Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Strategic Idleness and Dynamic Scheduling in an Open-Shop Service Network: Case Study and Analysis

This paper, motivated by a collaboration with a healthcare service provider, focuses on stochastic open-shop service networks with two objectives: more traditional macrolevel measures such as minimizing total system time or minimizing total number of tardy customers and the atypical microlevel measure of reducing the incidents of excessively long waits at any workstation within the process. While work-conserving policies are optimal for macrolevel measures, scheduling policies with strategic idleness SI might be helpful for microlevel measures. Using the empirical data obtained from the service provider, we provide statistical evidence that SI is used by its schedulers to manage the macro-and microlevel measures. However, the company has no specific rules on implementing SI and the schedulers make decisions based on their own experience. Our primary goal is to develop a systematic framework for the joint usage of SI with dynamic scheduling policies DSPs. We suggest to use threshold-based policies to intelligently combine SI and DSPs and show that the resulting policies provide an efficient way to simultaneously address both macro-and microlevel measures. We build two simulation models: one based on empirical data and one based on a randomly generated open-shop network. We use both models to demonstrate that an open-shop service network can be systematically and effectively managed to deliver improved service level by using SI.
Regulation of the intestinal epithelial barrier by the apical junctional complex

Purpose of review Epithelial intercellular junctions are important components of the epithelial barrier and are compromised in disorders such as Crohn's disease. We will highlight recent progress in understanding the role of an intercellular junction referred to as the apical junctional complex in regulating small intestinal epithelial permeability in health and disease. Recent findings Recent studies have implicated aberrant regulation of the AJC as an underlying factor contributing to a leaky epithelial barrier in Crohn's patients. Consequences of increased epithelial permeability include exposure of intestinal tissue to luminal antigens/pathogens which in turn influence disease activity. Furthermore, proinflammatory cytokines released into the milieu of the epithelium in patients with Crohn's disease influence apical junctional complex and epithelial barrier function. Such cytokines induce disassembly of the apical junctional complex by promoting differential endocytosis of component proteins. Additionally, apical junctional complex proteins are targeted by pathogens that use the epithelium as a portal of entry to establish disease in the host. Summary The epithelial apical junctional complex is important in determining epithelial barrier properties. Recent studies have highlighted contribution of proinflammatory cytokines and endocytosis of apical junctional complex proteins to the epithelial barrier defect. Continued advances in understanding of this field will yield new therapeutic targets for intestinal disorders.
Reputation and Product Quality

This article considers the role of reputation in a competitive market where product quality is unobservable. It is shown, among other things, that there can exist equilibria where price is equal to average cost but greater than marginal cost. No. firm cuts its price because this would make it more profitable to produce low- rather than high-quality goods; consumers are aware of this and would not buy its products.
Advancing our understanding of the inheritance and transmission of pectus excavatum

Abstract Pectus excavatum is the most common congenital chest wall abnormality expressed in children, yet its inheritance is poorly understood. Here we present the first comprehensive assessment of the inheritance of this disorder. After evaluating 48 pedigrees and 56 clinical traits of probands and family members, we find strong evidence of autosomal recessive, genetic control for this disorder. Additionally there is likely more than one pectus disease-associated allele, as well as a relatively large number of disease allele carriers in the human population. Some clinical traits appear important and may serve as reliable indicators for predicting the likelihood of pectus excavatum in children before severe symptoms present. Quantifying sex-ratio bias in probands demonstrates a highly significant male bias associated with pectus excavatum. When combined with pedigree data, sex-bias is indicative of sex-linked, sex-limited, and/or epigenetic control such as X-inactivation, reiterating a point made with pedigrees alone, which is that more than one mutation is likely responsible for this disorder.
Cutaneous and other lupus‐like symptoms in carriers of X‐linked chronic granulomatous disease: incidence and autoimmune serology

The objective of this study was to determine the utility of anti‐nuclear antibody (ANA) testing in the investigation of cutaneous and other lupus symptoms in female carriers of X‐linked chronic granulomatous disease (CGD). We undertook a prospective study of 19 carrier mothers attending our institution, with direct questioning of carriers concerning symptoms and testing for anti‐nuclear and anti‐phospholipid antibodies. A total of 58% reported significant photosensitive skin rashes, 42% reported mouth ulcers and 37% complained of joint pains that could not be attributed to other known causes. Anti‐nuclear antibody (ANA) testing was negative in 73% of all carriers. The five positive ANAs were of low titre (maximum 1 : 320 on Hep 2 cells in two women) and only one weak positive double‐stranded DNA antibody and no extractable nuclear antibodies were found. Several of the mothers, despite negative serology, benefited from referral to a specialist, and in some cases to specific treatment. A history of skin rashes, joint pain, fatigue and mouth ulcers should be sought actively in the female relatives of X‐CGD patients but negative lupus serology should not preclude referral to appropriate dermatology or rheumatology services. as symptoms may respond well to appropriate treatment.
Strategic positioning and quality determinants in banking service

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate and define the competitive positioning of banks including state‐owned, domestic and foreign banks operating in Istanbul, Turkey. The aim is to check the competitive marketplace and to identify the major quality attributes, which bankers themselves and their customers used in determining the overall perception of a given bank and services offered.Design/methodology/approach – The investigation was held in Istanbul, Turkey. In total, 30 banks were included in the research, which includes state‐owned, local and foreign‐owned banks. A total of 1,530 questionnaires were submitted, answers collected and analyzed. Reliability test and frequency analysis were used to analyze the data.Findings – From the banks' customers' point of view, determinants relating to functional quality or how the customers wish to receive banking services became evident. It also became clear that customers of banks are not fully receiving what they want or need and their expectations, es.
Korean Wave and Korean Women Television Viewers in Singapore

Abstract Against the backdrop of cultural globalization and regionalization, this study theorizes on transnational television consumption and cultural flows within Asia by examining the ways in which women of the Korean diaspora enjoy homeland television drama while living in Singapore. It was found that Korean drama viewing provides these women with cultural resources to resist male dominance. In a word, they acquire semiotic power to produce resistive reading from the resources of the text. The Korean Wave phenomenon plays an interesting role in this. Moving the cultural industries' position upward in the Korean economy has allowed the expertise about Korean television drama to function as means of empowering women in familial power relations. It has also heightened their ethnic pride in their relations with other Asians. Articulated in these contexts, the Korean Wave produces new meanings and serves new cultural interests for women.
On‐Market Share Buy‐Backs: ASX Disclosure Requirements and Compliance

Our paper investigates the compliance of Australian listed firms with the ASX disclosure rules for on-market share buy-backs. We find that firm compliance is reasonable for initial buy-back announcements, but poor for final buy-back notices. In the latter instance, the disclosure in the appropriate ASX notice is provided in only 53% of cases. Of significant concern is the even lower degree of final notice compliance (42%) for buy-backs tagged as having ‘unlimited’ duration. Across our total sample of 807 buy-backs, an alternative form of disclosure of buy-back completion is provided in 25% of cases, and no proper notification of either the initial announcement or the completion of the buy-back is provided in 12% of cases. In order to improve buy-back transparency, some legislative reform of the ASX rules is suggested including: discontinuing ‘unlimited duration’ buy-backs, restricting buy-back periods to a maximum of twelve months (after which a new buy-back process must be initiated), avoiding multiple simultaneous buy-backs, removing the requirement of daily buy-back notices in favour of more meaningful quarterly or monthly reports, and requiring greater disclosure in relation to foreign buy-backs.
Field Port-Lagrangian Representation of Conservation Laws for Variational Symmetries

This paper studies the relation between conservation laws and symmetries from the point of view of port-representation. First, the formal structure of conservation laws is defined by the field port-Lagrangian system for such symmetries. Next, it is shown that a variational complex notation naturally defines the system decomposition that extracts a self-adjoint subsystem from a non-self-adjoint system. Then, the above discussion is extended to one of non-trivial symmetries, a variational symmetry. Since the necessary and sufficient condition of the variational symmetry is a self-adjointness, we apply the decomposition given by the previous section to non-self-adjoint systems. Thirdly, we propose the procedure to realize the boundary observer for a destruction of symmetries. Finally, we show a shaping of conservation laws in the sense of generalized energy shaping
O papel de tributos diferidos no capital regulatório de instituições financeiras brasileiras

This study sought to provide evidence on the role of deferred tax assets and liabilities as an instrument for the attainment and arbitrage of regulatory capital levels by Brazilian financial institutions in the period from 2004 to 2009. Two hypotheses were developed. The managers of Brazilian financial institutions employ deferred taxes to a) comply with required regulatory capital limits and b) do so in a discretionary manner as a method for regulatory capital arbitrage. The present study collected evidence through the analysis of annual accounting information from Brazilian financial institutions. The hypotheses were tested using multiple linear regression and panel data regression data analysis techniques. The results show that Brazilian financial institutions have used deferred taxes to support or attain the minimum capital levels required by the Basel Accord; however, evidence that the volume of regulatory capital directly influences the volume of deferred taxes was also found, contradicting the international literature, which indicates discretion in the use of deferred taxes as a form of regulatory capital arbitrage.
The Effect of Husband's Job Displacement on the Timing and Spacing of Births in the United States

I use husband's job displacement as an exogenous shock to identify the effect of income on the timing and spacing of births. Gradual adjustment of fertility to income shock is considered in life‐cycle model with uncertainty. Flexible hazard model, estimated jointly for the first three births, allows household's fertility to be affected not only in the period of displacement but also before and after. General displacements and layoffs have negative log‐run effect on the timing and spacing of only the first and the third births. The effect persists with nonparametric controls for woman‐ and transition‐specific heterogeneity, and after robustness checks.
Functional MRI of lateral occipitotemporal cortex during pursuit and motion perception

We performed functional imaging with a conventional 1.5‐T magnetic resonance scanner in 9 normal subjects. We used a gradient‐echo technique to examine changes in signal between periods when subjects viewed a stationary black‐and‐white grating, a moving grating, and when they followed a moving spot. We located image pixels with significant differences between the viewing conditions. In 7 subjects, these occurred in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex, a region previously identified as a putative human homologue of the motion‐sensitive middle temporal area (MT, or V5) of monkeys. Signal intensity was greater during pursuit of the moving dot than durin viewing of the moving grating with the eyes still, despite the fact that the moving grating generated more retinal image motion. In contrast, signal intensity in striate cortex was least during pursuit of the moving dot. These findings suggest that the lateral occipitotemporal cortex has extraretinal signals during pursuit. Such signals may include attentional input, corollary eye movement information, or even a pursuit command. Extraretinal signals suggest that the lateral occipitotemporal cortex may contain a human homologue not only of MT but also of other components of monkey V5 complex, such as the medical superior temporal area.
The Bounded Rationality and Behavioral Influence on Career Decisions - A Study on Voluntary Retirees of PSU Banks

Opting for an early Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) is regarded as one of the important career decisions for Public Sector Bank Employees. It is observed that in taking such a major decision, many employees do not act rationally thereby giving scope for regretting on their decisions later on. The bounded rationality approach tends to prohibit them from seeking more details of the VRS offer and verification of future prospects of engagement after early retirement. A number of factors lead them to defend their decision even against adversities and there is a tendency to stick to their initial reasoning. The realization of irrationality comes only after treading in an irreversible path. The decision rationales of employees of Public Sector Banks who opted for VRS in 2000 are studied here in retrospect. The study analyzed major reasons of the employees for quitting the Bank Service under VRS. Study reveals that the younger employees who took VRS for the financial gains of the scheme reported more distress than those who had less number of years left for retirement. The theory of Simon’s bounded rationality and the behavioral influences on decision process have found support in this study.
The Relative Importance of Social Media for Accessing, Finding, and Engaging with News

The growing use of social media like Facebook and Twitter is in the process of changing how news is produced, disseminated, and discussed. But so far, we have only a preliminary understanding of (1) how important social media are as sources of news relative to other media, (2) the extent to which people use them to find news, (3) how many use them to engage in more participatory forms of news use, and (4) whether these developments are similar within countries with otherwise comparable levels of technological development. Based on data from a cross-country online survey of news media use, we present a comparative analysis of the relative importance of social media for news in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, covering eight developed democracies with different media systems. We show that television remains both the most widely used and most important source of news in all these countries, and that even print newspapers are still more widely used and seen as more important sources of news than social media. We identify a set of similarities in terms of the growing importance of social media as part of people’s cross-media news habits, but also important country-to-country differences, in particular in terms of how widespread the more active and participatory forms of media use are. Surprisingly, these differences do not correspond to differences in levels of internet use, suggesting that more than mere availability shapes the role of social media as parts of people’s news habits.
Simultaneous Presence of Insertion Sequence Excision Enhancer and Insertion Sequence IS629 Correlates with Increased Diversity and Virulence in Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Although new serotypes of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) emerge constantly, the mechanisms by which these new pathogens arise and the reasons emerging serotypes tend to carry more virulence genes than other E. coli are not understood. An insertion sequence (IS) excision enhancer (IEE) was discovered in EHEC O157:H7 that promoted the excision of IS3 family members and generating various genomic deletions. One IS3 family member, IS629, actively transposes and proliferates in EHEC O157:H7 and enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) O139 and O149. The simultaneous presence of the IEE and IS629 (and other IS3 family members) may be part of a system promoting not only adaptation and genome diversification in E. coli O157:H7 but also contributing to the development of pathogenicity among predominant serotypes. Prevalence comparisons of these elements in 461 strains, representing 72 different serotypes and 5 preassigned seropathotypes (SPT) A to E, showed that the presence of these two elements simultaneously was serotype specific and associated with highly pathogenic serotypes (O157 and top non-O157 Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli [STEC]) implicated in outbreaks and sporadic cases of human illness (SPT A and B). Serotypes lacking one or both elements were less likely to have been isolated from clinical cases. Our comparisons of IEE sequences showed sequence variations that could be divided into at least three clusters. Interestingly, the IEE sequences from O157 and the top 10 non-O157 STEC serotypes fell into clusters I and II, while less commonly isolated serotypes O5 and O174 fell into cluster III. These results suggest that IS629 and IEE elements may be acting synergistically to promote genome plasticity and genetic diversity among STEC strains, enhancing their abilities to adapt to hostile environments and rapidly take up virulence factors.
Plant closures in multiplant manufacturing firms: adding an international perspective

Multinational firms sometimes have to choose between plants in different countries when selecting a plant for closure. This kind of decision is particularly characteristic of firms operating plants in the same industry but in different EU countries. An examination of a number of cross‐boundary closures in the EU illustrates the dominant role of plant economies of scale in encouraging the concentration of production on the largest pre‐existing site. National differences in labour characteristics can also be important. In making such closure decisions, managers need to be aware that they may be accused of misusing government subsidies, playing one group of workers or government against another group of workers and government, misjudging the political context of the environment in which the closed plant is set and, where the firms have their head offices in Europe, favouring their home country. Strategies are suggested for countering
Bioeconometrics: Empirical Modeling of Bioeconomic Systems

The rise of ecosystem management as an approach to renewable resource policy increases the demand for empirical bioeconomics. This paper provides a working definition of bioeconometrics and a taxonomy of model types. A bioeconometric model is a structural model that econometrically estimates one or more parameters of a bioeconomic system. Bioeconometric model types include equilibrium, dynamically decoupled, and dynamically coupled. The challenges and importance of bioeconometrics are illustrated with a Monte Carlo analysis of simulated data that attempts to differentiate among six different qualitative categories in a system characterized by critical depensation. The analysis highlights a theme in nonlinear dynamics—that a small quantitative change in a parameter can affect the qualitative dynamics—and shows that the econometrician may know the least empirically about a bioeconomic system when she needs to know the most.
A Political Perspective on Contracting Out: The Politics of Good Times. Experiences from Danish Local Governments

Privatization has been on the political agenda for the last two decades. The literature points to two major explanations of privatization. One explanation is political-ideological, considering privatization to be a Liberal-Conservative strategy. Economic crisis or fiscal stress is the other main explanation of privatization. The two theses are investigated by evaluating the determinants of contracting out in Danish local governments. The analysis shows that fiscal stress is strongly, but inversely related to contracting out, while Liberal-Conservative political leadership is not associated with higher levels of contracting out than Social Democratic governance. Thus, the richer a local government becomes, the more it contracts out. Although party politics is not decisive for contracting out, the motivation seems to be political rather than economical. Specifically, it is argued that in a strongly decentralized public sector with influential public employees, contracting out is possible in good times when revenue and public expenditure are easier to increase, which reduces public employee resistance to contracting out.
Exploring Interactions between Real Activity and the Financial Stance

In this paper we empirically study interactions between real activity and the financial stance. Using aggregate data we examine a number of candidate measures of the financial stance of the economy. We find strong evidence for substantial spillover effects on aggregate activity from our preferred measure. Given this result, we use a large micro data-set for corporate firms to develop a macro-micro model of the interaction between the financial and real economy. This approach implies that the impulse responses of a given aggregate shock will depend on the portfolio structure of firms at any given point in time.
Risk of uterine rupture in Australian women attempting vaginal birth after one prior caesarean section: a retrospective population‐based cohort study

Please cite this paper as: Dekker G, Chan A, Luke C, Priest K, Riley M, Halliday J, King J, Gee V, O’Neill M, Snell M, Cull V, Cornes S. Risk of uterine rupture in Australian women attempting vaginal birth after one prior caesarean section: a retrospective population‐based cohort study. BJOG 2010;117:1358–1365.
Resale Price Maintenance and Quality Certification

Resale price maintenance (RPM) has been applied to a number of products that do not seem to require tangible presale dealer services. This article explains why RPM might exist in these instances. We show that RPM will be adopted when a manufacturer wishes to "purchase" quality or style certification from reputable dealers. We demonstrate that manufacturers will desire to adopt RPM even when they are permitted to shape the set of stores handling their products through refusals to deal. Although we do not claim that this is the only explanation of RPM, we nevertheless believe that our explanation has wide applicability.