Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of sales promotion on organization effectiveness in Nigerian manufacturing industry

This study examines sales promotion and its effects on organizational effectiveness in Nigerian manufacturing industry. The study focuses on how sales promotion is used to generate higher sales, increased profitability and greater market share. The study focused on sales promotional tools and how NESTLE Nigeria Plc has adopted sales promotion to generate its effectiveness. Sales promotion is an important component of any organization’s overall marketing strategies along side advertising, public relations, and personal selling. The study is significant because, it contributes to new knowledge by filling and reducing the gap that exist in the understanding of sales promotion by management and other stakeholders in the manufacturing sector. It also serves as source of references to other researchers in this field. A descriptive survey research design was applied to describes sale promotion activities of the organization. The sample size employed was 205 respondents from NESTLE Food Nigeria Plc. Questionnaires were administered to the sampled respondents to collect primary data used for this study. However, the study made use of survey design and purposive sampling technique in selecting the respondents comprising management and staff of NESTLE Nigeria Plc. The result of the study indicated that the beverage drink companies increasingly make use of sales promotions. Chisquare independence test was used to test the hypotheses stated. The results show that adoption of sales promotion strategies significantly influence the effectiveness of beverage drink industry. It was concluded that management may engage regularly in more promotional mix strategies, and also tend to be creative to consumers; this in turn would enhance and boost their sales revenue.
Penalties Off the Field: Exploring Social Media Policies for Student Athletes at Universities

University student-athletes and their teams rely on social media to communicate with their fans, and these interactions may be beneficial for teams and athletes alike. But social media use also carries risk if an offensive photo or statement goes viral. Using frameworks from social cognitive, privacy, and uses and gratification theories, this article captures the status of university social media policies for athletes through content analysis and interviews. The findings outline strategies for monitoring, penalizing and rewarding athletes for their online interactions.
k-string tensions in SU(N) gauge theories

In the context of four-dimensional SU(N) gauge theories, we study the spectrum of the confining strings. We compute, for the SU(6) gauge theory formulated on a lattice, the three independent string tensions sigma_k related to sources with Z_N charge k=1,2,3, using Monte Carlo simulations. Our results, whose uncertainty is approximately 2% for k=2 and 4% for k=3, are consistent with the sine formula sigma_k/sigma = sin(k pi/N) / \sin(pi/N) for the ratio between sigma_k and the standard string tension sigma, and show deviations from the Casimir scaling. The sine formula is known to emerge in supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theories and in M-theory. We comment on an analogous behavior exhibited by two-dimensional SU(N)xSU(N) chiral models.
PHONOLOGICAL INTERFERENCE IN THE ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

This study is aimed to know the kinds of phonological interference happen on the English pronunciation of the students of an elementary school in Kediri, East Java. The data were collected by asking the students to read a passage, and this activity was audio-recorded. The data were analyzed by using descriptive qualitative on content analysis. The result of the analysis showed that the phonological interference on the English pronunciation of the students was influenced by their Indonesian language system. It was found nineteen types of interference on the segmental aspects which consisted of nine vowel substitutions, two vowel shortenings and four consonant substitutions, two deletions of consonants and two additions of consonants. On the suprasegmental aspect (stress) there weretwenty misplaced stresses. Keyword s; Phonological i nterference, s egmental, s uprasegmental .
The PorX Response Regulator of the Porphyromonas gingivalis PorXY Two-Component System Does Not Directly Regulate the Type IX Secretion Genes but Binds the PorL Subunit

The Type IX secretion system (T9SS) is a versatile multi-protein complex restricted to bacteria of the Bacteriodetes phylum and responsible for the secretion or cell surface exposition of diverse proteins that participate to S-layer formation, gliding motility or pathogenesis. The T9SS is poorly characterized but a number of proteins involved in the assembly of the secretion apparatus in the oral pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis have been identified based on genome substractive analyses. Among these proteins, PorY, and PorX encode typical two-component system (TCS) sensor and CheY-like response regulator respectively. Although the porX and porY genes do not localize at the same genetic locus, it has been proposed that PorXY form a bona fide TCS. Deletion of porX in P. gingivalis causes a slight decrease of the expression of a number of other T9SS genes, including sov, porT, porP, porK, porL, porM, porN, and porY. Here, we show that PorX and the soluble cytoplasmic domain of PorY interact. Using electrophoretic mobility shift, DNA-protein co-purification and heterologous host expression assays, we demonstrate that PorX does not bind T9SS gene promoters and does not directly regulate expression of the T9SS genes. Finally, we show that PorX interacts with the cytoplasmic domain of PorL, a component of the T9SS membrane core complex and propose that the CheY-like PorX protein might be involved in the dynamics of the T9SS.
Minimally-invasive LVAD Implantation: State of the Art

Nowadays, the worldwide number of left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) being implanted per year is higher than the number of cardiac transplantations. The rapid developments in the field of mechanical support are characterized by continuous miniaturization and enhanced performance of the pumps, providing increased device durability and a prolonged survival of the patients. The miniaturization process enabled minimally-invasive implantation methods, which are associated with generally benefitting the overall outcome of patients. Therefore, these new implantation strategies are considered the novel state of the art in LVAD surgery. In this paper we provide a comprehensive review on the existing literature on minimally-invasive techniques with an emphasis on the different implantation approaches and their individual surgical challenges.
Open-quantum-system formulation of particle decay

We consider an open quantum system which contains unstable states. The time evolution of the system can be described by an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian H{sub eff}, in accord with the Wigner-Weisskopf approximation, and an additional term of the Lindblad form, the so-called dissipator. We show that, after enlarging the original Hilbert space by states which represent the decay products of the unstable states, the non-Hermitian part of H{sub eff}--the 'particle decay'- can be incorporated into the dissipator of the enlarged space via a specific Lindblad operator. Thus the formulation of the time evolution on the enlarged space has a Hermitian Hamiltonian and is probability conserving. The equivalence of the formulation with the original one demonstrates that the time evolution which is governed by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and a dissipator of the Lindblad form is nevertheless completely positive, just as systems with Hermitian Hamiltonians.
Between a guest and an okupa: Migration and the making of insurgent citizenship in Buenos Aires’ informal settlements

In this paper, we explore initiatives for the construction of substantive citizenship by transnational migrants in Buenos Aires. In looking at migrants’ political participation across the city, we found that the spatiality of citizenship practices is important. At the city level, there are migrant organisations representing specific nationalities. However, in informal settlements, where many migrants reside, we found that migrants engage in political practices across nationality and ethnic lines by coming together with their neighbours in grassroots organisations. These different forms of organising embody critically different views of migrants in their relationship with rights. While the former promote practices linked to ethnic belonging and see migrants as ‘guests’ in a foreign country, unable to make claims to the local or national governments, the latter see them as rights-bearing individuals with power to claim their right to the city. We argue that activism at the scale of the neighbourhood proves to hold more potential for the building of substantive citizenship than actions by organisations active at the city level. This is because migrant organisations active at the city level organise on the basis of nationality, while those at the neighbourhood level bring migrants and non-migrants together on the basis of their class-based interests.
Quiver varieties, affine Lie algebras, algebras of BPS states, and semicanonical basis

We suggest a (conjectural) construction of a basis in the plus part of the affine Lie algebra of type ADE indexed by irreducible components of certain quiver varieties. This construction is closely related to a string-theoretic construction of a Lie algebra of BPS states. We then study the new combinatorial questions about the (classical) root systems naturally arising from our constructions and Lusztig's semicanonical basis.
Disentangling school leadership and its ties to instructional practices – an empirical comparison of various leadership styles

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the direct and indirect ties between various leadership styles, namely, instructional, transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership, and the instructional practices of teachers by applying a structural equation model. For this purpose, we analyzed survey data of n = 3,746 teachers from 126 schools collected by the Hamburg school inspection in Germany between 2012 and 2015. The underlying model is based on Leithwood’s framework for guiding research on leader effects on learning and instruction. First, the results show that a bi-factor model seems to be the best measurement model. Next, it is shown that mediating variables are influenced by a leadership core as well as by different leadership facets. Third, we found that for influencing complex instructional practices like cognitive activation with challenging content, a combination of leadership styles is most promising, while for classroom management instructional leadership is the only and, thus, the primary determinant.
Short‐ and long‐distance moves of young adults during the transition to adulthood in Britain

Alina Pelikh's research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/J500094/1; PhD project: “Transition to Adulthood in Britain: The analysis of life trajectories of young adults,” the North West Doctoral Training Centre) and the University of Liverpool. This study was further supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant ES/L01663X/1).
Architectures for vibration-driven micropower generators

Several forms of vibration-driven MEMS microgenerator are possible and are reported in the literature, with potential application areas including distributed sensing and ubiquitous computing. This paper sets out an analytical basis for their design and comparison, verified against full time-domain simulations. Most reported microgenerators are classified as either velocity-damped resonant generators (VDRGs) or Coulomb-damped resonant generators (CDRGs) and a unified analytical structure is provided for these generator types. Reported generators are shown to have operated at well below achievable power densities and design guides are given for optimising future devices. The paper also describes a new class-the Coulomb-force parametric generator (CFPG)-which does not operate in a resonant manner. For all three generators, expressions and graphs are provided showing the dependence of output power on key operating parameters. The optimization also considers physical generator constraints such as voltage limitation or maximum or minimum damping ratios. The sensitivity of each generator architecture to the source vibration frequency is analyzed and this shows that the CFPG can be better suited than the resonant generators to applications where the source frequency is likely to vary. It is demonstrated that mechanical resonance is particularly useful when the vibration source amplitude is small compared to the allowable mass-to-frame displacement. The CDRG and the VDRG generate the same power at resonance but give better performance below and above resonance respectively. Both resonant generator types are unable to operate when the allowable mass frame displacement is small compared to the vibration source amplitude, as is likely to be the case in some MEMS applications. The CFPG is, therefore, required for such applications.
MEG-measurements of brain activity reveal the link between human speech production and perception

Whether human speech perception depends on a biologically based link between production and perception or whether it is best characterised as a series of acoustic, phonetic, and semantic transformations has remained an unresolved issue. We addressed this question via the use of objective brain research methods combined with advanced stimulus production methodology. We removed the contribution of the periodic glottal excitation, produced by the vocal folds in the human larynx, from vowel stimuli and found that magnetic responses generated in the auditory cortex respond to this removal. The amplitude of the main deflection of the magnetic responses, N1m, decreased even though the formant settings, intensity, and duration of the stimuli were identical. Hence, because human brain activity attenuates if vowel stimuli are “distorted“ by the removal of their naturally occurring periodic excitation we conclude that speech production and perception mechanisms in the human cortex are fundamentally interrelated.
Dynamic Policy Analysis

This chapter studies the microeconometric treatment-effect and structural approaches to dynamic policy evaluation. First, we discuss a reduced-form approach based on a sequential randomization or dynamic matching assumption that is popular in biostatistics. We then discuss two complementary approaches for treatments that are single stopping times and that allow for non-trivial dynamic selection on unobservables.The first builds on continuous-time duration and event-history models.The second extends the discrete-time dynamic discrete-choice literature.
The Opacity of Spiral Galaxy Disks. IV. Radial Extinction Profiles from Counts of Distant Galaxies Seen through Foreground Disks

Dust extinction can be determined from the number of distant field galaxies seen through a spiral disk. To calibrate this number for the crowding and confusion introduced by the foreground image, González et al. and Holwerda et al. developed the Synthetic Field Method (SFM), which analyzes synthetic fields constructed by adding various deep exposures of unobstructed background fields to the candidate foreground galaxy field. The advantage of the SFM is that it gives the average opacity for the area of a galaxy disk without making assumptions about either the distribution of absorbers or of the disk starlight. However, it is limited by poor statistics on the surviving field galaxies, hence the need to combine a larger sample of fields. This paper presents the first results for a sample of 32 deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/WFPC2 archival fields of 29 spiral galaxies. The radial profiles of average dust extinction in spiral galaxies based on calibrated counts of distant field galaxies is presented here, both for individual galaxies and for composites from our sample. The effects of inclination, spiral arms, and Hubble type on the radial extinction profile are discussed. The dust opacity of the disk apparently arises from two distinct components: an optically thicker (AI = 0.5–4 mag) but radially dependent component associated with the spiral arms and a relatively constant optically thinner disk (AI ≈ 0.5 mag). These results are in complete agreement with earlier work on occulted galaxies. The early-type spiral disks in our sample show less extinction than the later types. Low surface brightness galaxies, and possibly Sd's, appear effectively transparent. The average color of the field galaxies seen through foreground disks does not appear to change with radius or opacity. This gray behavior is most likely due to the patchy nature of opaque clouds. The average extinction of a radial annulus and its average surface brightness seem to correlate for the brighter regions. This leads to the conclusion that the brighter parts of the spiral disk, such as spiral arms, are also the ones with the most extinction associated with them.
Impact of Workplace Quality on Employee’s Productivity:Case Study of a Bank in Turkey

The workplace environment plays a crucial role for the employees. Nowadays employees may have a large number working alternatives, then the environment in workplace becomes a critical factor for accepting and/or keeping the jobs. The quality of environment in workplace may simply determine the level of employee’s motivation, subsequent performance and productivity. How well employees get along with the organization influence the employee’s error rate, level of innovation and collaboration with other employees, absenteeism and ultimately time period to stay in the job. This paper presents the analysis of working environment of a foreign private bank in Turkey and examines the relationship between the workplace physical conditions and employee’s productivity.
Application Of High Capacity Data Hiding In Halftone Images

We consider applications of our recently proposed method for hiding digital data in halftone images via dot orientation modulation. As compared to prior halftone image watermarking techniques, the method allows for automated extraction of the data and relatively high capacity. These characteristics enable several new applications that we highlight in this paper. By quantifying the effective error free operational rates obtained with suitable error correction codes in our experimental evaluations, we identify the rate constraints on feasible applications. In particular, our estimates indicate that the method can be utilized for a) embedding thumbnails of images for validation and authentication, b) embedding speech in printed images in order to improve accessibility for the visually impaired, and c) embedding textfor carrying meta-data pertaining to the image in the printed image itself (e.g. biography in portrait). We demonstrate a working prototype illustrating the applications.
Profile Merging and Code Versioning for Automated Profile Guided Optimization Systems

Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. Traditional Profile Guided Optimization schemes (PGO) require developers to manually select profiles which are representative of typical program executions, in order to optimize the final release binary. Most profile merge algorithms use a weighted averaging scheme to accumulate profile data into a composite (merged) profile. However, such simple additive schemes have been shown (Wang et. al) to degrade the effectiveness of profile information by diluting branch biases. The requirement of an accurate merge algorithm becomes all the more important in the context of Managed Run-time Environments (MRTE). Within such systems PGO schemes are required to be deployed on client machines and have to function automatically and transparently to user intervention. To address these criteria, we propose a detailed merge heuristic which resolves conflicts in branch by examining factors such as predictability of branch bias and branch weight. This algorithm is conservative on branch bias when bias information from different profiles are conflicting. The algorithm also takes into account the repetitiveness of execution runs to more accurately favor the behavior of typical execution scenarios. We hypothesize that our proposed merge algorithm can improve the quality of a composite profile by maximizing performance gain across input data sets while minimizing regressions for individual runs. We are currently in the process of implementing the proposed merge algorithm and ongoing work will focus on evaluating its performance benefit as compared to traditional schemes.
Motion planning under bounded uncertainty using ensemble control

This paper considers the problem of motion planning for a nonholonomic unicycle despite uncertainty that scales both the forward speed and the turning rate by an unknown but bounded constant. We model the unicycle as an ensemble control system, show that the position of this ensemble is controllable, and derive motion planning algorithms to steer this position between a given start and goal. We apply our work to a differential-drive robot with unknown but bounded wheel radius, and validate our approach with hardware experiments.
Jost-Lehmann-Dyson Representation and Froissart-Martin Bound in Quantum Field Theory on Noncommutative Space-Time

In the framework of quantum field theory (QFT) on noncommutative (NC) space-time with $SO(1,1)\times SO(2)$ symmetry, which is the feature arising when one has only space-space noncommutativity ($\theta_{0i}=0$), we prove that the Jost-Lehmann-Dyson representation, based on the causality condition usually taken in connection with this symmetry, leads to the mere impossibility of drawing any conclusion on the analyticity of the $2\to 2$-scattering amplitude in $\cos\Theta$, $\Theta$ being the scattering angle. A physical choice of the causality condition rescues the situation and as a result an analog of Lehmann's ellipse as domain of analyticity in $\cos\Theta$ is obtained. However, the enlargement of this analyticity domain to Martin's ellipse and the derivation of the Froissart bound for the total cross-section in NC QFT is possible {\it only} in the special case when the incoming momentum is orthogonal to the NC plane. This is the first example of a nonlocal theory in which the cross-sections are subject to a high-energy bound. For the general configuration of the direction of the incoming particle, although the scattering amplitude is still analytic in the Lehmann ellipse, no bound on the total cross-section has been derived. This is due to the lack of a simple unitarity constraint on the partial-wave amplitudes, which could be used in this case. High-energy upper bounds on the total cross-section, among others, are also obtained for an arbitrary flat (noncompact) dimension of NC space-time.