Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating the Impact of Working Capital Management Components on Corporate Profitability: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing Firms

Working capital management is a vital issue in financial decision making since it is a part of investment in asset and it directly affects the liquidity and profitability of the company. The study tries to investigate the relationship between working capital management components and the profitability of a sample of Indian manufacturing firms using a sample of 311Indian manufacturing firms for a period of 14 years from 1996-97 to2009-10 and have studied the effect of different variables of working capital management including the average collection period, inventory turnover in days, average payment period, cash conversion cycle and current ratio,debt ratio, size of the firm and financial assets to total assets ratio on the net operating profitability of Indian firms. The result suggests a strong negative relationship between the measures of working capital management including the number of days accounts receivable and cash conversion cycle, financial debt ratio with corporate profitability. Previous studies regarding the average days of accounts payable reported negative correlation of this variable and the profitability of the firm. But, we have not found any statistically significant relationship between these variables. Finally, we found insignificant negative relationship between firm size and its net operating profit ratio.
Follow the Pack or Make an Independent Decision? How Environmental Turbulence Affects ICT Sourcing Decisions

Since market and environmental conditions are becoming increasingly turbulent, ICT sourcing alternatives (such as colocation) have gained considerable attention in the industry since they allow firms to become more agile and responsive to environmental changes and increasing competition. However, little research has been conducted to analyze how different factors affect ICT sourcing decisions in the light of uncertainty arising from environmental turbulence. Since uncertainty and unpredictability of environmental changes might lead to mimicry of successful business strategies, this article focuses on the analysis of how uncertainty resulting from environmental turbulence leads to an imitative ICT adoption behavior of firms. Based on a multimethod research approach, we applied a Delphi study and a quantitative field study. The empirical results support our hypothesis that turbulent environmental conditions lead to mimetic adoption behavior, thus providing a theoretical contribution to the extant literature.
Combined TLR7/8 and TLR9 Ligands Potentiate the Activity of a Schistosoma japonicum DNA Vaccine

Background Toll-like receptor (TLR) ligands have been explored as vaccine adjuvants for tumor and virus immunotherapy, but few TLR ligands affecting schistosoma vaccines have been characterized. Previously, we developed a partially protective DNA vaccine encoding the 26-kDa glutathione S-transferase of Schistosoma japonicum (pVAX1-Sj26GST). Methodology/Principal Findings In this study, we evaluated a TLR7/8 ligand (R848) and a TLR9 ligand (CpG oligodeoxynucleotides, or CpG) as adjuvants for pVAX1-Sj26GST and assessed their effects on the immune system and protection against S. japonicum. We show that combining CpG and R848 with pVAX1-Sj26GST immunization significantly increases splenocyte proliferation and IgG and IgG2a levels, decreases CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Treg) frequency in vivo, and enhances protection against S. japonicum. CpG and R848 inhibited Treg-mediated immunosuppression, upregulated the production of interferon (IFN)-γ, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-4, IL-10, IL-2, and IL-6, and decreased Foxp3 expression in vitro, which may contribute to prevent Treg suppression and conversion during vaccination and allow expansion of antigen-specific T cells against pathogens. Conclusions Our data shows that selective TLR ligands can increase the protective efficacy of DNA vaccines against schistosomiasis, potentially through combined antagonism of Treg-mediated immunosuppression and conversion.
ADAPTIVE MULTIRESOLUTION MODULATION FOR MULTIMEDIA TRAFFIC OVER NAKAGAMI FADING CHANNELS

Future wireless communications networks will be required to support a multitude of services with different reliability and latency requirements. However, achieving such flexible systems are challenging in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) due to limited battery resources, node mobility, changes in path attenuation, and fluctuations in interference. By employing adaptive signaling techniques with Unequal Error Protection (UEP) to take advantage of the differences in the quality of service (QoS) requirements among different types of multimedia traffic, energy efficiency can be improved and also increase the data rate (spectral efficiency) over a fading channel, especially at low and moderate Carrier-to-Noise Ratio (CNR). This paper proposed a combination of curve fitting techniques that derives an exponential approximation to the average packet error rate (PER) probabilities as well as individual PER probabilities for asymmetrical phase-shift keying (PSK) and asymmetrical Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). Our design is both simpler and more robust than existing schemes.
The Political Economy of Remittance-led Development in Guanajuato, Mexico

In the present study I analyze the relationship between migrant remittances, development and political transformation across 46 municipios located in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. Using Guanajuato as a case study, my research addresses fundamental questions regarding the impact of remittances in Mexico: How, if at all, do migrants influence economic development and political change across the state? How does the impact of direct remittances to individual families compare to the impact of remittances channeled through collective structures? The crux of this study lies at the intersection of these inquires, and although my analysis is limited in scope, the results outlined in Chapter 3, 4, 5 and 6 point to one overarching theme: Remittances alone do not drive long-term development. Rather, in the long run meaningful remittance-led economic development and democratic change—measured by gains in health care, education, economic growth, and civic participation and transparency—require a deep and authentic partnership between economic actors, members of civic society and local government. As the results outlined in this study reveal, the program 3x1 para migrantes has the potential to underpin this type of relationship.
Public Health and Economic Consequences of Methyl Mercury Toxicity to the Developing Brain

Methyl mercury is a developmental neurotoxicant. Exposure results principally from consumption by pregnant women of seafood contaminated by mercury from anthropogenic (70%) and natural (30%) sources. Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made steady progress in reducing mercury emissions from anthropogenic sources, especially from power plants, which account for 41% of anthropogenic emissions. However, the U.S. EPA recently proposed to slow this progress, citing high costs of pollution abatement. To put into perspective the costs of controlling emissions from American power plants, we have estimated the economic costs of methyl mercury toxicity attributable to mercury from these plants. We used an environmentally attributable fraction model and limited our analysis to the neurodevelopmental impacts—specifically loss of intelligence. Using national blood mercury prevalence data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that between 316,588 and 637,233 children each year have cord blood mercury levels > 5.8 μg/L, a level associated with loss of IQ. The resulting loss of intelligence causes diminished economic productivity that persists over the entire lifetime of these children. This lost productivity is the major cost of methyl mercury toxicity, and it amounts to $8.7 billion annually (range, $2.2–43.8 billion; all costs are in 2000 US$). Of this total, $1.3 billion (range, $0.1–6.5 billion) each year is attributable to mercury emissions from American power plants. This significant toll threatens the economic health and security of the United States and should be considered in the debate on mercury pollution controls.
Restitution and memory : material restoration in Europe

The myriad debates on restitution and memory, which have been going on in Europe for decades, indicate that World War II never ended. It is still very much with us, paradoxically re-invoked by the events of 1989/90 and the expansion of Europe to the east in the aftermath of the collapse of communism and economic globalization. The growing privatization and reprivatization in Eastern Europe revive pre-war memories that lay buried under the blanket of collectivization and nationalization of property after 1945. World War II did not only result in the death and destruction on a large scale but also in an a far-reaching revolution of existing property relations. This volume offers an assessment of the problematic of restitution and its close interconnection with the discourses of memory that have recently emerged.
Contrarian Investment Strategies in a European Context

In this paper we study value strategies for four European countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). We find an outperformance for all four value variables which are investigated: the earnings-to-price (E/P) ratio, the cash-flow-to-price (CF/P) ratio, the book-to-market (B/M) ratio and the dividend yield.This outperformance is especially remarkable for the CF/P ratio, which amounts to 20.8% between the top and bottom quintiles in an univariate model.In a regression analysis, in which all four value variables as well as a correction for the size effect are taken into account, we find a difference of 11.8% for the CF/P ratio.We demonstrate that this result can not be explained by risk differences alone.Our findings confirm the outperformance of value strategies as found earlier by Chan, Hamao and Lakonishok (1991) and Lakonishok, Shleifer and Vishny (1994) for Japan and the United States respectively.
Towards a recursive agent model for an agent oriented methodology

Current business trends, policy markets, production requirements, etc., have created the need for integrating Multi Agent Systems (MAS). In the agent-specialized literature, we have found very little work about MAS methodologies that allow us to build MAS which is made up of two or more MASs. We think that several difficult challenges for automated systems can be tackled by giving full meaning to the MAS concept: adopting a recursive definition of MASs. In this work we outline the basis for a recursive agent oriented methodology for large-scale MAS.
Virtual Team Interaction Styles : Assessment and Effects ( Running Title : Virtual Team Interaction Styles )

The virtual team is an increasingly common strategic work unit of many organizations. The virtual team, via various computer-based media (e.g., email, groupware) and noncomputer-based media (e.g., telephone), can interact and collaborate though separated by distance and time. One approach to their study is determining whether factors that drive conventional team performance also exist in the virtual environment. Interaction style has been shown to have a great effect on conventional teams' ability to achieve solution quality and solution acceptance on collaborative decision tasks Group interaction styles affect communication and thus team performance by facilitating 3 or hindering the exchange of information among group members. These styles reflect an aggregation of behavioral traits of individual team members, rooted in their individual personalities. The interaction style of conventional teams can be reliably assessed, and from that assessment, performance on collaborative decision tasks can be predicted. This study investigated whether or not virtual teams who collaborate via computer-mediated communication also exhibit similar interaction styles, and whether the styles have the same effects on their decision performance and process outcomes as they do with conventional teams. Members of 42 virtual teams completed an intellective decision first individually and then collaboratively. Post task measures captured individual and team performance data (e.g., solution quality) as well as process perceptions (individual acceptance of the team solution). An additional post task tool was able to accurately capture the teams' interaction style. Results show that the interaction styles of virtual teams affect both performance and process outcomes in ways that are directionally consistent with those exhibited by conventional face-to-face teams. Implications include recommending the methodology for virtual team management, and suggestions for future research are offered.
Linking CRM strategy, customer performance measures and performance in the hotel industry

Customer relationship management (CRM) has been increasingly adopted because of its benefits of greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, which in turn, leads to enhanced financial and competitive performance. This paper reports on a study that examines the relationship between CRM strategy and performance and determines whether the use of customer performance measures plays a mediating role in the relationship between CRM strategy and performance. This study contributes to the limited literature on CRM strategy since little is known about the use of CRM strategy and customer performance measures and their relation with performance in the hotel industry in Malaysia. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of hotels in Malaysia. Hierarchical regression analyses on a sample of 95 hotels revealed that only the information technology dimension of CRM strategy has a significant and positive effect on performance. In addition, the hypothesis concerning the role of customer performance measures as a mediator was supported.
Universal HIV testing: is it enough?

Early diagnosis of HIV infection and timely access to medical care can improve treatment outcomes [1] and potentially decrease the risk of transmission [2]. In this issue, Keruly and Moore [3] report a decrease in the presenting CD4+ T cell count from 371 cells/mm3 in 1990-1994 to 276 cells/mm3 in 2003-2006 among patients newly presenting for HIV care in a large academic center in the United States. Despite significant advances in antiretroviral therapy and improved services for persons living with HIV infection, our health care system appears to be less capable of detecting the disease early in its course than it was nearly 2 decades ago. The authors conclude that national im-
The selection of political party leaders in contemporary parliamentary democracies: A comparative study

1. The Selection of Party Leaders in Contemporary Parliamentary Democracies William P. Cross and Jean-Benoit Pilet 2. The Selection of Party Leaders in the UK Tim Bale and Paul Webb 3. The Selection of Party Leaders in Belgium Jean-Benoit Pilet and Bram Wauters 4. Unanimous, By Acclamation? Party Leadership Selection in Norway Elin Haugsgjerd Allern and Rune Karlsen 5. The Selection of Party Leaders in Austria: Channeling Ambition Effectively Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik and Wolfgang C. Muller 6. Party Leader Selection in Germany Klaus Detterbeck and Ingo Rohlfing 7. The Selection of Party Leaders in Italy Giulia Sandri, Antonella Seddone and Fulvio Venturino 8. The Selection of Party Leaders in Spain Oscar Barbera, Juan Rodriguez-Teruel, Astrid Barrio, and Montse Baras 9. The Selection of Party Leaders in Portugal Marco Lisi and Andre Freire 10. Let's Not Risk Too Much: The Selection of Party Leaders in Romania Mihail Chiru and Sergiu Gherghina 11. Stable Leadership in the Context of Party Change: The Hungarian Case Gabriella Ilonszki and Reka Varnagy 12. Selecting Party Leaders in Israel Ofer Kenig and Gideon Rahat 13. Party Leadership in Canada William P. Cross 14. Leadership Selection in Australia Anika Gauja 15. The Selection of Party Leaders in Comparative Perspective Jean-Benoit Pilet and William P. Cross
A Neurocognitive Framework for Human Creative Thought

We are an intensely creative species. Creativity is the fountainhead of our civilizations and a defining characteristic of what makes us human. But for all its prominence at the apex of human mental faculties, we know next to nothing about how brains generate creative ideas. With all previous attempts to tighten the screws on this vexed problem unsuccessful – right brains, divergent thinking, defocused attention, default mode network, alpha enhancement, prefrontal activation, etc. (Dietrich and Kanso, 2010) – the neuroscientific study of creativity finds itself in a theoretical arid zone that has perhaps no equal in psychology. We propose here a general framework for a fresh attack on the problem and set it out under 10 foundational concepts. Most of the ideas we favor are part and parcel of the standard conceptual toolbox of cognitive neuroscience but their combination and significance to creativity are original. By outlining, even in such broad strokes, the theoretical landscape of cognitive neuroscience as it relates to creative insights, we hope to bring into clear focus the key enabling factors that are likely to have a hand in computing ideational combinations in the brain.
An Introduction to the Ecb's Survey of Professional Forecasters

This paper provides a detailed overview of the ECB’s Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF), a quarterly survey of euro area key macroeconomic variables conducted by the European Central Bank since 1999. Its purpose is to provide the necessary information for anyone interested in analysing or reporting the survey results. First, its motivations, the panel composition and the structure of the questionnaire are thoroughly explained. The results of the first 18 survey rounds for the three variables covered ? HICP inflation, the real GDP growth rate and the unemployment rate ? for the different horizons are then analysed in detail, including the information content of the uncertainty surrounding those forecast on the basis of the reported probability distributions for each of the variables and horizons. Finally, a comparison to other similar surveys, both for the euro area and the US economy, is also provided.
INORGANIC CARBON UTILIZATION BY ROSS SEA PHYTOPLANKTON ACROSS NATURAL AND EXPERIMENTAL CO2 GRADIENTS 1

We present results from a field study of inorganic carbon (C) acquisition by Ross Sea phytoplankton during Phaeocystis‐dominated early season blooms. Isotope disequilibrium experiments revealed that HCO3− was the primary inorganic C source for photosynthesis in all phytoplankton assemblages. From these experiments, we also derived relative enhancement factors for HCO3−/CO2 interconversion as a measure of extracellular carbonic anhydrase activity (eCA). The enhancement factors ranged from 1.0 (no apparent eCA activity) to 6.4, with an overall mean of 2.9. Additional eCA measurements, made using membrane inlet mass spectrometry (MIMS), yielded activities ranging from 2.4 to 6.9 U · [μg chl a]−1 (mean 4.1). Measurements of short‐term C‐fixation parameters revealed saturation kinetics with respect to external inorganic carbon, with a mean half‐saturation constant for inorganic carbon uptake (K1/2) of ∼380 μM. Comparison of our early springtime results with published data from late‐season Ross Sea assemblages showed that neither HCO3− utilization nor eCA activity was significantly correlated to ambient CO2 levels or phytoplankton taxonomic composition. We did, however, observe a strong negative relationship between surface water pCO2 and short‐term 14C‐fixation rates for the early season survey. Direct incubation experiments showed no statistically significant effects of pCO2 (10 to 80 Pa) on relative HCO3− utilization or eCA activity. Our results provide insight into the seasonal regulation of C uptake by Ross Sea phytoplankton across a range of pCO2 and phytoplankton taxonomic composition.
Bacterial-Plant-Interactions: Approaches to Unravel the Biological Function of Bacterial Volatiles in the Rhizosphere

Rhizobacteria produce an enormous amount of volatile compounds, however, the function of these metabolites is scarcely understood. Investigations evaluating influences on plants performed in various laboratories using individually developed experimental setups revealed different and often contradictory results, e.g., ranging from a significant plant growth promotion to a dramatic suppression of plant development. In addition to these discrepancies, these test systems neglected properties and complexity of the rhizosphere. Therefore, to pursue further investigations of the role of bacterial volatiles in this underground habitat, the applied methods have to simulate its natural characteristics as much as possible. In this review, we will describe and discuss pros and cons of currently used bioassays, give insights into rhizosphere characteristics, and suggest improvements for test systems that would consider in natura conditions and would allow gaining further knowledge of the potential function and significance of rhizobacterial volatiles in plant life.
SPERM VELOCITY IN SEMINAL PLASMA AND THE ASSOCIATION WITH GENDER OF OFFSPRING

The gender of the offspring is determined by the fertilizing sperm. Previous gender studies were based on washed sperm, but not on sperm in seminal plasma. The objective was to correlate motility parameters assessed during semen analyses with the offspring gender. For comparison, fixed sperm head DNA quantitated by Hoechst 33342 fluorescence microscopy was also analyzed. Forty-six patients undergoing assisted reproduction procedures resulted in livebirth deliveries with either male or female-predominant offsprings. Sperm head fluorescence was weakly correlated to the gender in 61% of the cases. Sperm of patients with male offsprings had slower curvilinear (44.2 ± 1.8 mean ± SEM, versus, 49.9 ± 2.7 µ/sec) and slower average path velocities (32.4 ± 1.2 versus 36.3±1.7 µ/sec). Using cut-off values for the curvilinear (<49 µ/sec) and average path (<36 µ/sec) velocities of sperm swimming in seminal plasma, the two parameters predicted 75 and 68% of the male offspring births, respectively. The data suggest that sperm movement in seminal plasma is a marker for factors that skew the ratio of the X- to Y-sperm populations.