Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Past Performance on the Exit of Team Members in Young Firms: The Role of Team Composition

We investigate the impact of past performance and team composition on exits of members from entrepreneurial teams. Not only does the homophily principle guide team formation, but it also seems to drive exits from teams. Our findings suggest that greater internal diversity along some but not all demographic dimensions is positively associated with a higher rate of team member exits. At the individual level, we find that the more individuals deviate from the norm in terms of age, the more likely they are to leave a team.
Evaluating the Consumer Response to Fuel Economy: A Review of the Literature

In modeling how the U.S. market responds to changes in national fuel economy standards, the question of how consumers evaluate trade-offs between the cost of consuming more fuel economy than they would otherwise choose and the expected fuel savings that result is potentially quite important. Consumer vehicle choice models are a means to predict the change in vehicle purchase patterns, as well as the effects of these changes on compliance costs and consumer surplus. This paper surveys the literature on consumer choice models and finds a wide range in methods and results. A large puzzle raised is whether automakers build into their vehicles as much fuel economy as consumers are willing to purchase. This paper examines possible reasons why there may be a gap between the amount consumers are willing to pay for fuel economy and the amount that automakers provide. Submitted August, 2009. Resubmitted April, 2011
The Road to ERP Success: Understanding End-User Perceptions

Even though there is a growing body of literature that focuses on improving the success rate of enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects, there is a lack of research aimed at understanding end-users perceptions of ERP systems. Given that employee expectations and attitudes play an important role in the success of ERP projects, the purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of end-user perceptions of ERP systems. In order to achieve this objective, we provide empirical evidence from two companies that have recently implemented ERP systems. We also offer strategies that could be utilized by managers, project leaders, and vendor companies to enhance user satisfaction with ERP systems
INFLUENCE OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL ON JOB PERFORMANCE OF LIBRARY EMPLOYEES IN SELECTED UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND INFORMATION CENTERS IN SOUTH-WEST NIGERIA

This study investigated the influence of performance appraisal on job performance of library employees in selected University library and information centers in South-West Nigeria. The survey research design was used for the study. Study population consisted of 133 library personnel in four university libraries. Sampling was purposive and enumerative as all members of the population were used for the study. Data collected were analyzed using frequency and percentage counts. Findings revealed that library personnel perceived performance appraisal as the routine evaluation of an employees' output; as a management tool aimed at improving the performance of employees; as a technique for determining staff compensation but not a management tool for strengthening superior - subordinate relationship. The study also revealed that performance appraisal could influence job performance as it improves and motivates personnel to work harder. Based on these findings, some recommendations like finding suitable appraisal scheme that will best suit the employees of the library in performing; giving a regular feedback to the employees after an evaluation; and gearing staff performance exercise towards staff productivity and performance were made.
The public administration reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina : a case of a sovereignty paradox?

As Bosnia and Herzegovina has toned its interest towards a European Union membership it has entered a long accession process guided by the European Union. In the process, in which it has been faced with various requirements and conditions as for moving closer to its European future, it has been required to reform its public administration system standing central to this thesis. The involvement of the European Union within the public administration reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been placed under great criticism as it has been claimed to place Bosnia and Herzegovina's own sovereignty at risk - presenting a case of a sovereignty paradox. It is in the aim of this thesis to examine the role of the European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to see how the sovereignty paradox manifests itself in the process of the public administration reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In order to do that a qualitative literature study has been performed in which scientific articles and European Union policy documents have been used as for creating a sufficient background and information on the central concepts to this thesis. The definitions created and the information received have been then taken further to the analysis part in which the relations, actions and future plans in the relationship between the European Union and Bosnia and Herzegovina with regards to the public administration reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been analyzed and discussed. This thesis arrives to the conclusion that the process of the Public Administration Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina indeed does present a case of a sovereignty paradox. The European Union on the one hand engages in Bosnia and Herzegovina's state building activities as it offers its assistance and advice so that it could reconstruct and re-establish it self, but on the other hand it presents a very clear blue- printed behavior as it places its own agenda on the table and expects the public administration reform to meet its own European standards while taking a part in a political game and assuring its place as a great regional power.
Current draft : June , 2003 First draft : December , 2001 Debt Valuation with Endogenous Default and Chapter 11 Reorganization

We examine a continuous-time structural model of debt valuation with endogenous default and Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Focusing on exclusivity rules, we model the bargaining process in Chapter 11 as the debtor’s ultimatum offers to the creditors and calibrate the model using an approach similar to that of Huang and Huang (2002)[20]. Credit spreads and expected Chapter 11 duration are shown to strongly depend on the outcome of a bargaining game between the debtor and the creditors. Calibrated credit spreads are up to twice as large as those produced by the model in Leland and Toft (1996) [26] and explain the entire spread on speculative grade debt. We show, however, that credit risk and anticipation of Chapter 11 bankruptcy alone cannot explain the observed spreads on investment grade debt even under big deviations from Absolute Priority Rules. In addition, we obtain several new empirical implications of the model with regards to the expected time in bankruptcy as a function of different firm characteristics. The model predicts that firms with higher fraction of intangible assets, lower pre-bankruptcy volatility of asset value, and lower average maturity of debt in their capital structure are expected to spend less time in Chapter 11. JEL Classification: C52, C72, C73, G13, G33
Health Hazards among Oncology Nurses Exposed to Chemotherapy Drugs

AIM To determine the health hazards among nurses exposed to chemotherapy drugs; identify potential risk factors that may predispose nurses to chemotherapy hazards; and evaluate available protective measures used in clinical practice. METHODS This was an analytical cross sectional study carried out during six months from February 2006 to July 2006 at Mansoura University hospitals. A study group of 35 oncology nurses and a control group of 29 non-oncology nurses were compared for safe behavior, use of protective measures while dealing with drugs, complaints due to drug exposure and mutagens in urine. Three tools were used in the study: a self administered questionnaire, a performance checklist to assess the practice of nurses, and Ames test for the detection of mutagens in urine. RESULTS Health hazards among the study group and controls were: abortions (31.4% vs 10.3%), infertility & sub-fertility (14.3% vs 3.4% ), premature labour (14.3% vs 17.2%), soft tissue injuries due to spills & splashes (14.3% vs 0.0%), and developmental and behavioral abnormalities among the children of the nurses (8.6% vs 3.4%). Urine samples from study nurses were more mutagenic than controls (40% vs 10.3%). Risky behaviour among study nurses included: eating food in drug handling areas (45.7%), use of improper place for preparing and handling cytotoxic drugs, expelling air from syringes filled with drugs, needle stick injuries, unsafe handling of contaminated material and unsafe cleaning of spills. Only 22.9% of the study nurses attended a training program about occupational health and safety and 8.6% of them mentioned that there are nursing care guidelines for procedures for dealing with patients receiving cytotoxic drugs as well as presence of in-service training programs. There was poor use of protective equipment in the study group. CONCLUSION This study revealed poor safety and significant adverse events among nurses handling cytotoxic drugs. There is, therefore, a need to improve the safety of the work environment; make available protective equipment; develop standard practice guidelines for oncology nurses; implement good planning and design of the workplace; provide adequate specialized equipment (such as cytotoxic drug safety cabinets) and personal protective equipment; establish clinical pharmacy practice; and integrate health monitoring programs that include the assessment and counseling of prospective nurses before they commence any work involving cytotoxic drugs and related waste.
Tomographic retrievals of ozone with the OMPS Limb Profiler: algorithm description and preliminary results

Abstract. Measurements of limb-scattered sunlight from the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite Limb Profiler (OMPS-LP) can be used to obtain vertical profiles of ozone in the stratosphere. In this paper we describe a two-dimensional, or tomographic, retrieval algorithm for OMPS-LP where variations are retrieved simultaneously in altitude and the along-orbital-track dimension. The algorithm has been applied to measurements from the center slit for the full OMPS-LP mission to create the publicly available University of Saskatchewan (USask) OMPS-LP 2D v1.0. 2 dataset. Tropical ozone anomalies are compared with measurements from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS), where differences are less than 5 % of the mean ozone value for the majority of the stratosphere. Examples of near-coincident measurements with MLS are also shown, and agreement at the 5 % level is observed for the majority of the stratosphere. Both simulated retrievals and coincident comparisons with MLS are shown at the edge of the polar vortex, comparing the results to a traditional one-dimensional retrieval. The one-dimensional retrieval is shown to consistently overestimate the amount of ozone in areas of large horizontal gradients relative to both MLS and the two-dimensional retrieval.
A New Type of Magnetic Actuator Capable of Wall-Climbing Movement Using Inertia Force

This paper proposes a new type of a magnetic actuator that operates on a resonance energy of a mass-spring model by using an electromagnetic force. The magnetic actuator is moved by the difference in an inertia force during one period of vibration. Experimental result demonstrates that a horizontal speed of the magnetic actuator was 7.4 mm/s with load mass of 50 g. We considered a method of a cable-free movement of the actuator by using two iron rails and four permanent magnets. The magnetic actuator is able to move stably a ceiling plane and a wall plane. This actuator is able to move on the plane of the magnetic materials only a function generator and a power amplifier.
The Stock Market Boom and Crash of 1926-1933: An Applied Time Series Investigation

We study the price dynamics of 24 publicly traded companies in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) during the years 1926-1933 using data from the Wharton Research Data Service (WRDS) database. We find evidence against the hypothesis of random walks in stock prices. There was a bubble during the years 1927-29, which begins in the fall of 1927. Companies introducing new technologies, such as Radio Corporation of America (RCA), had their price peak first, and led the boom. Companies in traditional sectors had their peaks last, and were followers. In addition, there is significant price undershooting in the aftermath of the crash, in contrast to the typical experimental bubble a la Vernon Smith.
Kinematic and kinetic analyses of human movement with respect to health, injury prevention and rehabilitation aspects

Die Arbeit gibt Einblicke in des Spektrum der Moglichkeiten der Sportbiomechanik zum einem anhand eines Methodenvergleichs, in dem die Problematik von der Vergleichbarkeit verschiedener Modellierungsmethoden behandelt wird, und zum anderen anhand eines anwendungsorientierten Teils. Realisiert wird dieser Teil durch 3 Studien zu Gelenkbelastung bei Kniebeugevariationen sowie zu Gelenkbelastung von adiposen Kindern und zu Effekte von verschiedenen Orthesen-konstruktionen auf die Kniestabilitat
Grand Rotation Curve and Dark-Matter Halo in the Milky Way Galaxy

A grand rotation curve of the Milky Way Galaxy is constructed, which covers a wide range of radius from the Galactic Center to ~1 Mpc, and is deconvolved into bulge, disk and halo components by least-squares fitting. We determined the scale radii and masses of the bulge and disk to be M_b=(1.652 +/-0.083)x10^10 Msun, a_b=(0.522 +/- 0.037) kpc, M_d=(3.41 +/- 0.41)x10^10 Msun and a_d=(3.19 +/- 0.3) kpc. The dark halo was fitted by the Navaro-Frenk-White (NFW) density profile, rho=rho_0/[(R/h) (1+R/h)^2], and the fit yielded h=12.5 +/- 0.9 kpc and rho_0=(1.06 +/- 0.14)x10^-2 Msun pc^-3. The local dark matter density near the Sun at R_0=8 kpc is estimated to be rho_0_sun=(6.12 +/-0.80)x10^-3 Msun pc^-3 = 0.235 +/- 0.030 GeV cm^-3. The total mass inside the gravitational boundary of the Galaxy at R~ 385 kpc, a half distance to M31, is estimated to be M_h ~ (7.03 +/- 1.01)x10^11 Msun. This leads to the stellar baryon fraction of (M_b+M_d)/(M_b+M_d+M_h)=0.072 +/-0.018. Considering expected baryon fraction in the Local Group, we suggest that baryons in the form of hot gas are filling the dark halo with temperature of ~ 10^6 K and emission measure ~ 10^-5 pc cm^-6. Such hot halo gas may share a small fraction of the observed X-ray background emission.
Sense of Community in New Zealand Neighbourhoods: A Multi-Level Model Predicting Social Capital

Feeling like one belongs and is accepted in meaningful social groups has been reliably linked to wellbeing and health-related outcomes in numerous studies. Given the importance of belongingness as a form of social capital, we developed and evaluated a broad-scale Multilevel Random Coefficient Model predicting residents’ sense of community (belongingness in the community) in a large nationally representative telephone sample of New Zealanders (N = 6631). Our model integrated both neighbourhood-level characteristics (e.g., regional deprivation and the proportion of smokers) and person-level characteristics (e.g., income, perceptions of local community problems, age and engagement in sports) within a single unified framework. We organized these variables into two conceptual categories that are either (a) costly (or entirely unfeasible) to change or (b) feasible to change. By contrasting these various features within a single unified model with a multilevel structure, we provide base-rate information which can aid in informing policy decisions regarding the most readily applicable (and possibly costeffective) methods for improving residents’ sense of community. Our model identified the following feasible methods of increasing social capital within New Zealand communities: (a) reducing noise pollution, (b) increasing and promoting participation in local sports teams, and (c) increasing the diversity and appreciation of the local arts scene.
Event-based Validation of Swell Arrival Time 1 2

Copyright: © Copyright 2016 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a website or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. All AMS journals and monograph publications are registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (http://www.copyright.com). Questions about permission to use materials for which AMS holds the copyright can also be directed to the AMS Permissions Officer at permissions@ametsoc.org. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy statement, available on the AMS website (http://www.ametsoc.org/CopyrightInformation).
The effects of Iranian consumers buying tendencies on utilitarian and hedonic shopping value

This study investigates the effects of Iranian consumers’ buying tendencies including variety-seeking, compulsive and impulsive buying tendencies and price sensitivity on utilitarian and hedonic value as influencing factors on shopping experience for Manto and Shirt shoppers in the Iranian market. The main constructs were identified from the literature and then the relationships between them were tested. A questionnaire was developed and successfully administered to a national sample of 1466 wo men and men in four big cities of Iran through face to face interviews. Results were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) and parameters were estimated using maximum likelihood method and ten hypotheses were tested. Based on this study, both variety-seeking and compulsive buying tendencies were critical factors of shopping values for Manto and Shirt shoppers. On the contrary, there was a negative relationship between price sensitivity and hedonic value. However, there were no positive relationships between impulsive buying tendency and shopping values and there was also no positive relationship between price sensitivity and utilitarian value. Moreover, the result of this study revealed that utilitarian and hedonic value positively influenced the shopping satisfaction. Key words: Variety-seeking buying, compulsive buying, impulsive buying, price sensitivity, utilitarian and hedonic value, shopping satisfaction.
Plasticity of leaf anatomy, chemistry and water economy of irrigated sugar beets grown under Mediterranean conditions

In a three-year (2004-2006), field experiment, we aimed to study changes in leaf physiological traits (leaf water potential-Ψleaf, leaf water content-LWC, carbon isotope discrimination-Δ, specific leaf area-SLA, chlorophyll content as assessed by SPAD and modified SPAD-MSPAD) and elemental composition (K, Na, Ca, Mg, K/Na, Ca/Mg, total leaf salinity-TLS) of sugar beets (cv. Rizor) grown under Mediterranean, irrigated conditions. Each year, soil moisture content (SMC) and leaf parameters were determined 11 times from early June to the end of October. Growing seasons differed as regards water inputs with 2004 being the driest and 2006 being the wettest. Leaf physiology and chemistry showed plasticity to water availability and significant differences were found between years (except for Ca), sampling time and their interaction. Ψleaf, LWC, Δ, SLA, K/Na and Ca/Mg were positively affected by SMC while the adverse was evident for chlorophyll content (SPAD and MSPAD), Na, Ca, Mg and TLS. As a Chenopodiaceae, sugar beet used leaf succulence, lowering SLA, to cope with water shortage and maintain LWC ca 90%. Low SLA was related with low Ψleaf and Δ values. Succulent leaves were characterized by increased leaf salinity and chlorophyll accumulation, which was ascribed to increased Mg concentrations. Leaf salinity and mainly Na had a negative impact on Δ. Antagonistic effects of K on Na or Mg and synergistic effects of Na on Ca and Mg were recorded.
Pelagic larval growth rate impacts benthic settlement and survival of a temperate reef fish

Larvae of marine reef organisms settling into benthic habitats may vary greatly in individual quality. We evaluated potential effects of variation in larval growth rate (1 metric of quality) on larval duration, size-at-settlement, and post-settlement survival of recently settled kelp bass Paralabrax clathratus. We sampled kelp bass daily and weekly from standardized collectors located near the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, Santa Catalina Island, to characterize larval traits of settlers and surviving recruits. Using growth models to fit trajectories of larval otolith growth, we estimated instantaneous larval growth rates and found that these values were good predictors of larval duration and juvenile survival. Kelp bass that grew rapidly as larvae settled ∼8.5 d sooner than the slowest growing individuals; both groups had similar sized individuals at settlement, but fast growing larvae experienced enhanced survival during the first 5 d after settlement relative to slower growing larvae. There is growing evidence suggesting that larval experience continues to exert demographic consequences on subsequent life stages. This helps to explain some of the spatial and temporal variability that characterizes recruitment in marine systems.
Weak ionization of the global ionosphere in solar cycle 24

Abstract. Following prolonged and extremely quiet solar activity from 2008 to 2009, the 24th solar cycle started slowly. It has been almost 5 years since then. The measurement of ionospheric critical frequency (foF2) shows the fact that solar activity has been significantly lower in the first half of cycle 24, compared to the average levels of cycles 19 to 23; the data of global average total electron content ( TEC ) confirm that the global ionosphere around the cycle 24 peak is much more weakly ionized, in contrast to cycle 23. The weak ionization has been more notable since the year 2012, when both the ionosphere and solar activity were expected to be approaching their maximum level. The undersupply of solar extreme ultraviolet (EUV) irradiance somewhat continues after the 2008–2009 minimum, and is considered to be the main cause of the weak ionization. It further implies that the thermosphere and ionosphere in the first solar cycle of this millennium would probably differ from what we have learned from the previous cycles of the space age.