Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Client recommendations for financial incentives on construction projects

Purpose – The paper seeks to provide recommendations for construction clients who design and implement financial incentive mechanisms (FIMs) on projects.Design/methodology/approach – Four large Australian building projects commissioned by government clients under managing contractor contracts and completed between 2001 and 2005 were examined to explore the “drivers” that promoted motivation toward financial incentive goals. The results were triangulated across data sources, projects and stakeholder types.Findings – FIM design should incorporate: flexibility to modify goals and measurement procedures over time; multiple goals covering different project areas; distribution of rewards across all the key organisations contributing to team performance (e.g. potentially not just the contractor, but the subcontractors and consultants) and a reward amount sufficient to be valued by potential recipients. FIM benefits are maximised through the following complementary procurement initiatives: equitable contract risk.
Clinical trials in the out-of-hospital setting: Rationale and strategies for successful implementation

Cardiopulmonary arrest and trauma are two of the major epidemics of our time. In most cases, the final outcome is altered, for better or for worse, by how interventions are provided in the prehospital setting, making that venue critical for lifesaving community research efforts. In certain venues, out-of-hospital emergency medical services personnel are highly skilled at managing resuscitations and routinely operate under strict, highly scrutinized protocols, resulting in extraordinary study compliance. Larger patient enrollment derived from population-based investigations can lead to faster study completion, less selection bias, higher-powered data, and enhanced subgroup analysis. Most importantly, the concomitant training, expert protocol development, and rigid scrutiny all lead to improved patient outcomes, regardless of study intervention. For successful implementation, emergency medical services personnel should be involved in study design, and utilize routine, automated data collection. Technologies should be provided that simplify tasks and diminish confounding variables. Considering that exception to informed consent is a critical component, prospective education and involvement of the medical community, community leaders, employee groups and the media, long before protocol implementation, is essential. Such efforts should be led by respected, academically authoritative, grassroots emergency medical services medical directors and trauma chiefs, preferably those based at the main trauma centers or public receiving facilities.
Measuring the real indigenous economy in remote Australia using NATSISS 2002

This article utilises a model of the economy that includes the non-market, Indigenous customary sector. It seeks to ‘Indigenise’ the economy by using available NATSISS 2002 data on fishing and hunting activities, art and craft production, and Indigenous people’s ability to meet cultural responsibilities while in employment. Other ABS statistics ignore the non-market sector and hence understate the extent of Indigenous economic participation and wellbeing. Whilst it has significant shortcomings, NATSISS 2002 provides statistics which challenge standard measures of economic activity and development and support the view that the real economy in remote Indigenous Australia is made up of three sectors rather than two. The policy ramifications of this are that the customary sector might provide economic opportunity, and that major programs like the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme, as well as land rights and native title, might be useful instruments to facilitate enhanced customary participation with positive livelihood outcomes.
Strong ties or weak ties? Neighbourhood networks in a new perspective

The purpose of this article is to explore the structure and content of locally based neighbourhood networks. Instead of assuming that more and deeper neighbourhood relations are obviously better, we consider the role that social relations among neighbours actually plays in people's daily lives. The empirical results presented in this article are based on two case studies conducted in a Swedish housing area in 1983, and a follow up study in 1993. The results indicate that as long as we focus only on strong ties, the neighbourhood—in comparison to other arenas like family, relatives, work mates, and close friends—is of less importance for most people. But if we also consider the number of weak ties, defined as unpretentious everyday contacts, the local arena seems to be of significant importance for many people. The neighbourhood is proved to be a suitable arena for weak ties, because proximity and continuity, which promote the development of these kind of social contacts, are easily established in the vici.
Identifying employees' perceptions on organizational obligations

Purpose – This study aims to identify the organizational obligations that are mostly valued by employees and potential variations in perceptions regarding the ideal psychological contract, between employees working in the public and the private sectors.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 1,145 employees, with 398 being employed in the public sector, participated in the study. The study took place in Greece, where the public sector's particularities provide excellent ground for comparisons with the private sector. Overall, 40 organizational obligations, drawn from existing literature, were adopted to measure employees' view of the desired psychological contract. A comparison based on sectors was made to check for differences.Findings – Overall ranking of the organizational obligations, based on employee perceptions, is provided. Next, statistical analysis through t‐tests exposed significant variation in seven organizational obligations. In all cases, variations could be attributed to organizational an.
Inter�?Temporal Labour Force Participation Among Married Women in Japan

This paper investigates the components that affect inter‐temporal labour force participation among married women in Japan. We estimate linear probability models and simple, dynamic probit models with a variety of specifications. We find that serially correlated transitory errors have a significant effect on the participation behaviour of married women, while the first‐order lagged dependent variable has no significant effect. The result that serially correlated transitory errors influence married women's inter‐temporal labour force participation suggests that exogenous rather than endogenous causes have a significant effect on long‐term economic disparity among married women.
Consumers’ Repurchase Intention Towards a Mobile Phone Brand in Qatar: An Exploratory Study Utilizing Theory of Reasoned Action Framework

The aim of this study is to analyze the influencing factors on consumers’ repurchase intention towards a brand of a mobile phone. The theory of reasoned action has been used in this study to measure consumer repurchase intention. This theory considers consumer attitude towards action and subjective norms as influencing factors on consumer purchase intention. In this study, past behaviour is also added to the model to measure consumers’ repurchase intention. The exploratory study was conducted in the State of Qatar and the results showed that peoples’ attitudes toward action, subjective norms and past behaviour tend to have a significant influence on their repurchase intention. However, the analysis reveals that there is a negative relationship between consumers’ repurchase intention and mobile phone price, size and consumers’ past behaviour. Results of this study can be used by the marketing managers to devise strategies to attract consumers by understanding the factors that affect repurchase intentions.
Oil Price, Energy Consumption and Macroeconomic Performance: Further Evidence from Nigeria (1970-2009)

The global energy crisis and the renewed interest in international policies needed to find a suitable energy supply and consumption pattern has raised the tempo of research interest in the linkages between the energy sector and economic performance across countries. The empirical analyses and the adopted models for investigating these linkages highly depend on the development level and economic structure of the countries considered. The focus of this paper is to investigate the dynamic relationship between oil price, energy consumption and macroeconomic performance in Nigeria. The main motivation for the paper came from a study carried out on another country. Bekhet and Yusop (2009) investigated similar issues with data from Malaysia and found that there is an evidence for a stable long-run relationship between the oil price, employment, economic growth. Bekhet and Yusop (2009) also showed that changes in world oil prices also affect the total energy consumption in Malaysia but reverse does not hold in Malaysia context. In view of the fact that Nigeria is also a net export of oil and a developing country facing challenges with energy policy and economic growth, it is imperative to examine whether the result obtained in Malaysia could be replicated with data from Nigeria. This analysis is useful in assessing the dependence of energy consumption for Nigerian economy. This is important because when a country’s economy is heavily dependent on energy consumption, environmental policies for energy conservation could adversely affect economic growth. Therefore, the understanding of the direction of causality between energy consumption and economic growth could have important policy implications. Indeed, the relationship between use of energy and economic growth has been a subject of greater inquiry as energy is considered to be one of the important driving forces of economic growth in all economies (Pokharel, 2006). Besides that, this paper is also trying to look at the effects of world oil price to energy consumption as well as to the Nigeria economic performances namely the economic growth.
Exploring Attitudes to Financial Reporting in the Australian Not‐For‐Profit Sector

type="main" xml:lang="en"> The current level of satisfaction among different stakeholders about the current approaches and practises of financial reporting of not-for-profit (NFP) entities is underexplored ( Christensen and Mohr, 2003 ; Lee, 2004 ; Gray et al., 2006 ; Parker, 2007 ). This paper uses content analysis to examine submissions to the 2008 Australian Senate Economics Standing Committee for its inquiry into the disclosure regimes of charities and NFP organisations, which aimed to explore attitudes about financial reporting in the NFP sector. Financial reporting is viewed as an important part of accountability, but the sector identifies deficiencies in the current regime in terms of consistency, efficiency and transparency. Respondents to this inquiry believed that a sector-specific accounting standard was important. Financial reporting standards, regulations and legal structures should be uniform across the entire sector, but with some variation allowed for smaller NFPs. The cost of complying with standards was a significant issue for smaller NFPs.
Immunodiagnostic Value of Combined Detection of Autoantibodies to Tumor‐associated Antigens as Biomarkers in Pancreatic Cancer

Previous studies demonstrated that cancer sera contain antibodies, which react with a unique group of autologous cellular antigens called tumour‐associated antigens (TAAs). This study determines whether a panel of TAAs would enhance antibody detection and be a useful approach in pancreatic cancer (PC) detection and diagnosis. The panel of TAAs was composed of six TAAs including p53, p16, p62, survivin, Koc and IMP1 full‐length recombinant proteins. Enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to detect antibodies against these six TAAs in 23 sera from patients with PC and also 23 sera from normal individuals. Antibody frequency to any individual TAA in PC was variable and ranged from 14.7% to 30.4%. With the successive addition of TAAs to a final total of six antigens, there was a stepwise increase in positive antibody reactions reaching a sensitivity of 60.9% and a specificity of 87.0% in PC. Positive and negative likelihood ratio were 4.685 and 0.449, respectively. Positive and negative predictive values were, respectively, 82.4% and 69.0%. Agreement rate and Kappa value were 73.9% and 0.478, respectively. The data from this study support our previous hypothesis that using a panel of appropriately selected TAAs can enhance autoantibody detection in immunodiagnosis of PC. In 15 PC sera with carbohydrate antigen 19‐9 (CA19‐9) negative, 6 (40%) were found to have anti‐TAA (anti‐tumour associated antigens) antibodies. When CA19‐9 and anti‐TAAs were used together as markers in PC detection, the diagnostic sensitivity could be raised from 60.9% to 69.6%. Anti‐TAA and CA19‐9 were independent markers, and the simultaneous use of these two markers could raise the sensitivity of PC detection.
Dissociation of bactericidal activity from other functions of activated macrophages in exudates induced by thioglycolate medium

Macrophages displayed increased spreading, increased Fc-receptor-mediated phagocytosis, and increased secretion of plasminogen activator when collected from the peritoneal cavities of either Listeria-immune mice challenged intraperitoneally 3 days earlier with Listeria or nonimmune mice injected intraperitoneally 3 days earlier with fluid thioglycolate medium. In contrast, macrophages from the thioglycolate-induced peritoneal exudates were severely impaired in vitro in their ability to destroy Listeria. Injection of thioglycolate markedly interfered with the destruction of sublethal intraperitoneal challenge of Listeria, which resulted in nonimmune animals dying of an overwhelming systemic infection. In animals immune to Listeria, injection of thioglycolate delayed the onset of the expression of immunity to an intraperitoneal challenge of bacteria. The thioglycolate-induced suppression of bactericidal activity was determined to be confined to the site of injection. Results of experiments indicated that the colloidal agar in thioglycolate medium was the cause of the impairment of macrophage bactericidal activity. In addition to the impairment of bactericidal activity induced by agar, additional studies showed that an intraperitoneal injection of colloidal agar (0.075% wt/vol) by itself was a sufficient inflammatory stimulus for the accumulation of a large number of host phagocytic cells.
Crisis? What Crisis? Currency Vs. Banking in the Financial Crisis of 1931

This paper examines the role of currency and banking in the German financial crisis of 1931 for both Germany and the U.S. We specify a structural dynamic factor model to identify financial and monetary factors separately for each of the two economies. We find that monetary transmission through the Gold Standard played only a minor role in causing and propagating the crisis, while financial distress was important. We also find evidence of crisis propagation from Germany to the U.S. via the banking channel. Banking distress in both economies was apparently not endogenous to monetary policy. Results confirm Bernanke's (1983) conjecture that an independent, non-monetary financial channel of crisis propagation was operative in the Great Depression.
Prevalence of measles antibodies in adults with HIV infection: possible risk factors of measles seronegativity

ObjectivesTo determine the prevalence of measles (rubeola) immunity in a group of HIV-1-infected adults and to examine predictors of measles seronegativity in this population. SettingCounty hospital outpatient clinic and public-health department early HIV intervention clinic. PatientsA total of 262 HIV-infected adults presenting to outpatient clinics between September 1990 and January 1991. InterventionsPatients were screened for the presence of measles immunoglobulin G antibody, as measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Pertinent clinical and immunologic information was recorded. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify possible risk factors for measles seronegativity. Main outcome measureMeasles seronegativity, as defined by a lack of detectable antibody (ELISA predicted index value <1.0). ResultsThirteen (5%) patients lacked serologic evidence of immunity. Risk factors for measles seronegativity included year of birth in 1957 or later, Caucasian (non-Hispanic) race and oral hairy leukoplakia. Factors associated with progressive HIV disease (other than hairy leukoplakia) were not associated with a lack of existing immunity. ConclusionsA high prevalence (95%) of measles antibody was found in this large group of HIV-infected adults. Young, white individuals born in 1957 or later were at the greatest risk for measles seronegativity, but declining immunity due to progressive HIV infection did not appear to be associated with a lack of antibody. Self-reported histories of measles infection or immunization were not reliable predictors of measles immunity.
An analysis of scheduling policies in multiechelon production systems

Abstract Results of a simulation study of the economics of frequency of rescheduling Material Requirements Planning (MRP) systems are presented for a single-product, two-stage system in which demand is uncertain. The results indicate that for systems with moderate demand uncertainty, frequent rescheduling to maintain customer service may be uneconomical when compared with the alternative of more stable schedules in conjunction with safety stock. This result arises primarily because the cost of “emergency” production setups which occur when rescheduling is frequent exceeds the cost of safety stock required to “protect” stable schedules.
Can We Reduce the Number of Low-Birth-Weight Babies? The Cuban Experience

Low-birth-weight (LBW) infants have a significantly greater mortality than other babies, not only within the neonatal period but also in infancy and early childhood. Babies are LBW either because they are preterm or they have experienced intrauterine growth retardation. Reducing the prevalence of LBW babies is important in reducing child and infant mortality. Risk factors for prematurity and intrauterine growth retardation are well established. Socioeconomic conditions and nutrition during pregnancy are two key factors. Interventions to reduce the prevalence of LBW infants in developed countries have usually been unsuccessful. A few studies in developing countries have, however, achieved positive results. Cuba has managed to reduce the prevalence of LBW infants and their model of healthcare in relation to achieving this is described. Key features of the Cuban healthcare system are that it is both free and universal, and additionally there is a strong emphasis on primary healthcare. It is likely that a similar approach in both developing countries and disadvantaged communities in developed countries would reduce the prevalence of LBW babies. This would have a major impact in relation to reducing infant mortality rates.
Cable Bacteria and the Bioelectrochemical Snorkel: The Natural and Engineered Facets Playing a Role in Hydrocarbons Degradation in Marine Sediments

The composition and metabolic traits of the microbial communities acting in an innovative bioelectrochemical system were here investigated. The system, known as Oil Spill Snorkel, was recently developed to stimulate the oxidative biodegradation of petroleum hydrocarbons in anoxic marine sediments. Next Generation Sequencing was used to describe the microbiome of the bulk sediment and of the biofilm growing attached to the surface of the electrode. The analysis revealed that sulfur cycling primarily drives the microbial metabolic activities occurring in the bioelectrochemical system. In the anoxic zone of the contaminated marine sediment, petroleum hydrocarbon degradation occurred under sulfate-reducing conditions and was lead by different families of Desulfobacterales (46% of total OTUs). Remarkably, the occurrence of filamentous Desulfubulbaceae, known to be capable to vehicle electrons deriving from sulfide oxidation to oxygen serving as a spatially distant electron acceptor, was demonstrated. Differently from the sediment, which was mostly colonized by Deltaproteobacteria, the biofilm at the anode hosted, at high extent, members of Alphaproteobacteria (59%) mostly affiliated to Rhodospirillaceae family (33%) and including several known sulfur- and sulfide-oxidizing genera. Overall, we showed the occurrence in the system of a variety of electroactive microorganisms able to sustain the contaminant biodegradation alone or by means of an external conductive support through the establishment of a bioelectrochemical connection between two spatially separated redox zones and the preservation of an efficient sulfur cycling.
Interest Rate Pass-Through in Turkey

We examine the speed and rate of adjustment of lending rates to monetary policy rate for corporate, housing, cash and automobile loans using bank-level micro data. We show that empirical results on unit root, co-integration tests and the estimation of co-integrating vector improve when we allow cross-sectional dependence. We find evidence in favor of central bank control over credit market via short-term interest rates, which is more apparent in the post-credit boom period. Estimation results reveal that while corporate loans are not sensitive to changes in the policy rate, cash and automobile loan rates are responsive to the policy rate. Housing loans, on the other hand, display excessive sensitivity to the policy rate.
Is Timing Everything? Race, Homeownership and Net Worth in the Tumultuous 2000s

We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate how net worth was affected among low‐ and moderate‐income households who became first‐time homebuyers at different points during the volatile 2000s. We address selection using propensity score matching and estimating difference‐in‐difference models, and use quantile regressions to account for the skew in net worth outcomes. Results highlight the significance of race in the relationship between first‐time home buying and net worth during the decade. Although timing was critical to the short‐term trajectory of net worth for whites, total net worth declines for black first‐time homebuyers regardless of economic climate. The most dramatic differences between black and white new homebuyers is their neighborhood locations, with blacks purchasing in predominantly black neighborhoods with lower housing prices and price appreciation, and lower and declining rates of homeownership.
Contracts and Money

Why are contracts not fully indexed? In a setting in which fully indexed contracts are feasible, we find that when price‐level data are gathered with delay, these contracts are not renegotiation‐proof. The contracts that replace them entail a lower level of welfare for the parties to that contract. They also imply that real variables respond to nominal shocks.
The Exchange Rate Managements in Crisis-experienced Emerging Market Economies after the 1990s

This article examined the exchange rate managements in the crisis-experienced emerging market economies after the 1990s. First, we found that the exchange rate flexibility has increased from the pre-crisis period towards the post-crisis period under the “soft peg” regime. Second, we identified a structural change in the factors for determining a reference rate in exchange rate management from the pre-crisis period to the post-crisis period. Third, we found that East Asian countries, in their post-crisis exchange rate managements, might reduce US dollar dominance, while raising the other currencies’ weight, and further found that the countries who were not sensitive to inflation rates in their pre-crisis managements, might raise its sensitivity during the post-crisis period.