologies is important to support the decision regarding their use in software projects. In particular, a choice of model-based testing approach can influence testing success or failure. Therefore, this paper aims at describing knowledge acquired from a systematic review regarding model-based testing approaches and proposing an infrastructure towards supporting their selection for software projects.
Choosing the Best Training Programme: Is There a Case for Statistical Treatment Rules?

When treatment effects of active labour market programmes (ALMPs) are heterogeneous in an observable way across the population, the allocation of the unemployed into different programmes becomes particularly important. In this article, we present a statistical model that can be used to allocate unemployed into different ALMPs. The model presented is a duration model that uses the timing-of-events framework to identify causal effects. We compare different assignment rules, and the results suggest that a significant reduction in the average duration of unemployment may result if a statistical treatment rule is introduced.
Review on Agile requirements engineering challenges

The popularity of agile methodology has been increased since agile offers further collaboration. Requirements engineering (RE) is one of the software development process in agile approaches. The features of face to face communication is one of agile way which unlike to other traditional software methods. Software developers are using the definition agile way to improve the agile way of activities. Besides, the challenge of dealing with RE practices is not much is known in agile way or model. However, many literature works have been done in RE in agile approaches and challenges faced by teamwork. The aim of this paper is to fill the gap by presenting RE practices in agile methodology also the challenges of RE activities which are faced by agile team members. 80 systematic literature reviews are conducted and 22 research papers are identified. Moreover, the reviews discuss RE in agile methodology approaches. This paper has adopted a systematic literature review and has applied a certain inclusion and exclusion criteria to detect the research studies related to RE in agile methodology to achieve the aim of this research. This research determined most of agile requirements engineering activities, also challenges of requirements engineering in agile methodology. Therefore, the research findings can be a reference to all researchers who are interested in this research area because the paper's findings clarify that RE in agile methodology need to have further attention by researchers and more practical results are needed to gain understandable information about RE practices in Agile methodology.
XMM-Newton confirmation of soft X-ray excess emission in clusters of galaxies - The discovery of O VII emission from an extended warm baryonic component

We investigate a sample of 14 clusters of galaxies observed with XMM-Newton in a search for soft X-ray excess emission. In five of these clusters a significant soft excess is evident. This soft X-ray excess is compared with the thermal emission from both the hot intracluster gas and any cooling (flow) gas that may be present. A warm (kT = 0.2 keV), extended (several Mpc), plasma component is particularly clear in the outer parts of the cluster, where the normal cluster X-ray emission is weak. This warm component causes both a thermal soft X-ray excess at low energies (below 0.4-0.5 keV), as well as O  line emission with a redshift consistent with a cluster origin, and not easily interpreted as Galactic foreground emission. The intensity of this component is commensurate with what has been measured before with the ROSAT PSPC in the 1/4 keV band. We attribute this component to emission from intercluster filaments of the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium in the vicinity of these clusters. For the central regions of clusters the detection of lines in the soft X-ray spectrum is more difficult, due to the predominance of the X-ray emitting hot plasma there, hence we cannot discriminate between the thermal and nonthermal origin of the soft excess, leaving several options open. These include thermal emission from warm filaments seen in projection in front of or behind the cluster center, thermal or nonthermal emission in the cluster core itself related to magnetic reconnection, or Inverse Compton emission from the cosmic microwave background on relativistic electrons.
Guiding or Hiding: Explorations into the Effects of Learning on the Rate of Evolution

Individual lifetime learning can`guide' an evolving population to areas of high tness in genotype space through an evolutionary phenomenon known as the Baldwin eeect (Baldwin, 1896; Hin-ton & Nowlan, 1987). It is the accepted wisdom that this guiding speeds up the rate of evolution. By highlighting another interaction between learning and evolution, that will be termed the Hiding eeect, it will be argued here that this depends on the measure of evolutionary speed one adopts. The Hiding eeect shows that learning can reduce the selection pressure between individuals by`hiding' their genetic diierences. There is thus a trade-oo between the Baldwin eeect and the Hiding eeect to determine learning's innuence on evolution and two factors that contribute to this trade-oo, the cost of learning and landscape epis-tasis, are investigated experimentally.
QUANTIZED DETECTOR NETWORKS: A REVIEW OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

QDN (quantized detector networks) is a description of quantum processes in which the principal focus is on observers and their apparatus, rather than on states of SUOs (systems under observation). It is a realization of Heisenberg's original instrumentalist approach to quantum physics, and can deal with time dependent apparatus, multiple observers and inter-frame physics. QDN is most naturally expressed in the mathematical language of quantum computation, a language ideally suited to describe quantum experiments as processes of information exchange between observers and their apparatus. Examples in quantum optics are given, showing how the formalism deals with quantum interference, non-locality and entanglement. Particle decays, relativity and non-linearity in quantum mechanics are also discussed.
How not to be Seen: The Contribution of Similarity and Selective Ignoring to Sustained Inattentional Blindness

When people attend to objects or events in a visual display, they often fail to notice an additional, unexpected, but fully visible object or event in the same display. This phenomenon is now known as inattentional blindness. We present a new approach to the study of sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events in order to explore the roles of similarity, distinctiveness, and attentional set in the detection of unexpected objects. In Experiment 1, we found that the similarity of an unexpected object to other objects in the display influences attentional capture: The more similar an unexpected object is to the attended items, and the greater its difference from the ignored items, the more likely it is that people will notice it. Experiment 2 explored whether this effect of similarity is driven by selective ignoring of irrelevant items or by selective focusing on attended items. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the distinctiveness of the unexpected object alone cannot entirely account for the similarity effects found in the first two experiments; when attending to black items or white items in a dynamic display, nearly 30% of observers failed to notice a bright red cross move across the display, even though it had a unique color, luminance, shape, and motion trajectory and was visible for 5 s. Together, the results suggest that inattentional blindness for ongoing dynamic events depends both on the similarity of the unexpected object to the other objects in the display and on the observer's attentional set.
A micropower neural recording amplifier with improved noise efficiency factor

This article presents a neural recording amplifier suitable for large-scale integration with multi-electrode arrays (MEAs) in very low-power microelectronic cortical implants. The proposed amplifier is the most energy-efficient structure reported to date, which achieves an effective noise efficiency factor (NEF) smaller than the theoretical limit that was claimed in literature for any existing amplifier (NEF=3D2.02). The proposed technique, which is referred to as partially OTA sharing technique, achieves a significant reduction of power dissipation as well as silicon area, in addition to the very low NEF. The effect of systematic mismatch on crosstalk between adjacent channels and the trade-off between noise and crosstalk are theoretically analyzed. For an array of four neural amplifiers, simulation results show a midband gain of 39.2 dB and a -3 dB bandwidth from 10 Hz to 10.6 kHz. The input referred noise is simulated to be 2.21 μVrms and the power consumption is 7.92 μW from 1.8 V supply, which refers to NEF=3D1.8. The worst-case crosstalk within the desired bandwidth is -46.1 dB.
ANALISIS TINGKAT KESEJAHTERAAN MASYARAKAT NELAYAN DI DESA DAHARI SELEBAR KECAMATAN TALAWI KABUPATEN BATUBARA

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk: mengetahui Tingkat Kesejahteraan Masyarakat Nelayan di Desa Dahari Selebar Kecamatan Talawi Kabupaten Batubara. Penelitian ini dilakukan di Desa Dahari Selebar Kecamatan Talawi Kabupaten Batubara. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah seluruh masyarakat nelayan yang ada di Desa Daari Selebar Kecamatan Talawi Kabupaten Batubara yang berjumlah 443 KK. Sampel dalam penelitian ini adalah 15% dari jumlah populasi nelayan yaitu 66 KK. Teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan adalah daftar wawancara. Teknik analisis data yang dilakukan yaitu analisis deskriptif kualitatif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa tingkat kesejahteraan masyarakat nelayan yaitu 42 responden (63,63%) tergolong dalam prasejahtera, 21 responden (31,81%) tergolong dalam sejahtera I, dan 3 responden (4,56%) tergolong dalam sejahtera II. Jika dikaitkan dengan Upah Minimum Kabupaten Batubara tahun 2016 yaitu sebesar Rp.2. 313.625 maka seluruh responden masuk dalam kategori miskin, masyarakat prasejahtera pendapatannya Rp 897.000, masyarakat sejahtera I Rp 1.149. 000, dan masyarakat sejahtera II Rp 1.470. 000. Kata kunci: tingkat kesejahteraan masyarakat nelayan
Negative Cooperativity of Glutamate Binding in the Dimeric Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor Subtype 1*

Metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) subtype 1 is a Class III G-protein-coupled receptor that is mainly expressed on the post-synaptic membrane of neuronal cells. The receptor has a large N-terminal extracellular ligand binding domain that forms a homodimer, however, the intersubunit communication of ligand binding in the dimer remains unknown. Here, using the intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence change as a probe for ligand binding events, we examined whether allosteric properties exist in the dimeric ligand binding domain of the receptor. The indole ring of the tryptophan 110, which resides on the upper surface of the ligand binding pocket, sensed the ligand binding events. From saturation binding curves, we have determined the apparent dissociation constants (K0.5) of representative agonists and antagonists for this receptor (3.8, 0.46, 40, and 0.89 μm for glutamate, quisqualate, (S)-α-methyl-4-carboxyphenylglycine ((S)-MCPG), and (+)-2-methyl-4-carboxyphenylglycine (LY367385), respectively). Calcium ions functioned as a positive modulator for agonist but not for antagonist binding (K0.5 values were 1.3, 0.21, 59, and 1.2 μm for glutamate, quisqualate, (S)-MCPG, and LY367385, respectively, in the presence of 2.0 mm calcium ion). Moreover, a Hill analysis of the saturation binding curves revealed the strong negative cooperativity of glutamate binding between each subunit in the dimeric ligand binding domain. As far as we know, this is the first direct evidence that the dimeric ligand binding domain of mGluR exhibits intersubunit cooperativity of ligand binding.
Allele-specific differences in apolipoprotein C-III mRNA expression in human liver.

BACKGROUND Sequence variations at the apolipoprotein (apo)C-III gene locus have been associated with increased plasma triglycerides. In particular, the S2 allele of an SstI polymorphism in the 3' untranslated region has been associated with hypertriglyceridemia in many populations. The aim of this study was to determine whether the variant S2 allele is related to increased mRNA expression in vivo. METHODS We measured allele-specific apoC-III expression in liver biopsies of five obese subjects, using restriction isotyping and a primer extension method, both based on the SstI polymorphism. RESULTS The expression of mRNA by the S1 and S2 alleles was similar in two patients, whereas the mRNA encoded by the S2 allele was 14%, 26%, and 29% more abundant than the wild-type mRNA in the remaining three patients. Because other polymorphisms at the apoC-III gene locus have been implicated in the S2-associated hypertriglyceridemia, we determined apoC-III haplotypes comprising promoter polymorphisms at -935, -641, -630, -625, -482, -455, as well as the SstI sites and a BbvI site, both located in the 3' untranslated region. None of these polymorphisms nor any haplotype exhibited a perfect association with allele-specific expression, but variation at the T-482C site correlated in four of five subjects with the relative allele abundance. CONCLUSION These data provide preliminary evidence for allele-specific differences in apoC-III mRNA expression in vivo and suggest that such differences may contribute to associations of apoC-III gene polymorphisms with hypertriglyceridemia.
Meta-analysis provides evidence-based interpretation guidelines for the clinical significance of mean differences for the FACT-G, a cancer-specific quality of life questionnaire

Our aim was to develop evidence-based interpretation guidelines for the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G), a cancer-specific health-related quality of life (HRQOL) instrument, from a range of clinically relevant anchors, incorporating expert judgment about clinical significance. Three clinicians with many years’ experience managing cancer patients and using HRQOL outcomes in clinical research reviewed 71 papers. Blinded to the FACT-G results, they considered the clinical anchors associated with each FACT-G mean difference, predicted which dimensions of HRQOL would be affected, and whether the effects would be trivial, small, moderate, or large. These size classes were defined in terms of clinical relevance. The experts’ judgments were then linked with FACT-G mean differences, and inverse-variance weighted mean differences were calculated for each size class. Small, medium, and large differences (95% confidence interval) from 1,118 cross-sectional comparisons were as follows: physical well-being 1.9 (0.6–3.2), 4.1 (2.7–5.5), 8.7 (5.2–12); functional well-being 2.0 (0.5–3.5), 3.8 (2.0–5.5), 8.8 (4.3–13); emotional well-being 1.0 (0.1–2.6), 1.9 (0.3–3.5), no large differences; social well-being 0.7 (−0.7 to 2.1), 0.8 (−2.9 to 4.5), no large differences. Results from 436 longitudinal comparisons tended to be smaller than the corresponding cross-sectional results. These results augment other interpretation guidelines for FACT-G with information on sample size, power calculations, and interpretation of cancer clinical trials that use FACT-G.
When Push Comes to Shove: How Are Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder Coping With Bullying?

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are frequent targets of peer victimization (i.e., bullying). Although the frequency and potential impact of such experiences on students with ASD has been examined, the potential coping strategies implemented by such students are relatively unexplored. This qualitative study examined coping strategies for peer victimization as suggested by 38 students with ASD who do not have cognitive impairment. Participants viewed cartoons depicting characters that experienced various forms of bullying at school and responded to open-ended questions to explore their suggested coping strategies. Thematic analysis yielded three themes: approach coping, avoidance coping, and complexities of bullying. This study provides insight into the coping strategies implemented by students with ASD and possible avenues for school-based intervention.
Group Versus Individual Risk Choices in Female Workgroups in Ethiopia

A lottery choice task was conducted to examine the risk attitudes of 352 Ethiopian women who were members of 72 female workgroups in the spices processing business in Addis Ababa. The women were asked to make risk choices on their own, and the same choices together with the other members of their workgroup, as a group decision. Our study is different from earlier research in the field in that it focuses on poor women operating a business in a low-income patriarchal society. The data show younger and more educated women to be more risk-taking in their individual choices than older and less educated women. The group choices were more cautious than the (means of) the individual choices of the members, hence providing evidence of a cautious shift. Groups that were more risk-taking had better business performance in terms of capital gains, hired workers and income earned by the women.