Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
To book or not to book: the role of hotel web site heuristics

Purpose – This study aims to examine web site heuristics and their influence on the likelihood to purchase.Design/methodology/approach – A convenience sample of 28 participants was assigned a list of 30 hotel web sites to evaluate according to predetermined criteria and open‐ended questions.Findings – Results indicated that booking decisions are positively related to a web site's aesthetic appeal. The study found the presence of photographs on a hotel web site was the most significant factor impacting site appeal and influencing the booking decision. Other features affecting purchase decisions included ease of use, color, link availability, lack of web site clutter, and sites unique in appearance.Research limitations/implications – Research limitations included the size and composition of the sample. Respondents were college students, thus they represented a younger demographic and one which may be more tech‐savvy than other age groups. Also, the hotel web sites which were evaluated were located in one po.
Visibility via Roadshows for Athens Listed Companies

A major tool of corporate communications and especially of investor relations (IR) is the initiation, organisation and implementation of roadshows. Roadshows can promote listed companies, before, during and after their IPOs, and put their investment case on the radar screen of targeted, sophisticated market participants such as institutional investors, financial analysts, bankers and others. This paper investigates the opinions, experience and perceptions of company executives, analysts and fund managers about Greek listed firms’ roadshow efforts. We find that offering, relationship and proactive roadshows affect positively management and company visibility, attraction of new investors, stock buying and liquidity as well as analyst coverage among others.
Structures and Multipoint Correlators for Turbulent Advection: Predictions and Experiments

We present theoretical predictions and wind tunnel measurements of the 3-point correlator of fluctuating temperature in preheated turbulent flow. The dependence of this passive scalar correlator on the point configuration is calculated on the basis of a model Hopf operator describing its time evolution but can be understood in terms of the underlying frontlike structure of the temperature field. Model predictions reproduce the main features observed in experiment. The geometric insight into the structure of the fluctuating field provided by multipoint correlators suggests new approaches to the study of turbulence itself. [S0031-9007(98)07639-X] PACS numbers: 47.27. Ak, 02.50. Fz Turbulent advection and mixing is a technically important problem in engineering (e.g., combustion) and in geophysical flows (e.g., dispersion of pollutants). The statistical properties of scalar fluctuations (e.g., temperature or the concentration of a pollutant) has many similarities with the statistics of the turbulent velocity field itself [1,2]. Much work [3] has been devoted to understanding the scaling properties of turbulent fields which deviate from the simple dimensional form predicted by the
Commercial Credit,Financing Constraint and Financing Behavior Of SMS Enterprises in Our Country——A Questionnaire on Enterprises of Manufacturing Industry in Jiangsu Province and an Empirical Study

In contrast to its role and position in our SMS enterprises, commercial credit is not well studied theoretically and empirically in our country. Based on a questionnaire on SMS enterprises in manufacturing industry in Jiangsu Province and a quantitative analysis, the author discovers from the micro-perspective the model and mechanism of commercial credit for financing activities by SMS enterprises. It is found that financing dilemma faced by SMS enterprises is caused primarily by inadequate use of inter-enterprise commercial credit in China as compared with developed countries. The industrial characteristics and technical competence of these enterprises predetermines their weak positions in trading market. As a result, 2/3 of them are forced to become pure lenders of commercial credit. The receivables and payables in the commercial credit featuring term mismatch entail risks of capital chain, which arise from the interaction between "banking credit channel" and "commercial credit channel" under the impact of macro austerity policy.
Strategic philosophy and management level

Purpose – To examine how a manager's strategic philosophy is influenced by his or her management level in the organization.Design/methodology/approach – Scales are developed to measure managers' philosophical perspectives along three key dimensions and tested with 289 managers in the United States. Refined scales are administered to 237 managers.Findings – A manager's level in the organization influences his or her strategic philosophy. As compared to middle‐and lower‐level managers, top managers were more likely to view strategy formulation as an art, to emphasize strategic flexibility as opposed to strategic consistency, and to see strategy as top‐down process.Research limitations/implications – No single strategic philosophy is suggested as the optimal perspective. In addition, there are multiple possible explanations for the findings. Additional research is needed. Recognizing differences in strategic philosophy can also enhance training and development efforts at the lower and middle management level.
Transfected rat high-molecular-weight neurofilament (NF-H) coassembles with vimentin in a predominantly nonphosphorylated form

A fully encoding cDNA for the high-molecular-weight rat neurofilament protein (NF-H) has been isolated from a lambda gt11 library, sequenced and subcloned into eukaryotic expression vectors. Sequence analysis shows that rat NF-H has an overall homology of 72 and 88% with human and mouse NF-H, respectively. The head and rod domains are almost entirely identical, and the divergences are due to differences in the long C-terminal extensions of the molecule. The consensus phosphorylation sequence for neurofilaments Lys-Ser-Pro (KSP) is present 52 times. The predicted molecular mass of the protein is 115 kDa, 42% lower than that observed by SDS-PAGE. Upon transfection into vimentin-containing fibroblasts, such as L tk-, L929, and 3T6 cells, NF- H is seen distributed with vimentin by light and electron microscopic examinations indicating that copolymers of NF-H and vimentin are formed in these cells. Only a negligible proportion of the cells is positive when stained with a number of antibodies directed against phosphorylated NF-H epitopes. This is in contrast with the middle molecular weight NF protein (NF-M) transfected into L tk- and L929 cells, which can readily be detected by antibodies against phosphorylated neurofilament epitopes. The mobilities of the transfected protein on 1- and 2-dimensional gels confirm that NF-H is predominantly in a nonphosphorylated form. These results indicate that phosphorylation of NF-H, but not NF-M, on the KSP sequence is due to protein kinases, which are not present in fibroblasts and are presumably NF-H specific. The stable NF-H-expressing cell lines can therefore be used to study these putative neurofilament kinases in vitro and in vivo.
Investment and Financing Decisions of Private and Public Firms

This paper analyzes the investment and financing decisions of private and public firms. We focus on their use of cash flow and find that private firms have lower investment-cash flow sensitivities and a stronger link between performance and shareholder distributions, a behavior that is consistent with private firms suffering from fewer agency conflicts. However, our results are only observable in countries with a highly developed and liquid stock market and low ownership concentration. It is the “dark side” of liquidity that reduces the incentives for shareholders to actively monitor managers and leads to inefficient cash flow allocation in public firms.
Ethnicity and customer satisfaction in the financial services sector

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe research carried out to determine whether South Florida's heterogeneous retail banking customers have differing perceptions of the importance of service quality dimensions; and to ascertain whether various ethnic groups report different levels of customer satisfaction with their retail banks.Design/methodology/approach – This study examines three distinct ethnic groups vis‐a‐vis the most significant dimensions of service quality causal to customer satisfaction with retail banking institutions. Because of the ethnic diversity of its residents, South Florida was chosen for this research.Findings – As a group, 230 banking customers rated reliability and responsiveness as having the greatest impact on their satisfaction levels. Although no statistically significant differences were apparent in the overall levels of satisfaction among the groups, respondents from the three largest regional ethnic groups (African‐Americans, Latinos, and non‐Latino Caucasians) w.
Changes in the treatment of inpatient hyperglycemia: What every nurse practitioner should know about the 2012 Standards of Care

Purpose: To provide nurse practitioners (NPs) with a review of the 2012 Standards of Care for the management of hospitalized patients who are hyperglycemic. Data sources: The 2012 American Diabetes Association's (ADA) Standards of Care for the treatment of inpatient hyperglycemia and selected evidence‐based articles. Conclusions: Because hyperglycemia occurs at alarming rates in the inpatient setting when hyperglycemia is not controlled, there is a great impact on acute and even chronic conditions. These complications will lead to increased healthcare costs. Implications for practice: It is essential that NPs who care for hospitalized, hyperglycemic patients are aware of the 2012 ADA Standards of Care.
Optimal Cross-Layer Design for Energy Efficient D2D Sharing Systems

In this paper, we propose a cross-layer design, which optimizes the energy efficiency of a potential future 5G spectrum-sharing environment, in two sharing scenarios. In the first scenario, underlying sharing is considered. We propose and minimize a modified energy per good bit (MEPG) metric, with respect to the spectrum sharing user’s transmission power and media access frame length. The cellular users, legacy users, are protected by an outage probability constraint. To optimize the non-convex targeted problem, we utilize the generalized convexity theory and verify the problem’s strictly pseudoconvex structure. We also derive analytical expressions of the optimal resources. In the second scenario, we minimize a generalized MEPG function while considering a probabilistic activity of cellular users and its impact on the MEPG performance of the spectrum sharing users. Finally, we derive the associated optimal resource allocation of this problem. Selected numerical results show the improvement of the proposed system compared with other systems.
Customer retention is not enough

Purpose – Every company knows that it costs far less to hold on to a customer than to acquire a new one. That is why customer retention has become the Holy Grail in industries from airlines to wireless. Yet defecting customers are far less of a problem than customers who change their buying patterns. Today's typical metrics of customer satisfaction and defection do not tell a company how susceptible its customers are to changing their spending patterns. This article seeks to investigate this problem.Design/methodology/approach – The investigation was carried out through a two‐year study of the attitudes of 1,200 households toward companies in 16 industries.Findings – McKinsey found that focusing on smaller changes in customer spending can have as much as ten times more value than concentrating on defections alone.Originality/value – This is important for those companies that wish to retain their customers.
Consumer responses to a future UK food system

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe research exploring consumer responses to potential changes in food-related practices to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Design/methodology/approach – Six focus groups explored consumer responses to measures to intended to mitigate the emissions from, and adapt to the impacts of climate change. These included: meat reduction, greater reliance on seasonal British food, meal replacement tablets, laboratory grown meat, communal eating houses, genetically modified food and food waste. Practice theory provided the lens to interpret the changes to meanings, competences and materials associated with food consumption. Findings – Changes that could be assimilated within existing competencies were viewed more positively, with lack of competence a key barrier to accommodating change. At present, climate change and sustainability do not influence purchasing decisions. Policy measures delivering multiple benefits (“win-wins”), of which environmental performance m.
The Effect of Pinned Photodiode Shape on Time-of-Flight Demodulation Contrast

An empirical investigation on improving the pinned photodiode (PPD) demodulation contrast by tailoring the geometry of the device is presented. Results of this TCAD simulation-based study are used to develop a structure especially suited for time-of-flight applications. In order to obtain a fair comparison between various PPD shapes, a square structure is adopted as a benchmark and all subsequent PPD geometries use the same process parameters. Five different PPD shapes are compared: 1) nominal square-shaped PPD; 2) triangular PPD; 3) constant-field PPD; 4) L-shaped constant-field PPD; and 5) proposed PPD. Device physics simulations are undertaken and the speed of each structure is evaluated on the basis of its demodulation contrast. It is shown that triangular and constant-field PPDs can provide significant improvement compared with a conventional square-shaped PPD, however they still lack effective lateral charge transfer in the final electron sorting stage. The final PPD proposed in this paper achieves this with a tailored PPD shape and doping gradient. In addition, the transfer gates are placed close to one another to make use of gate-induced fringe fields and thus improve the speed of electron sorting. Using these techniques, a PPD demodulation contrast of 61% is obtained at a frequency of 100 MHz, which is comparable to the contrast achieved in state-of-the-art photogate-based designs.
Nitrification and dissimilatory ammonium production and their effects on nitrogen flux over the sediment-water interface in bioturbated coastal sediments

Nitrification and dissimilatory reduction of nitrate to ammonium were measured concomitantly with nitrogen release from marine coastal sediment samples from 2 fjord sill stations. Dissimilatory ammonium production (DAP) and nitrification were measured using core injections of "NO; and H1"CO;, respectively. DAP was detected in all segments of the cores by tracing "NH: evolved from the added "NO;. 15NH: recovery increased with increasing core depth, ranging from 1.6 to 10 % for Stn H and from 0.3 to 2.9 % for Stn L. Nitrification activity at Stn L was in the order of 10 nmol cm-3 h' in the upper 2 cm but was not demonstrated in deeper strata. Consequently, DAP was most pronounced in the upper few centimeters although it was anticipated that more than 97 % of the nitrate produced was denitnfied. Mean fluxes of ammonlum out of the sediment were 24 and 12 pm01 m-2 h-' for Stns H and L, respectively, and corresponding nitrate fluxes were 2 and -24 pm01 m-2 h-'. The sum of ammonium and nitrate release in the individual cores did not reach the rates expected from their oxygen consumption rates, which implies that inorganic nitrogen was lost, probably due to coupled nitrification and denitrification. This estimated loss was about half of the obtained nitrification rate at Stn L. Furthermore, the estimated loss was larger in cores with a rich macrofauna and especially with high numbers of Arnphiura spp. (brittlestars). It is suggested that these animals stimulate both nitrification and dissimilatory nitrate reduction.
Outsourcing, occupational restructuring, and employee well-being: Is there a silver lining?

This paper explores the effects of outsourcing on employee well-being through the use of the Finnish linked employer-employee data. The direct negative effect of outsourcing is attributable to greater job destruction and worker outflow. In terms of perceived well-being, the winners in international outsourcing are those who are capable of performing interactive tasks (i.e., managers, professionals and experts), especially when offshoring involves closer connections to other developed countries.
A 128-Channel, 8.9-ps LSB, Column-Parallel Two-Stage TDC Based on Time Difference Amplification for Time-Resolved Imaging

This paper proposes a 128-channel column-parallel two-stage time-to-digital converter (TDC) utilizing a time difference amplifier (TDA) and shows measurement results obtained from an implementation in a 0.35- μm CMOS process. The first stage operates as a coarse TDC, the time residue is amplified by a TDA, then converted by the second-stage TDC. As the gain of the time difference amplifier can be adjusted from 8.5 to 20.4, the time resolution of the TDC can be tuned from 21.4 to 8.9 ps. The time resolution variation due to process-voltage-temperature (PVT) effects is ± 5.8% without calibration when the time resolution is 12.9 ps. We propose a calibration method to compensate LSB changes due to the power supply fluctuation and temperature variation.
Go Down Fighting: Short Sellers vs. Firms

I study battles between short sellers and firms. Firms use a variety of methods to impede short selling, including legal threats, investigations, lawsuits, and various technical actions intended to create a short squeeze. These actions create short sale constraints. Consistent with the hypothesis that short sale constraints allow stocks to be overpriced, firms taking anti-shorting actions have in the subsequent year very low abnormal returns of about -2 percent per month.
Fe(II)‐induced DNA damage in α‐synuclein‐transfected human dopaminergic BE(2)‐M17 neuroblastoma cells: detection by the Comet assay

Lewy bodies in the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) contain aggregates of α‐synuclein (α‐syn). Missense mutations (A53T or A30P) in the gene encoding α‐syn are responsible for rare, inherited forms of PD. In this study, we explored the susceptibility of untransfected human dopaminergic BE(2)‐M17 neuroblastoma cells, cells transfected with vector only, or cells transfected with wild‐type α‐syn, A30P α‐syn or A53T α‐syn to Fe(II)‐induced DNA damage in the form of single‐strand breaks (SSBs). DNA SSBs were detected following 2‐h treatments with various concentrations of Fe(II) (0.01–100.0 μm), using the alkaline single cell‐gel electrophoresis (‘Comet’) assay and quantified by measuring comet tail length (CTL) (μm). Fe(II) treatment induced significant increases in CTL in cells transfected with A30P α‐syn or A53T α‐syn, even at the lowest concentrations of Fe(II) tested. In comparison, untransfected cells, vector control cells or cells transfected with wild‐type α‐syn exhibited increases in SSBs only when exposed to concentrations of 1.0 μm Fe(II) and above. Even when exposed to higher concentrations (10.0–100.0 μm) of Fe(II), untransfected cells, vector control cells or cells transfected with wild‐type α‐syn were less susceptible to DNA‐damage induction than cells transfected with A30P α‐syn or A53T α‐syn. Incorporation of DNA‐repair inhibitors, hydroxyurea and cytosine arabinoside, enhanced the sensitivity of DNA damage detection. Susceptibility to Fe(II)‐induced DNA damage appeared to be dependent on α‐syn status because cells transfected with wild‐type α‐syn or A53T α‐syn were equally susceptible to the damaging effects of the mitochondrial respiratory chain inhibitor rotenone. Overall, our data are suggestive of an enhanced susceptibility to the toxic effects of Fe(II) in neuroblastoma cells transfected with mutant α‐syn associated with inherited forms of PD.
Corporate social responsibility versus corporate social iresponsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been an intensively researched topic in the last decades. More and more scientists manifested interest in this concept and elaborated various definitions. Gradually, CSR evolved from a theoretical concept to a complex managerial tool used to build a company’s reputation and enlarge its competitive advantage. It was soon a must have for more and more companies. Although only large corporations used it at first, today CSR is part of the business strategy of many small and medium size companies also. The more popular it became, the more it grew in complexity and the idea of corporate social irresponsibility arose. Corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) refers to the dark side, as it investigates the wrongful and damaging business decisions that managers might take. In this article we provide a viewpoint on the conceptualization of the two topics and the distinction between them. Through an evaluation of the academic literature, we provide an explanatory view of corporate social responsibility and corporate social irresponsibility emphasizing their most popular definitions, historical development and relevance for companies. The opinions expressed in the article can be useful for both academia and managers as we give suggestions on finding ways to reduce CSI and enhance CSR.
Merging task‐technology fit and technology acceptance models to assess guest empowerment technology usage in hotels

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that affect the usage of guest empowerment technologies (GET) with a specific focus on in‐room entertainment technologies.Design/methodology/approach – This study used structural equation modeling to evaluate the application of task‐technology fit (TTF) and technology acceptance models (TAMs) in reference to entertainment GETs.Findings – This paper confirmed that the most popular forms of entertainment GET were in‐room movies and on‐demand services. Most importantly, the analysis of the data revealed that a user's individual experiential characteristics have a significant negative relationship with fit of GET while the technology and task characteristics have a significant positive relationship with fit of GET.Research limitations/implications – This paper makes a contribution to the current body of literature as it is among the first to utilize a hybrid TTF/TAM in the hotel self‐service environment. As such, it can be utilized by future resear.