Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Managers' Perceptions of Export Barriers

Abstract Exports continue to be one of the fastest-growing economic activities in our world today. However, the rate at which countries develop substantial levels of export activity appears to vary. Firm-level decisions regarding export initiation are motivated in part by the perceptions of management, leading to the principal question of this study. Do managers of exporting firms in India perceive different export obstacles to those in the United States? In an examination of 255 Indian and American engineering firms, logistic regression and other significance testing is performed to identify any differences in export barrier variables. Findings indicate that there are in fact differences in manager perceptions of export barriers between the firms from each country lending credence to differing export activity levels. Furthermore, identification of specific variables allow for the formulation of both firm and public policy in an effort to mitigate the impact of these variables on export initiation.
Recent Advancements of Treatment for Leptomeningeal Carcinomatosis

Treatment of Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis (LMC) from solid cancers has not advanced noticeably since the introduction of intra-cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) chemotherapy in the 1970's. The marginal survival benefit and difficulty of intrathecal chemotherapy injection has hindered its wide spread use. Even after the introduction of intraventricular chemotherapy with Ommaya reservoir, frequent development of CSF flow disturbance, manifested as increased intracranial pressure (ICP), made injected drug to be distributed unevenly and thus, the therapy became ineffective. Systemic chemotherapy for LMC has been limited as effective CSF concentration can hardly be achieved except high dose methotrexate (MTX) intravenous administration. However, the introduction of small molecular weight target inhibitors for primary cancer treatment has changed the old concept of 'blood-brain barrier' as the ultimate barrier to systemically administered drugs. Conventional oral administration achieves an effective concentration at the nanomolar level. Furthermore, many studies report that a combined treatment of target inhibitor and intra-CSF chemotherapy significantly prolongs patient survival. Ventriculolumbar perfusion (VLP) chemotherapy has sought to increase drug delivery to the subarachnoid CSF space even in patients with disturbed CSF flow. Recently authors performed phase 1 and 2 clinical trial of VLP chemotherapy with MTX, and 3/4th of patients with increased ICP got controlled ICP and the survival was prolonged. Further trials are required with newly available drugs for CSF chemotherapy. Additionally, new LMC biologic/pharmacodynamic markers for early diagnosis and monitoring of the treatment response are to be identified with the help of advanced molecular biology techniques.
Novel multiphase hybrid boost converter with wide conversion ratio

This paper presents a novel interleaved multiphase hybrid boost DC/DC converter. This converter type provides high efficiency and can be used for applications with wide voltage conversion ratio. At the beginning, the circuit function and the design of a single-phase converter is described. With a multiphase design, the filter circuit effort can be significantly reduced. In these circuits the different phases of the converter are controlled with a time offset. The design for a multiphase converter is described in detail. The mathematical analyses of the circuits are proven by several practical measurements of a realized two-phase converter. Additional the efficiency measurements of the hybrid boost converter are presented.
Bandit Algorithms for Social Network Queries

In many cases the best way to find a profile or a set of profiles matching some criteria in a social network is via targeted crawling. An important challenge in targeted crawling is to choose the next profile to explore. Existing heuristics for targeted crawling are usually tailored for specific search criterion and could lead to short-sighted crawling decisions. In this paper we propose and evaluate a generic approach for guiding a social network crawler that aims to provide a proper balance between exploration and exploitation based on the recently introduced variant of the Multi-Armed Bandit problem with volatile arms (VMAB). Our approach is general-purpose. In addition, it provides provable performance guarantees. Experimental results indicate that our approach compares favorably with the best existing heuristics on two different domains.
On Robust Traffic Engineering in Transport Networks

This paper reports on a probabilistic method for traffic engineering (specifically routing and resource allocation) in backbone networks, where the transport is the main service and robustness to the unexpected changes in network parameters is required. We analyze the network using the probabilistic betweenness of the network nodes (or links). The theoretical results lead to the definition of "criticality" for nodes and links. Link criticality is used as the main metric to model the risk of taking a specific path from a source to a destination node. Different paths will be ranked based on their criticality measure, and the best path will be selected to route the flow along the core network. The choice of the path is in the direction of preserving the robustness of the network to the unforeseen changes in topology and traffic demands. The proposed method is useful in situations like MPLS and Ethernet networks where path assignment is required.
Unlocking Innovation in Women-Owned Firms: Strategies for Educating the Next Generation of Women Entrepreneurs

In this article we report on the results of a survey of innovative practices in a sample of U.S. firms. Survey results reveal gender differences in the areas of both human and social capital. In the area of human capital, women were less likely to have advanced degrees or senior management experience. In the area of social capital, although a high percentage of women engaged in networking activities, there is some evidence that their networking strategies were less targeted than those of men. Consistent with prior research, women entrepreneurs had lower levels of “self-efficacy” or confidence in their ability to identify and develop innovative ideas. The implications of these findings for the education and training of women entrepreneurs are discussed.
Corporate derivatives and foreign exchange risk management

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors affecting firms' decision to use foreign exchange (FX) derivative instruments by using the data of 86 non-financial firms listed on Karachi Stock Exchange for the period 2004-2007. Design/methodology/approach - Required data were collected from annual reports of listed firms of Karachi Stock Exchange. Non-parametric test was used to examine the mean difference between users and non-users operating characteristics. Logit model was applied to analyze the impact of firm's financial distress costs, underinvestment problem, tax convexity, profitability, managerial ownership and foreign exchange exposure on firms' decision to use FX derivative instruments for hedging. Findings - Results explain that firms having higher foreign sales are more likely to use FX derivative instruments to reduce exchange rate exposure. Moreover, financially distressed large-size firms with financial constraints and fewer managerial holdings are more likely to use FX derivatives. Research limitations/implications - Incomplete financial instrument disclosure requirements restricted researchers to using binary variable as a dependent variable instead of notional value or fair value of derivative usage. Practical implications - The study shows that in the presence of amateur derivative market, Pakistani corporations possessing higher agency costs of debt, agency costs of equity, and financial constraints will benefit more by defining hedging policies coherent with the firm's investment and financing policies in order to enhance firm value. Originality/value - Until now, no earlier empirical study focused on the determinants of a firm's hedging policies in Pakistan, in the presence of volatile exchange rates,. The current study, therefore, attempts to identify the factors which affect the firm's decision to use derivative instruments for hedging FX exposure of non-financial firms in Pakistan.
Cyclin G2 Dysregulation in Human Oral Cancer

Using expression microarray, we have previously shown that human cyclin G2 (hCG2) is significantly down-regulated in laser capture microdissected oral cancer epithelia. Western analysis showed detectable hCG2 protein in normal (2 of 2) but not in malignant (4 of 4) oral keratinocyte cell lines. Immunohistochemistry analysis done on oral cancers showed that normal oral mucosa (100%, 12 of 12) and 69.1% (47 of 68) of dysplastic oral epithelia expressed readily detectable hCG2 in the nuclei. However, only 11.1% of oral cancer epithelia (14 of 126) showed mild hCG2 nuclear staining. Interestingly, of the oral cancers devoid of nuclear hCG2 (112 cases), 58 cases (52%) showed cytoplasmic hCG2 immunostaining, whereas the other 54 cases (48%) exhibited neither nuclear nor cytoplasmic hCG2 staining. In vitro functional study by ectopic restoration of hCG2 expression in the human malignant squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) line SCC15 resulted in a significant inhibition of cellular proliferation (P < 0.001) and colony formation (P < 2 × 10−5) with increased population of G1 phase and decreased in S phase (P < 0.01). Furthermore, stable down-regulation of hCG2 by short interference RNA-based gene silencing in immortalized normal oral keratinocytes resulted in enhanced cell growth with increase in S and prominently in G2 phase. Because hCG2 has been implicated as a negative regulator in cell cycle progression, our results support that hCG2 dysregulation may play an important role in epithelial transformation and the early stages of human oral cancer development.
Accounting: Perceptions of Influential High School Teachers in the USA and NZ

A decline in enrolments in Accounting programs in the United States of America has been well documented over the last decade. Some researchers have explained that this decline is in part due to the misinformation or lack of information about the nature of accounting and the duties performed by accountants. Other studies have found that a significant number of students make their career choice decisions while at high school and that teachers are influential in this decision making process. This study replicates a US study by surveying NZ high school teachers to compare their perceptions of the accounting profession to, engineering, law and medicine based on 24 attributes of a profession. The results from this study are contrasted to those from the US study. Our findings indicate that similar to the US, NZ high school teachers have a low opinion of accounting as a career option for university-bound high school students. This implies there are significant issues for educators and the profession including a possible mismatch between the requisite skills perceived by teachers and those sought by the profession.
The Rise in Mortality from Breast Cancer in Young Women: Trend Analysis in Brazil

Introduction Breast cancer is the most common cause of cancer death among women. Objective The objective of this study was to analyze time trends in overall mortality from breast cancer in Brazil, Brazilian regions and States. Methods This is an exploratory study, of the time series of deaths from breast cancer contained in the Mortality Information System (SIM), of women living in Brazil, Brazilian regions and States, from 1996 to 2013. For the trend analysis, the polynomial regression model was used, and a significant trend was considered when the estimated model obtained a p value <0.05. Results There was a tendency of increased mortality from breast cancer in Brazilian women (average increase of 0.18 per year; p <0.001), with regional differences, particularly in the age group 20–49 years (0.07 per year; p <0.001). The age group 50–69 years remained constant but had high average rates (37.14). Conclusion More effective planning is needed to focus on the different scenarios of the Brazilian regions. Screening strategies for the incidence and mortality from breast cancer must also be rethought according to age group in the country.
Competition and capabilities in British Television Production

We examine, through a sectoral case study, the effects of market liberalisation on production capabilities in the UK television industry. Two aspects of this process are examined: the growth of an „independent‟ programme production sector, and the introduction, development and transformation of an internal market system within the BBC. The paper looks at the extent to which a competitive and business-orientated independent sector can be said to be emerging, and considers the impact of the internal market on the BBC‟s efficiency and flexibility. In each case, market-driven reforms are seen to have a complex and ambiguous relationship to a continuing debate over the meaning of quality and innovation in television production. a Centre for Business Research Judge Institute of Management University of Cambridge Trumpington Street Cambridge CB2 1AG, UK E-mail: s.deakin@cbr.cam. ac.uk b Faculty of Economics and Management Portuguese Catholic University Rua Diogo Botelho, 1327 4169-005 Porto, Portugal E-mail: alourenco@porto.ucp. pt, and Judge Institute of Management University of Cambridge E-mail: a.lourenco@jims.cam. ac.uk c Stephen Pratten Management Centre King‟s College, London Franklin Wilkins Building, 150 Stamford Street London SE1 9NN E-mail: stephen.pratten@kcl.ac.uk 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Portuguese Workshop in Law and Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon. We are indebted to the participants in the workshop for their comments and suggestions. Ana Lourenco is indebted to the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia and to the Cambridge European Trust for their financial support.
13 Manifold Matching for High-Dimensional Pattern Recognition

In pattern recognition, a kind of classical classifier called k-nearest neighbor rule (kNN) has been applied to many real-life problems because of its good performance and simple algorithm. In kNN, a test sample is classified by a majority vote of its k-closest training samples. This approach has the following advantages: (1) It was proved that the error rate of kNN approaches the Bayes error when both the number of training samples and the value of k are infinite (Duda et al., 2001). (2) kNN performs well even if different classes overlap each other. (3) It is easy to implement kNN due to its simple algorithm. However, kNN does not perform well when the dimensionality of feature vectors is large. As an example, Fig. 1 shows a test sample (belonging to class 5) of the MNIST dataset (LeCun et al., 1998) and its five closest training samples selected by using Euclidean distance. Because the selected five training samples include the three samples belonging to class 8, the test sample is misclassified into class 8. Such misclassification is often yielded by kNN in highdimensional pattern classification such as character and face recognition. Moreover, kNN requires a large number of training samples for high accuracy because kNN is a kind of memory-based classifiers. Consequently, the classification cost and memory requirement of kNN tend to be high.
Analyzing Complex Strategic Interactions in Multi-Agent Systems

We develop a model for analyzing complex games with repeated interactions, for which a full game-theoretic analysis is intractable. Our approach treats exogenously specified, heuristic strategies, rather than the atomic actions, as primitive, and computes a heuristic-payoff table specifying the expected payoffs of the joint heuristic strategy space. We analyze two games based on (i) automated dynamic pricing and (ii) continuous double auction. For each game we compute Nash equilibria of previously published heuristic strategies. To determine the most plausible equilibria, we study the replicator dynamics of a large population playing the strategies. In order to account for errors in estimation of payoffs or improvements in strategies, we also analyze the dynamics and equilibria based on perturbed payoffs.
Family Instability and Young Adolescent Maladjustment: The Mediating Effects of Parenting Quality and Adolescent Appraisals of Family Security

Examined relations among family instability and adolescent's psychological functioning using family models of children's emotional security in a sample of 220 young adolescents and their primary caregivers. Primary caregiver reports of family instability were associated with multiple informant measures of adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Findings from structural equation models supported the hypothesis that family instability increases adolescent risk for psychological problems by directly undermining their insecure appraisals of the family. Results also supported a pathway whereby family instability predicted parenting difficulties and parenting difficulties, in turn, indirectly predicted adolescents' internalizing and externalizing symptoms through its association with lower levels of perceived insecurity in the family. Results are discussed in relation to how they advance process-oriented conceptualizations of family instability.
Local Versus Global Convergence Across National Economies

This paper reexamines the ability of the Solow-type growth models to explain the pattern of cross-country growth rates. Recent authors, most notably Mankiw, Romer and Weil [1990], have argued that differences in national growth rates are compatible with the view that each country has access to a common, neoclassical aggregate production function. Such models imply that, conditional on population growth and savings rates, disparate economies are converging over time to the same level of per capita output. We argue that cross-country growth is better explained by a model of local versus global convergence. Countries converge locally in the sense that economies with similar initial conditions tend to converge to one another. However, we find little evidence of convergence across economies with substantially different initial conditions as measured by per capita output or literacy rates. Further, the impact of capital formation on aggregate output increases with the level of economic development. These results are consistent with models of multiple equilibria in long run behavior. Our results suggest that the Solow growth model should be supplemented with a theory of aggregate production function differences in order to fully explain international growth patterns.
A Comparative Morphometrical Study of the Pecten Oculi in Different Avian Species

In this study was investigated the structure of pecten oculi in the ostrich, duck, pigeon, turkey, and starling. The pecten oculi of the ostrich was vaned type and made up primary, secondary, and few tertiary lamellae. However, duck, pigeon, turkey and starling had a pleated-type pecten oculi which displayed folded structure. The numbers of pleats of the pectens were 12, 13-14, 21-22, and 17 in duck, pigeon, turkey, and starling, respectively. Light microscopic investigation demonstrated that pecten oculi is basically composed of numerous capillaries, large blood vessels, and pigment cells in all investigating avian species. Capillaries were 20.23, 14.34, 11.78, 12.58, and 12.78 μm in diameter in ostrich, duck, pigeon, turkey, and starling, respectively. The capillaries are surrounded by thick basal membrane, and pigmented cells were observed around the capillaries.
Seam tracking control of welding robotic manipulators based on adaptive chattering-free sliding-mode control technology

A novel adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) algorithm is derived to deal with seam tracking control problem of welding robotic manipulator, during the process of large-scale structure component welding. The controllers robustness is verified by the Lyapunov stability theory, and the analytical results show that the proposed algorithm enables better high-precision tracking performance with chattering-free than classic sliding mode control (SMC) algorithm.
A More Sensitive Lorentzian State Sum

We give the construction modulo normalization of a new state sum model for lorentzian quantum general relativity, using the construction of Dirac's expansors to include quantum operators corresponding to edge lengths as well as the quantum bivectors of the Barrett-Crane model, and discuss the problem of its normalization. The new model gives rise to a new picture of quantum geometry in which lengths come in a discrete spectrum, while areas have a continuum of values.
HP1-β is required for development of the cerebral neocortex and neuromuscular junctions

HP1 proteins are thought to be modulators of chromatin organization in all mammals, yet their exact physiological function remains unknown. In a first attempt to elucidate the function of these proteins in vivo, we disrupted the murine Cbx1 gene, which encodes the HP1-β isotype, and show that the Cbx1−/−-null mutation leads to perinatal lethality. The newborn mice succumbed to acute respiratory failure, whose likely cause is the defective development of neuromuscular junctions within the endplate of the diaphragm. We also observe aberrant cerebral cortex development in Cbx1−/− mutant brains, which have reduced proliferation of neuronal precursors, widespread cell death, and edema. In vitro cultures of neurospheres from Cbx1−/− mutant brains reveal a dramatic genomic instability. Our results demonstrate that HP1 proteins are not functionally redundant and that they are likely to regulate lineage-specific changes in heterochromatin organization.
Corrigendum: A theoretical comparison between two ruminal electron sinks

published online: 16 May 2014. Citation: Ungerfeld EM (2014) Corrigendum: A theoretical comparison between two ruminal electron sinks. Front. Microbiol. 5:235. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2014. 00235 This article was submitted to Systems Microbiology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Microbiology. Copyright © 2014 Ungerfeld. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.