Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A phenomenological investigation of small-business closure in California: an examination of the leadership process

Small businesses are important to the United States economy, and yet the majority struggle to remain relevant and close prior to their fifth year. This qualitative phenomenological study explored small business closure in California by comparing the experiences of successful and unsuccessful small-business leaders, to understand their involvement with leadership during the early stages of the business, and the impact of this on the firms’ ability to survive. Participants’ experiences from two groups, successful and unsuccessful, were compared to glean an understanding of the leadership process, how leadership differs between the groups, and to see what themes or constructs emerged that could help to explain the high closure rate. This resulted in the development of 12 themes. The predominant themes were: small business closure can be caused by inability to motivate employees; by poor understanding and lack of attention to leadership, and by lack of relationship building skills. The data also showed that leadership shortfall directly impacted 65% of the companies studied, however leadership was not considered a priority in participating organizations but rather an afterthought to be considered only in times of crises. Yet leadership was perceived to be important when envisioning a path for the future and when providing a platform for employees to succeed. Those embracing leadership as a skillset were more likely to get through the challenges of the early developmental years while those ignoring the importance of leadership were more likely to close prematurely. These findings suggest a disconnect with regards to the understanding, role, and benefits of leadership in small organizations, particularly young organizations in the early stages of development.
The Socialization of Elite Tennis Players in Sweden: An Analysis of the Players’ Backgrounds and Development

This study analyzed the process of socialization of elite tennis players, thereby contributing to an explanation of the success experienced by Swedish tennis players in recent years. The top five male and top five female Swedish players, along with parents and coaches, were interviewed regarding background, early life sport experiences, and development. All five males held ranking positions among the 15 best in the world. The control group was chosen by matching pairs regarding age, sex, and junior ranking. Results indicated that both groups at the ages of 12 to 14 were equal, but after puberty the development of the groups diverged. As teenagers, some elite players were ranked among the world’s top players while the control group players did not experience success. The results clearly indicate that it is not possible to predict who will develop into a world-class tennis player based on individual talent alone. Personal qualifications and early life experiences in combination with social structures, tradi.
Randomized Trial of Therapeutic Massage for Chronic Neck Pain

ObjectivesLittle is known about the effectiveness of therapeutic massage, one of the most popular complementary medical treatments for neck pain. A randomized controlled trial was conducted to evaluate whether therapeutic massage is more beneficial than a self-care book for patients with chronic neck pain. MethodsSixty-four such patients were randomized to receive up to 10 massages over 10 weeks or a self-care book. Follow-up telephone interviews after 4, 10, and 26 weeks assessed outcomes including dysfunction and symptoms. Log-binomial regression was used to assess whether there were differences in the percentages of participants with clinically meaningful improvements in dysfunction and symptoms (ie, >5-point improvement on the Neck Disability Index; >30% improvement from baseline on the symptom bothersomeness scale) at each time point. ResultsAt 10 weeks, more participants randomized to massage experienced clinically significant improvement on the Neck Disability Index [39% vs. 14% of book group; relative risk (RR)=2.7; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.99-7.5] and on the symptom bothersomeness scale (55% vs. 25% of book group; RR=2.2; 95% CI, 1.04-4.2). After 26 weeks, massage group members tended to be more likely to report improved function (RR=1.8; 95% CI, 0.97-3.5), but not symptom bothersomeness (RR=1.1; 95% CI, 0.6-2.0). Mean differences between groups were strongest at 4 weeks and not evident by 26 weeks. No serious adverse experiences were reported. ConclusionsThis study suggests that massage is safe and may have clinical benefits for treating chronic neck pain at least in the short term. A larger trial is warranted to confirm these results.
Large Scale Asset Purchases with segmented mortgage and corporate loan markets

We introduce Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAPs) in a New-Keynesian DSGE model that features distinct mortgage and corporate loan markets. We show that following a significant disruption of financial intermediation, central-bank purchases of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) are uniformly less effective at easing credit market conditions and stabilizing economic activity than outright purchases of corporate bonds. Moreover, the size of the effects crucially depends on the extent to which credit markets are segmented, i.e. to which a "portfolio balance channel" is at work in the economy. More segmented credit markets imply larger, but more local effects of particular asset purchases. With strongly segmented credit markets, large scale purchases of MBS are useful to stabilize the housing market but do little to mitigate the contractionary effect of the crisis on employment and output.
The value compass : A study of consumer values and brand values

In the psychological field, a lot of progress has been made in values theory. In marketing theory, however, the use of values has been undervalued. Despite the widespread managerial use of brand values, attention has remained focused on the brand personality concept. This book intends to provide a new perspective to marketing science, by proposing a system of brand values that takes into account the developments in values theory. Values were tested in a number of rounds among a total of more than 3,000 respondents in the Netherlands and several other countries including Germany, Italy, and China. In this study, values that motivate consumer behavior were demonstrated to relate to each other as a consistent value system, labelled here as the Value Compass. We showed that the values with which brands profile themselves can be organized according to a similar structure as the human value system, which opens additional insights into the use of values to position brands, or to predict brand choice. The cross-cultural validation included in this book showed a high degree of equivalence of the Value Compass. This validation provided insight in the cross-cultural similarities in the structure of the value system, but it also emphasized the cross-cultural differences in priorities that individuals attach to certain values.
Research Validity Scales for the NEO-PI-R: Additional Evidence for Reliability and Validity

We examined the reliability and validity of the research validity scales (Schinka, Kinder, & Kremer, 1997) for the NEO-Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R) in a clinical sample. The Negative Presentation Management (NPM) and Positive Presentation Management (PPM) scales were found to have satisfactory internal consistency reliability. Support for the validity of these scales was provided by the pattern of convergent and discriminant correlations with respective Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) validity scales. Finally, PAI profiles of individuals with invalid NPM scores were found to differ significantly from those with valid NPM scores. Comparisons of the invalid profiles with profiles from other clinical samples provided additional support for the use of the NPM scale as a measure of negative impression management.
A Diverse Panel of Hepatitis C Virus Glycoproteins for Use in Vaccine Research Reveals Extremes of Monoclonal Antibody Neutralization Resistance

ABSTRACT Despite significant advances in the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, the need to develop preventative vaccines remains. Identification of the best vaccine candidates and evaluation of their performance in preclinical and clinical development will require appropriate neutralization assays utilizing diverse HCV isolates. We aimed to generate and characterize a panel of HCV E1E2 glycoproteins suitable for subsequent use in vaccine and therapeutic antibody testing. Full-length E1E2 clones were PCR amplified from patient-derived serum samples, cloned into an expression vector, and used to generate viral pseudoparticles (HCVpp). In addition, some of these clones were used to generate cell culture infectious (HCVcc) clones. The infectivity and neutralization sensitivity of these viruses were then determined. Bioinformatic and HCVpp infectivity screening of approximately 900 E1E2 clones resulted in the assembly of a panel of 78 functional E1E2 proteins representing distinct HCV genotypes and different stages of infection. These HCV glycoproteins differed markedly in their sensitivity to neutralizing antibodies. We used this panel to predict antibody efficacy against circulating HCV strains, highlighting the likely reason why some monoclonal antibodies failed in previous clinical trials. This study provides the first objective categorization of cross-genotype patient-derived HCV E1E2 clones according to their sensitivity to antibody neutralization. It has shown that HCV isolates have clearly distinguishable neutralization-sensitive, -resistant, or -intermediate phenotypes, which are independent of genotype. The panel provides a systematic means for characterization of the neutralizing response elicited by candidate vaccines and for defining the therapeutic potential of monoclonal antibodies. IMPORTANCE Hepatitis C virus (HCV) has a global burden of more than 170 million people, many of whom cannot attain the new, expensive, direct-acting antiviral therapies. A safe and effective vaccine that generates both T cell responses and neutralizing antibodies is required to eradicate the disease. Regions within the HCV surface glycoproteins E1 and E2 are essential for virus entry and are targets for neutralizing antibodies. Screening of vaccine candidates requires suitable panels of glycoproteins that represent the breadth of neutralization resistance. Use of a standard reference panel for vaccine studies will ensure comparability of data sets, as has become routine for HIV-1. Here, we describe a large panel of patient-derived HCV glycoproteins with an assessment of their neutralization sensitivity to defined monoclonal antibodies, which has enabled us to predict their likely efficacy in the wider HCV-infected population. The panel could also be important for future selection of additional therapeutic antibodies and for vaccine design.
Improving Outcomes After Relapse in Ewing's Sarcoma: Analysis of 114 Patients From a Single Institution

The outcome for patients with relapsed Ewing's sarcoma is poor. A retrospective analysis was carried out to identify factors associated with improved survival. Between 1992 and 2002, 114 patients presented with relapsed or progressive disease. Median time to progression/relapse was 13 months (range, 2–128). Treatment at relapse included high dose treatment (HDT) in 29 patients, and surgery or definitive radiotherapy in 29. 2 and 5-year post relapse survival (PRS) was 23.5% and 15.2%, respectively. In multivariate analysis, the most significant factors associated with improved survival were disease confined locally or to the lungs (2-year PRS, 40% versus 6%; P < .001), relapse > 18 months from diagnosis (2-year PRS, 53% versus 8%; P < .001), HDT at relapse (2-year PRS, 62% versus 11%; P < .001), and surgery and/or radiotherapy at relapse (2-year PRS, 51% versus 14%; P < .001). First treatment failure in Ewing's sarcoma is mostly fatal. Improved survival can be achieved in selective patients with aggressive treatment. These improvements are confined to those without bone or bone marrow metastases.
The Effect of Emotional Intelligence on Salesperson's Behavior and Customers' Perceived Service Quality

This study discusses salespersons' emotional intelligence, one of the key abilities necessary to meet customers' needs effectively, and express positive emotions in frequent interactions with customer. Emotional intelligence refers to self-controllability and social ability emphasizing pro-social aspect and understanding of others. This study investigates how salespersons' emotional intelligence affects adaptive selling and positive emotional expression during the process of interaction with customers, and how such adaptive selling and positive emotional expression affects the quality of service perceived by customers. The results show that greater salespersons' emotional intelligence results in better adaptive selling and positive emotional expression. Such adaptive selling and positive emotional expression had significant effects on the quality of service perceived by customers. These results are important in that they address emotional intelligence as salespersons' emotional ability, which has been overlooked as an antecedent variable for improving adaptive selling and display of positive emotion, consequently provide another factor to help salespersons improve their selling behavior.
GPS-INS Integration for Autonomous Navigation of Aircrafts

The advent of Global Navigation Satellite Systems has brought about an additional navigational aid for aircrafts. Due to their complementary error characteristic, various approaches involving Global Positioning System coupled with the Inertial Navigation System have been looked into for complete autonomous navigation and attitude estimation of the aircraft. In this paper, we study, through simulation, approaches of GPS-INS integration based on the extended Kalman filter. An open-loop tightly-coupled GPS-INS integration approach utilizing raw pseudorange measurements is analyzed in presence of realistic measurement errors. Improvements in the approach, via bias estimation and carrier phase tracking have also been briefly examined. Lastly, a computationally efficient approach to resolve integer ambiguities for carrier phase tracking is also simulated. Although the results presented are based on GPS simulation, the analysis is equally applicable to other satellite navigation systems due to their similar operating principles. Keywords—Extended Kalman Filter, GPS-INS integration
Diversified Temporal Subgraph Pattern Mining

Many graphs in real-world applications, such as telecommunications networks, social-interaction graphs and co-authorship graphs, contain temporal information. However, existing graph mining algorithms fail to exploit these temporal information and the resulting subgraph patterns do not contain any temporal attribute. In this paper, we study the problem of mining a set of diversified temporal subgraph patterns from a temporal graph, where each subgraph is associated with the time interval that the pattern spans. This problem motivates important applications such as finding social trends in social networks, or detecting temporal hotspots in telecommunications networks. We propose a divide-and-conquer algorithm along with effective pruning techniques, and our approach runs 2 to 3 orders of magnitude faster than a baseline algorithm and obtains high-quality temporal subgraph patterns in real temporal graphs.
Vitamin E may affect the life expectancy of men, depending on dietary vitamin C intake and smoking.

BACKGROUND antioxidants might protect against oxidative stress, which has been suggested as a cause of aging. METHODS the Alpha-Tocopherol-Beta-Carotene (ATBC) Study recruited males aged 50-69 years who smoked at least five cigarettes per day at the baseline. The current study was restricted to participants who were followed up past the age of 65. Deaths were identified in the National Death Registry (1,445 deaths). We constructed Kaplan-Meier survival curves for all participants, and for four subgroups defined by dietary vitamin C intake and level of smoking. We also constructed Cox regression models allowing a different vitamin E effect for low and high age ranges. RESULTS among all 10,837 participants, vitamin E had no effect on those who were 65-70 years old, but reduced mortality by 24% when participants were 71 or older. Among 2,284 men with dietary vitamin C intakes above the median who smoked less than a pack of cigarettes per day, vitamin E extended lifespan by 2 years at the upper limit of the follow-up age span. In this subgroup, the survival curves of vitamin E and no-vitamin E participants diverged at 71 years. In the other three subgroups covering 80% of the participants, vitamin E did not affect mortality. CONCLUSIONS this is the first study to strongly indicate that protection against oxidative stress can increase the life expectancy of some initially healthy population groups. Nevertheless, the lack of effect in 80% of this male cohort shows that vitamin E is no panacea for extending life expectancy.
Automatic Speech Feature Extraction for Cognitive Load Classification

Performance of attention-demanding tasks is challenged if motor (e.g., walking) and cognitive (e.g., talking) tasks are carried out simultaneously. These dual-task paradigms have received increasing interest in probing the attentional influence associated with impairments to these systems [1]. For example, gait instabilities in Alzheimer's patients has been suggested to result from impaired attentional faculties impacting balance control [2]. Parkinson's patients have demonstrated inappropriate prioritization during dual-tasking, potentially leading to a higher risk of falls [3]. Furthermore, the controversy surrounding cell phone conversations on driving performance [4] further motivates the need to measure and understand the influence of attentional load.
Everyday green space and experienced well-being: the significance of wildlife encounters

Abstract A broad and growing evidence base suggests the potential for time spent in natural environments to promote human health and well-being. Whilst evidence of such benefits is rapidly accumulating, we still know relatively little about the role of wildlife encounters in shaping the well-being potential of people’s routine green/blue space interactions, particularly amongst non-specialists. This article addresses this conceptual gap, drawing on the findings of a three-stage, qualitative, interpretive study which sought to understand and situate people’s natural environment well-being experiences within their everyday lives. Wildlife encounters were emphasised by study participants in the context of four types of well-being experience: social, immersive, symbolic and achievement oriented. These are explored within this paper, before discussing the influence of past experiences and current life circumstances on participants’ wildlife relationships. Consideration is also given to how environmental managers might focus activity and investment to balance opportunities for such wildlife experiences with the ongoing priorities of delivering socially inclusive, ecologically rich and climate change-resilient green spaces.
Overview of the International Authorship Identification Competition at PAN-2011

This paper gives an overview of the evaluation methodology applied to authorship identication solutions as part of PAN 2011. The two variations of authorship identication that were explored were au- thorship attribution, determining which of a known set of authors wrote a text, and authorship verication , determining if a specic authors did or did not write a text. We summarize the methods used by the various participants, which were quite varied, and present the overall results of the evaluation.
Theorizing inquiry in the moral space of practice

ABSTRACT Moral realism has been advanced as a central theme in contemporary hermeneutic thought. From this standpoint, participation in cultural practices is made possible and meaningful by ontologically real moral goods and reference points. Cultural practices thus constitute a moral referential totality for human action. This article suggests that these and related hermeneutic insights offer a unique perspective for taking account of practical involvement in the world and can form the basis of an interpretive frame for research that foregrounds this practice-based moral realism. An emphasis on moral realist concepts such as participation in practice, distinctions of worth, strong evaluations, and moral reference points can allow interrelated phenomena to show up as aspects of a moral ecology and reveal something about their moral significance within a form of practice. Moreover, inquiry of this sort can reveal something about that form of practice as a space of moral possibilities for action.
The benefits of individual versus group work in a biology based laboratory setting

Laboratory science classes and group work are almost inextricably linked in student college life today. The merits of both are extolled by both educators and future employers as a fundamental part of a rounded qualified graduate. However, there is little evidence to the contrary, particularly in laboratory based programs. This study aims to determine the students’ perception of the benefits of different working scenarios in a biological laboratory setting. The study followed 32 students in their third year of their college program working in three different biology based laboratory classes. During each of these laboratory classes the students either worked alone, worked with a preferred partner or worked with an assigned partner. The students were asked to grade their experiences in a survey. The students were asked to reflect on the following areas: enjoyment of experience, understanding of activities, laboratory technique and time efficiency. Mixed modal analysis of variance and pair-wise analyses were used to determine significance between the differing work group scenarios. The laboratory group make-up had no impact on the student enjoyment of the laboratory class. There was also no significant impact on the students’ ability to perform the laboratory exercise in a time efficient manner. The analysis did however indicate that students who work alone or with their preferred partner have a greater understanding of the subject matter against those who worked with an assigned partner. The results also suggest that students who worked alone had significantly improved laboratory technique compared to student working in a group.
Testing two mechanisms linking work-to-family conflict to individual consequences: do gender and gender role orientation make a difference?

Abstract Based on social role theory and a gender role orientation perspective, this study extended the two mechanisms (i.e. resource depletion and source attribution) that link work-to-family conflict to perceived accomplishment in the family and work domains by testing the moderating effects of gender and gender role orientation on the relationships. Data were collected from managers via questionnaires in China, and 225 cases were analyzed with hierarchical regression models. The results showed that compared with female managers, the negative relationship between work-to-family conflict and perceived family accomplishment was stronger for male managers. Within the male group, we found that the negative relationship between work-to-family conflict and perceived family accomplishment was stronger for male managers with an egalitarian gender role orientation than those with a traditional gender role orientation. In addition, for male managers with a traditional gender role orientation, there was a positive relationship between work-to-family conflict and perceived work accomplishment. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.