Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Restaurant Experience on Brand Image and Customer Loyalty: Moderating Role of Dining Motivation

ABSTRACT This study seeks to determine which restaurant experiences influence the image of a restaurant's brand and formation of customers' loyalty. The research examines the connections among restaurant experiences, brand image, satisfaction, and loyalty in the context of full-service restaurants. This study also investigates the moderating effect of customers' dining motivations on the formation of brand image. The results of this study suggest that: (a) A restaurant's environment and food quality positively influences brand image and customers' satisfaction, (b) customers' perceptions of price fairness do not influence brand image but does affect customers' satisfaction, (c) development of customers' positive brand image does not drive satisfaction but does influence loyalty in full-service restaurants, and (d) customers' dining motivations moderate the relationship between restaurant experiences and perceptions of brand image. These results provide a basis for investigating which restaurant experiences are critical in eliciting development of a positive brand image and which have behavioral consequences. This study also offers mangers a perspective for developing marketing strategies to strengthen brand image in full-service restaurants.
Optimality of Myopic Inventory Policies for Several Substitute Products

Multiproduct inventory systems with proportional ordering costs and stochastic demands are studied. New conditions are obtained under which a myopic ordering policy (a policy of minimizing expected cost in the current period alone) is optimal for a sequence of periods for all initial inventory levels. An important one of these, the substitute property, holds when the myopic policy is such that increasing the initial inventory of one product does not increase the quantity ordered of any product. Conditions on the one period expected holding and shortage cost function, which are of independent interest in nonlinear programming, are shown to imply the substitute property. Applications of these conditions to models with storage or investment limitations and to a multiechelon model are given. Under backlogging the usual extension to a fixed delivery lag is obtained. Some non-stationary cases are also treated.
The economics of the family firm

Abstract The paper investigates how far the study of family firms constitutes a subject in its own right. It is argued that family ownership per se does not require the development of a special theory of family firms. It is suggested that the uniqueness of the family firm resides in the strength of the dynastic motive, which may strengthen trust between family members, but discourages the recruitment of non-family members and so inhibits the growth of the firm. The strength of the dynastic motive varies across family firms. The paper summarises two recent approaches to the economic theory of family firms which attempt to formalise these insights, and demonstrates the complementarities between them.
Stable periplasmic secretion intermediate in the general secretory pathway of Escherichia coli.

The secretion of the Klebsiella oxytoca cell surface lipoprotein pullulanase involves translocation across the cytoplasmic and outer membranes of the Gram‐negative bacterial cell envelope. A variant of pullulanase was created by fusing the signal peptide‐encoding 5′ region of the Escherichia coli gene for periplasmic MalE protein to the 3′ end of the pulA gene encoding almost the entire mature part of pullulanase. When produced in E. coli carrying the malE‐pulA gene fusion on a high copy number plasmid and the complete set of genes specifically required for pullulanase secretion on a second plasmid, the hybrid protein differed from wild‐type pullulanase as follows: (i) it was not fatty‐acylated; (ii) it was apparently processed by LepB signal peptidase rather than by LspA lipoprotein signal peptidase; (iii) it was released into the periplasm and was only slowly transported across the outer membrane, and (iv) it was released directly into the medium rather than via the usual surface‐anchored intermediate. The hybrid protein was secreted more rapidly when malE‐pulA was expressed from a low copy number plasmid. The two steps in the secretion pathway could be totally uncoupled by expressing first the malE‐pulA gene fusion and then the cognate secretion genes. These results show that fatty‐acylation of wild‐type PulA is not essential for secretion but may improve its efficiency when large amounts of the protein are produced, that the two steps in secretion can occur quite independently and that the periplasmic intermediate can persist for long periods under certain circumstances.
Influence of environmental temperature on growth, muscle and adipose tissue metabolism, and meat quality in swine.

An experiment involving 32 individually housed, castrated male pigs was conducted to determine the effects of environmental temperature (12 degrees C = T12 or 28 degrees C = T28) on the performance, carcass characteristics, muscle and adipose tissue metabolism, and meat quality of pigs fed to achieve equal rates of weight gain between 8 and 92 kg live weight. The T12 pigs had less muscle (P less than .01) and more subcutaneous fat (P less than .01) in the ham than did T28 animals. Thyroids and adrenals were heavier (P less than .01) in T12 than in T28 pigs. Percentage of type I muscle fibers was higher (P less than .01) and fiber cross-sectional areas smaller (P less than .01) in semispinalis muscle (SS) of T12 pigs, whereas no effect of temperature was noticed in longissimus muscle (LD). Cold exposure induced a larger increase in oxidative metabolism in SS (+30 to 32%, P less than .001) than in LD (+14 to 17%, P less than .10) and an enhanced glycolytic metabolism in LD (P less than .05). Lipid concentration was higher in SS of T12 than in that of T28 pigs. Lipogenic enzyme activities and unsaturation of backfat were higher in T12 than in T28 pigs, whereas no effect of temperature was noticed in leaf fat. Cold treatment resulted in a faster postmortem pH decline (P less than .01), higher glycolytic potential (P less than .01), and lower ultimate pH (P less than .01) in LD. The results indicate that 12 degrees C vs 28 degrees C induced detrimental effects on growth, ham composition, and muscle and adipose tissue quality.
Corporate governance, organisational power and disclosure by firms in the United Arab Emirates

This study examines the association between corporate governance mechanisms and corporate disclosure in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Hypotheses based on agency theory and organisational power literature are developed and tested on 85 firms listed in Dubai and Abu Dhabi stock exchanges. The study also runs multiple regression tests on two sub-samples (46 financial firms and 39 non-financial firms) in order to provide a richer analysis for the empirical findings. Overall, the results show that the extent of firms' disclosure is positively associated with the number of board committees, debt finance, firm size and firm profitability, while it is negatively related to CEO power. This study's findings direct policymakers attention to the importance of: the composition of the board, the optimal size of the board, governing the type of knowledge required for board members, and revisiting the level of foreign ownership in UAE firms.
FIN 48 and Tax Compliance

ABSTRACT: We develop a model to examine the effects of Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Interpretation No. 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes (FIN 48), on the strategic interaction between publicly traded corporate taxpayers and the government. Several of our findings contradict conjectures voiced by members of the business community regarding the economic effects of implementing FIN 48. Specifically, taxpayers with strong facts obtain higher expected payoffs from uncertain tax benefits and some disclosed liabilities understate the expected tax liability. Consistent with the common conjectures, however, some taxpayers are more likely to be audited or are deterred from entering into transactions that generate uncertain tax benefits because of FIN 48.
Neural mechanisms of auditory sensory processing in children with high intelligence

To investigate the differences in event-related potential parameters related to children's intelligence, 18 intellectually gifted children and 18 average children participated in this study. The electroencephalograms were recorded the auditory sensory memory that elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN), as well as involuntary attention switch that elicited the P3a and early MMN were analyzed. The results indicated that children with high intelligence had comparatively larger MMN, LDN, early MMN, P3a amplitudes, and earlier peak latency in LDN than average children. The enhanced neural function of the intellectually gifted children might be due to more spatially and temporally coordinated neural network, faster neural processing speed and more efficient neural activation functions.
Monetary Policy Shocks and Stock Returns Reactions: Evidence from Botswana

This paper applies standard vector autoregressions (VAR) technique to quarterly data for Botswana for the period 1993-2010 to investigate the impact of monetary policy shocks on stock returns. Monetary policy is measured by changes in the 91 day Bank of Botswana Certificates rate. Our results indicate that positive interest rate innovations are associated with increases, rather than decreases, in the aggregate stock returns of companies listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE). A possible explanation for this counter-intuitive result is that the market capitalization in BSE is dominated by commercial banks, which are also the main beneficiaries of the interest income from investment in risk-free Bank of Botswana Certificates. The observed positive reaction of aggregate stock returns to monetary policy tightening suggests that the increase in returns to bank stocks offsets the negative reactions of non-bank stock returns. Variance decomposition shows that monetary policy shocks explain a relatively small proportion of stock returns variability. Keywords : Monetary policy; stock returns; vector autoregressions, Botswana
Travel Inn: everything you want for a good night's sleep - 100 per cent satisfaction guarantee or your money back.

In the UK, following a period of exponential growth, the budget hotel market is maturing. In the classic product/service lifecycle model, this phase of development in a market is usually associated with strategies which engender strong brand loyalty; which strengthen and underpin market share; which develop competitive relative positioning and which serve to emphasize, via differentiation, unique brand benefits or propositions. This paper considers the strategies of Whitbread Travel Inn who, as the market leader, launched their 100 per cent Good Night satisfaction guarantee (or your money back) across the brand in 2001. To begin with a review of the budget hotel market is undertaken. This is followed by an analysis of the achievements of the guarantee over its first 18 months of operation, and consideration of the training approach that inculcated a new mind‐set within the organization. The paper concludes by reiterating the successes achieved and celebrates an award winning performance.
Re-visiting the strategy-performance question: an empirical analysis

Strategic planning is assuming a greater importance for small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms as well as large firms. However, the lack of systematic strategic planning is considered by some commentators to be major reason for the failure of many of the initiatives designed to make SMEs more competitive. This paper reports the results of a nation-wide survey conducted in the UK, investigating the association between the emphasis placed on factors shaping the strategic plan together with their attendant resources and their perceived impact on a range of tangible and intangible performance measures. Evidence gathered suggests that a positive relationship exists between some dimensions of performance and a number of these factors. The analysis also indicates that high-performing firms place a greater emphasis on each of these factors compared with low-performing firms.
Influences on strategic decision effectiveness: Development and test of an integrative model

This paper draws upon three broad perspectives on the strategic decision-making process in order to develop a more completely specified model of strategic decision effectiveness in a different context, namely Egypt. The key variables in this model consist of three strategic decision-making process dimensions (rationality, intuition, and political behavior); seven moderating variables concerning decision-specific, environmental, and organizational factors; and strategic decision effectiveness as an outcome variable. A two-stage study was conducted in which the first stage provided exploratory insights and the second stage investigated hypotheses on the impact of strategic decision-making process dimensions on strategic decision effectiveness and the moderating role of broader contextual variables. The second-stage study produced three major findings: (1) both rational and political processes appear to have more influence on strategic decision effectiveness than does intuition; (2) strategic decision effectiveness is both process- and context-specific; and (3) certain results support the ‘culture-free’ argument, while others support the ‘culture-specific’ argument. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Exit Strategies and Plant-Closing Decisions: The Case of Steel

Several articles show that differences in firm characteristics such as size or diversification may affect plant-closing decisions during an industry's decline such that higher-cost plants survive lower-cost plants. Examination of the plant-closing decisions of integrated steel firms indicates that individual plant characteristics that determine expected revenues and costs explain much of the firms' plant-closing behavior but that firm size may have had some effect at well.
Distinct molecular requirements for activation or stabilization of soluble guanylyl cyclase upon haem oxidation‐induced degradation

Background and purpose: In endothelial dysfunction, signalling by nitric oxide (NO) is impaired because of the oxidation and subsequent loss of the soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC) haem. The sGC activator 4‐[((4‐carboxybutyl){2‐[(4‐phenethylbenzyl)oxy]phenethyl}amino)methyl[benzoic]acid (BAY 58‐2667) is a haem‐mimetic able to bind with high affinity to sGC when the native haem (the NO binding site) is removed and it also protects sGC from ubiquitin‐triggered degradation. Here we investigate whether this protection is a unique feature of BAY 58‐2667 or a general characteristic of haem‐site ligands such as the haem‐independent sGC activator 5‐chloro‐2‐(5‐chloro‐thiophene‐2‐sulphonylamino‐N‐(4‐(morpholine‐4‐sulphonyl)‐phenyl)‐benzamide sodium salt (HMR 1766), the haem‐mimetic Zn‐protoporphyrin IX (Zn‐PPIX) or the haem‐dependent sGC stimulator 5‐cyclopropyl‐2‐[1‐(2‐fluoro‐benzyl)‐1H‐pyrazolo[3,4‐b]pyridin‐3‐yl]‐pyrimidin‐4‐ylamine (BAY 41‐2272).
Corporate governance mechanisms and audit report timeliness: empirical evidence from Oman

This study provides empirical testing of evidence on whether internal and external corporate governance mechanisms are associated with audit report timeliness. We employ data from companies listed on the Omani capital market. Using a panel data approach, we discover that only internal corporate governance mechanisms associated with timely audit report. More specifically, we find board characteristics such as size and expertise, and audit committee characteristics such as financial expertise, are associated with improved audit report timeliness. By using composite measure for internal corporate governance mechanisms, we also find that audit committee quality enhances audit report timeliness while board quality does not. We further demonstrate that corporate governance mechanisms play a substitution role rather than a complementary role in explaining audit report timeliness. Thus, we conclude that corporate governance mechanisms in Oman are not as effective as in more developed countries and that regulators in such a less developed country should impose and encourage substantial corporate governance practices instead of merely adhering to pro-forma practices.
Physical activity and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy among Hispanic women.

PURPOSE Prior studies of the association between physical activity and risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy have been conflicting, failed to assess total physical activity, and included few Hispanic women, the largest minority group in the United States with the highest birth rates. METHODS We examined this association among 1043 participants in the Latina Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Study, a prospective cohort of predominantly Puerto Rican prenatal care patients conducted from 2000 to 2004 in western Massachusetts. Physical activity before and in early pregnancy was assessed by bilingual interviewers using a modified version of the Kaiser Physical Activity Survey. RESULTS Fifty women (4.8%) were diagnosed with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and 30 (2.9%) with preeclampsia. In multivariable analyses, there was a statistically significant trend of decreasing risk of hypertensive disorders with increasing sports/exercise in early pregnancy (P(trend) = 0.04). High levels of early pregnancy active living activity (odds ratio (OR) = 0.4, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.1-1.1, P(trend) = 0.07) and household/care giving activity (OR = 0.4, 95% CI = 0.1-1.3, P(trend) = 0.07) were associated with a 60% reduction in risk of hypertensive disorders relative to low levels; however, these associations were of marginal statistical significance. High levels of total physical activity (OR = 0.3, 95% CI = 0.1-1.0, P(trend) = 0.06) in early pregnancy were associated with a 70% reduction in the risk of hypertensive disorders relative to low levels; however, this association was also of marginal statistical significance. Prepregnancy physical activity was not associated with hypertensive disorders. CONCLUSIONS These results in a Hispanic population, although based on small numbers of cases, corroborate previous studies suggesting that recreational activity in early pregnancy reduces the risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.
The evolution of business ethics in Japan and Korea over the last decade

Both Japan and Korea have suffered painful economic recession and a series of corporate misconducts and scandals over the last decade. In the meantime, people’s interests in business ethics and corporate social responsibility have remarkably increased. This study examines (1) Japanese and Korean managers’ perceptions of business ethics, (2) the similarities and differences between the two countries in comparison with the US, and (3) the evolution of business ethics over the ten-year period. The study reveals that Japanese and Korean companies have made remarkable progress in making systematic measures to establish corporate ethics, but the managers’ perceptions of ethics in both countries have not changed significantly over the last decade. The study also shows that Korean managers’ way of perceiving ethics is a specific mixture of those of the US and Japanese managers.
Knockdown of autophagy enhances the innate immune response in hepatitis C virus–infected hepatocytes

The role of autophagy in disease pathogenesis following viral infection is beginning to be elucidated. We have previously reported that hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in hepatocytes induces autophagy. However, the biological significance of HCV‐induced autophagy has not been clarified. Autophagy has recently been identified as a novel component of the innate immune system against viral infection. In this study, we found that knockdown of autophagy‐related protein beclin 1 (BCN1) or autophagy‐related protein 7 (ATG7) in immortalized human hepatocytes (IHHs) inhibited HCV growth. BCN1‐ or ATG7‐knockdown IHHs, when they were infected with HCV, exhibited increased expression of interferon‐β, 2′,5′‐oligoadenylate synthetase 1, interferon‐α, and interferon‐α–inducible protein 27 messenger RNAs of the interferon signaling pathways in comparison with infected control IHHs. A subsequent study demonstrated that HCV infection in autophagy‐impaired IHHs displayed caspase activation, poly(adenosine diphosphate ribose) polymerase cleavage, and apoptotic cell death. Conclusion: The disruption of autophagy machinery in HCV‐infected hepatocytes activates the interferon signaling pathway and induces apoptosis. Together, these results suggest that HCV‐induced autophagy impairs the innate immune response. (HEPATOLOGY 2011;53:406‐414)
Government expenditures as a citizens'evaluation of public output: public choice and the benefit principle of taxation

Combining elements from the theories of public choice and benefit taxation, the author develops a framework in which private citizens can evaluate public activities. Why, and under what circumstances, do bureaucrats increase the size of the public sector and the amount of public spending in their own self interest? What does the private sector think public output should be, what is actual public output, and how does the private sector evaluate that output? The author applies the theoretical results of an attempt to answer these questions in four Central European countries (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia), using actual data for 1989-91 and projections for 1992. Interpreting indirect evidence, he shows that the private sector would prefer less government activity in all countries, from a low of 5 percent less public spending (in Poland) to a high of one-third less (in Slovenia). If those governments were to follow those guidelines, their spending-to-GDP ratios would more closely resemble the 1987-89 average for a selected group of European market economies. The author also introduces a more rigorous, if not necessarily more objective, approach to determining optimal government spending. This approach requires little information, but uses a static model and requires faith in the direction of causality for some key variables. To the extent that one can accept those limitations, the model may be a useful operational tool in public spending evaluation.