Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Service Quality and Customer Loyalty in the Commercial Airline Industry

The study examines issues related to service quality and customer loyalty in the commercial airline industry. The results of an empirical study, using data collected on two air carriers, indicate that current levels of perceived service quality are below potential and that customer loyalty to airlines is low. A significant relationship was found to exist between service quality (carrier image) and retained preference, a measure of customer loyalty.
International co-movements of real and financial economic variables

This study presents a first attempt at investigating whether the international co-movements of real economic activity conform to the same international co-movements of financial activity. This study tests the international co-movements of real economic activity, on the one hand, and financial variables such as stock returns, interest rates, inflation rates and risk premiums, on the other hand. We employ a dynamic correlation model on data from OECD countries for the period 1980–2010. Our findings demonstrate that international stock markets co-react in accordance with the underlying international economic forces. We also document three other results. First, the correlation among countries with respect to real economic activity is statistically positive, but the level of this correlation is lower than that of financial variables. Second, there is a significant increase over time in the international correlation level with respect to the financial variables. Finally, the creation of the Euro Monetary Union and the adoption of an inflation targeting policy in many countries have increased the international correlation of all of the financial variables tested. The article concludes with two implications from these findings: (1) predictions in the context of international portfolio diversification, and (2) policy making at the fiscal and monetary levels.
Validity of capital asset pricing model in Pakistan: Evidence from Karachi Stock Exchange

This study investigates the validity of capital asset pricing (CAP) model in Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). The data used in this study were collected from 387 companies of 30 different sectors on monthly, quarterly and semi-annual basis. The Paired sample t- test is applied to find the difference between actual and expected returns. Results show that capital asset pricing model (CAPM) predict more accurately the expected return on a short term investment as compare to long term investment. It is recommended that the investors should more focus on CAPM results for short term as compare to long term investments in KSE.
Associations of serum C-reactive protein with fasting insulin, glucose, and glycosylated hemoglobin: the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1994.

This study investigated the associations between serum C-reactive protein and fasting blood levels of insulin, glucose, and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c). Data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1998-1994) were used. Study subjects included 2,466 men and 2,876 women who were > or = 17 years and nondiabetics with an overnight fast for blood draw. C-reactive protein was categorized into low (<0.3 mg/dl), moderate (0.3-0.9 mg/dl), and high (> or = 1.0 mg/dl) levels. Mean levels of insulin, glucose, and HbA1c were compared across C-reactive protein levels after adjustment for age, ethnicity, education, poverty index, cigarette smoking, alcohol use, and leisure time physical activity. For men with low (n = 1,818), moderate (n = 493), and high (n = 155) C-reactive protein, the adjusted means of insulin were 9.4, 11.7, and 10.5 microunits/ml (p < 0.01); glucose, 99.8, 101.6, and 100.6 mg/dl (p > 0.05); and HbA1c, 5.4%, 5.5%, and 5.5% (p < 0.05). For women with low (n = 1,816), moderate (n = 776), and high (n = 282) C-reactive protein, the adjusted means of insulin were 8.7, 11.2, and 13.7 microunits/ml (p < 0.01); glucose, 95.3, 97.9, and 105.2 mg/dl (p < 0.01); and HbA1c, 5.3%, 5.4%, and 5.6% (p < 0.01). In conclusion, elevated C-reactive protein was associated with higher insulin and HbA1c among men and women and with higher glucose levels among women only. These results suggest a possible role of inflammation in insulin resistance and glucose intolerance.
Entrepreneurship and Conflict Reduction in the Post-Genocide Rwandan Coffee Industry

Abstract Entrepreneurship is widely acknowledged as a catalyst for poverty reduction and economic development. Yet its role in conflict reduction and social development is largely understudied. This paper presents evidence from a field survey conducted among a sample of Rwanda's emerging specialty coffee farmers and workers at coffee washing stations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that quantitatively analyses economic liberalization and conflict reduction in one of Rwanda's most pivotal industries, i.e., coffee, and one of the few studies addressing the link between entrepreneurship in the developing world and intergroup peace-building. We approximated conflict reduction with an attitude of reconciliation between ethnic groups in Rwanda. Results from statistical analyses uncovered significant correlations between economic and livelihood advancement with comparatively more positive attitudes to reconciliation, especially where intergroup contact has increased alongside new incentives for collaboration across group boundaries. This suggests that enhanced entrepreneurship in Rwanda's liberalized coffee industry may provide the context for increased commercial intergroup contact, which in turn may constitute an opportunity for conflict reduction. We conclude with suggestions for follow-up research, to further analyze which types of economic policy changes may also hold the potential to contribute to positive social change.
Banks, Financial Markets and International Consumption Risk Sharing

Abstract In this article, we explore how characteristics of the domestic financial system influence the international allocation of consumption risk in a sample of OECD countries. Our results show that the extent of risk sharing achieved does not depend on the overall development of the domestic financial system per se. Rather, it depends on how the financial system is organized. Countries characterized by developed financial markets are less exposed to idiosyncratic risk, whereas the development of the banking sector contributes little to the international diversification of consumption risk.
Immunological Relationships Between Hexons of Certain Human Adenoviruses

Antisera against hexons of serotypes 2, 4, 5, and 6 (subgroup III), and 15 (subgroup II) were absorbed with purified hexons of various serotypes representing the different subgroups of human adenoviruses. Group, subgroup, and type specificities of hexons could be distinguished. The subgroup specificity of type 4 hexons resembled that of hexons of subgroup I members (types 3, 11, and 16). Antihexon sera gave a type-specific inhibition of virion-associated hemagglutinin. The inhibiting activity of different sera was found to be inversely related to the length of fibers of the serotype concerned. Virions of serotypes carrying fibers shorter than about 20 nm (types 3, 4, 9, 11, and 15) were readily inhibited, whereas those of serotypes with longer fibers (types 2 and 6) were inhibited only by relatively large amounts of antibody measured in terms of homotypic complement fixation activity. The reciprocal cross-neutralization between serotypes 4 and 16 was studied separately. Hexons of both serotypes each carried a type-specific component and, in addition, a unique antigen specificity common to the two types. This common antigen specificity was interpreted to be available to a larger extent at the surface of virions (and probably also isolated hexons) of type 4 than of type 16. These results suggest an explanation for the predominantly one-sided character of the cross-neutralization between types 4 and 16.
Feminised recession: impact of the global financial crisis on women garment workers in the Philippines

This article discusses the findings of Oxfam-commissioned research into the impact of the economic crisis on women garment workers in the Philippines. It provides policy recommendations aiming to ensure that measures put in place by the government and international bodies support the women workers who have seen their jobs lost or their working conditions worsen, and ensure that recovery measures support the goal of gender equality rather than working against this.
Reliability and Validity of the Braden Scale for Predicting Pressure Ulcer Risk

Multiple tools have been developed to assist nurses and other care providers to identify and quantify pressure ulcer risk. One of the most widely used tools is the Braden Scale for Predicting Pressure Ulcer Risk. It has been in use for 2 decades and multiple studies have individually reported on its reliability and validity. This article summarizes the reliability and validity of the instrument, and discusses implications for its use in clinical and research settings. The Braden Scale for Predicting Pressure Ulcer Risk has generally performed well in the clinical setting. It has demonstrated reliability and validity in multiple clinical settings, and its parsimonious format enhances incorporation into routine clinical practice. Expanding the instrument may further increase its reliability and validity in the research setting.
The Role of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) in Facilitating Global Production Networks

This article examines the effects of over 250 preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on trade flows distinguished into parts and components (PCs) and final goods in production networks for the period of 1979-2008. The gravity equation estimates suggest that the concurrent year effects of PTA formation on trade in PCs are not seen, while they have the positive impact on trade in final goods. Rather, it is found that PTAs have positive and perversive effects on both types of trade flows in six and nine years after the PTA formation.
(Im-)Mobile policies: Why sustainability went wrong in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi

This paper proposes a tripartite framework of transportation, transformation and translation to conceptualise the circulation, mutation and impacts of mobile policies as translocal, socio-material networks. Drawing on material from semi-structured interviews, participant observation and documents it considers the value of this framework by examining the mobility of the sustainability agenda of the Winter Olympic Games 2014 in Sochi, Russia. The paper shows how sustainability policies were packaged and mobilised to flow to Russia (transportation), how ineffective governance arrangements, a lack of institutional controls and time pressure altered them (transformation) and how the results fell far short of initial bid commitments (translation). As such, it sheds light onto the multiple immobilities and mutations that come with the attempts to mobilise policies.
Scene Classification via Triplet Networks

Scene classification is a fundamental task for automatic remote sensing image understanding. In recent years, convolutional neural networks have become a hot research topic in the remote sensing community, and have made great achievements in scene classification. Deep convolutional networks are primarily trained in a supervised way, requiring huge volumes of labeled training samples. However, clearly labeled remote sensing data are usually limited. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a novel scene classification method via triplet networks, which use weakly labeled images as network inputs. Besides, we initiate a theoretical study on the three existing loss functions for triplet networks, analyzing their different underlying mechanisms for dealing with “hard” and/or “easy” triplets during training. Furthermore, four new loss functions are constructed, aiming at laying more stress on “hard” triplets to improve classification accuracy. Extensive experiments have been conducted, and the experimental results show that triplet networks coupled with our proposed losses achieve a state-of-the-art performance in scene classification tasks.
Monetary Policy Surprises, Investment Opportunities, and Asset Prices

I propose an asset pricing model with the market return and a mimicking portfolio for monetary policy shocks measured on days of FOMC announcements. This economically motivated two-factor model prices portfolios formed on size, value, momentum, investment, and operating profitability with an R2 of 80% and an average annual pricing error of 0.96%-performing as well as the standard four- and five-factor models designed to price these assets. These results are consistent with intertemporal asset pricing theory and recent evidence that monetary policy shocks have a large impact on asset prices via an impact on expected future aggregate returns.
How Global is the Global Compact?

Launched by the United Nations in 2000, the Global Compact (GC) promotes private sector compliance with 10 basic principles covering human rights, labour standards, the environment, and anti-corruption. Its sponsors aim to establish a global corporate social responsibility (CSR) network based on a pledge to observe the 10 principles adopted by companies across the range of company size and regional origin, backed by a modest reporting system and collaborative programmes. The author analyzes the GC's progress toward building a global network from its launch through 2006 and finds that, while the GC's nominal membership base of nearly 3000 companies makes it the largest system among collective action institutions (CAIs) for corporate responsibility, the GC has not reached critical mass. Deficiencies in its nascent global network include limited market penetration among the largest corporations, a membership heavily weighted toward Western European companies, and major weaknesses in compliance with its reporting system. The author concludes that the GC must improve both penetration and compliance if it is to succeed in building a global standard for CSR.
Working Memory in the Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex participates in a variety of higher cognitive functions. The concept of working memory is now widely used to understand prefrontal functions. Neurophysiological studies have revealed that stimulus-selective delay-period activity is a neural correlate of the mechanism for temporarily maintaining information in working memory processes. The central executive, which is the master component of Baddeley’s working memory model and is thought to be a function of the prefrontal cortex, controls the performance of other components by allocating a limited capacity of memory resource to each component based on its demand. Recent neurophysiological studies have attempted to reveal how prefrontal neurons achieve the functions of the central executive. For example, the neural mechanisms of memory control have been examined using the interference effect in a dual-task paradigm. It has been shown that this interference effect is caused by the competitive and overloaded recruitment of overlapping neural populations in the prefrontal cortex by two concurrent tasks and that the information-processing capacity of a single neuron is limited to a fixed level, can be flexibly allocated or reallocated between two concurrent tasks based on their needs, and enhances behavioral performance when its allocation to one task is increased. Further, a metamemory task requiring spatial information has been used to understand the neural mechanism for monitoring its own operations, and it has been shown that monitoring the quality of spatial information represented by prefrontal activity is an important factor in the subject's choice and that the strength of spatially selective delay-period activity reflects confidence in decision-making. Although further studies are needed to elucidate how the prefrontal cortex controls memory resource and supervises other systems, some important mechanisms related to the central executive have been identified.
Aspects of temporal processing of FM stimuli in primary auditory cortex.

The timing of the phasic responses of neurons in cat primary auditory cortex to linear frequency modulated (FM) sweeps was studied and compared in detail with the neurons-responses to tone bursts of different frequencies. FM sweeps differed in direction and rate of change of frequency (RCF) and entirely traversed the neuron's excitatory frequency response area. It is demonstrated that a neuron's response to FM sweeps in a given direction is initiated whenever the instantaneous frequency of the sweep reaches a particular value, the effective Fi, independent of RCF. Effective Fi for upward and downward sweeps are closely associated with the steepest slopes of the neuron's tone burst frequency response function below and above the best frequency, respectively. This predictability of response timing appears ideal for encoding of FM parameters, such as direction, RCF, and form of modulation (e.g. linear, exponential) in the spatiotemporal pattern of excitation and in the inter-response-intervals of different neurons, i.e. in latency place codes.
A meta-analysis on the influence of national culture on innovation capability

This paper records the study on the influence of national cultures on innovation capability. It is a meta-analysis of previous studies. Innovation capability is measured according to the research by Porter and Stern (2001). The national culture is measured according to the study by Hofstede (1991). Hofstede's (1991) national culture model covers dimensions such as power distance, individualism, masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. Four hypotheses were formulated accordingly to test the relationship between national culture and national innovation capability. It is found out that individualism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance are correlated with national innovation capability. An innovative culture index (ICI) is formulated for benchmarking.
Multinational Enterprises: Their Private and Social Benefits and Costs

Government policy-makers in many countries compete to attract FDI because they believe that FDI will generate knowledge spillovers in the local economy. However, there is surprising little empirical evidence in favour of substantial spillovers. This raises the question of what benefits can be appropriated by host countries when spillovers are small. This paper analyses the issue using a simple model of the global strategy of a profit-maximising MNE. It is based on a partial equilibrium model of the firm; although less sophisticated than the general equilibrium approach, it provides a sharper focus on fundamental policy issues. It shows that the principal social benefit conferred by an MNE is measured by the profit its subsidiary generates. This reflects the fact that, according to standard theory, the MNE is an institutional arrangement for appropriating rents from innovation. Other rents may also accrue to local factors of production. The model is used to appraise a range of alternative policy instruments for maximising national benefit from FDI.
Understanding hospital innovation enabled customer-perceived quality of structure, process, and outcome care

Competition in the healthcare sector has become increasingly severe because of the limited health insurance budget in Taiwan. Hospital innovation is an important resource for gaining competitive advantage according to the resource-based view of the firm. Little research has been conducted to explore its impact on customer-perceived quality of care. This study thus proposes a novel research framework for understanding the relationship between hospital innovation and customer-perceived quality of care. As the healthcare business has long been regarded as a special type of service sector, hospital innovation should include both medical and administrative innovations for effective improvement of service processes. The assessment of quality of care is complex in nature, involving evaluation of the structure, process, and outcome of care. Empirical examination has concluded that both types of hospital innovations have significant impact on all three aspects of quality of care. In particular, administrative innovation has been shown to have stronger impact on the quality of care than medical innovation.
The glaciers of the Hindu Kush Himalayas: current status and observed changes from the 1980s to 2010

The fate of the Hindu Kush Himalayan glaciers has been a topic of heated debate due to their rapid melting and retreat. The underlying reason for the debate is the lack of systematic large-scale observations of the extent of glaciers in the region owing to the high altitude, remoteness of the terrain, and extreme climatic conditions. Here we present a remote sensing–based comprehensive assessment of the current status and observed changes in the glacier extent of the Hindu Kush Himalayas. It reveals highly heterogeneous, yet undeniable impacts of climate change.
Efficiency, enforcement and revenue tradeoffs in participatory forest management: an example from Tanzania

Abstract Where joint forest management has been introduced into Tanzania, ‘volunteer’ patrollers take responsibility for enforcing restrictions over the harvesting of forest resources, often receiving as an incentive a share of the collected fine revenue. Using an optimal enforcement model, we explore how that share, and whether villagers have alternative sources of forest products, determines the effort patrollers put into enforcement and whether they choose to take a bribe rather than honestly reporting the illegal collection of forest resources. Without funds for paying and monitoring patrollers, policy makers face tradeoffs over illegal extraction, forest protection and revenue generation through fine collection.
Cross-listed stocks as an information vehicle of speculation: Evidence from European cross-listings in the early 1870s

This study deals with the price building process of cross-listed stocks on the most important European stock exchanges in the 1870s. By applying a vector error correction approach we look for cointegration relationships. Obviously, there was already a high degree of cross-border integration. Furthermore, we observe the uncommon phenomenon that it was not the home market Vienna but the foreign market Berlin which was the dominant one in the price-building process. An explanation could be the intense speculation during the 1870s in Berlin. Therefore, cross-listed stocks worked as a vehicle for spreading the ongoing speculation from Berlin to other places.
Developments in human resource management in Iran

This paper identifies and examines a number of features that has influenced the development of HRM in Iran, with particular reference to national factors and organizational strategies. We begin by detailing the Iranian context with reference to the relevant literature, then set out our aims and objectives and outline our methodology. In presenting our findings, we consider perceptions of HRM, the HR challenges organizations face and the implementation of HR practices. In doing so, we compare and contrast responses from managers employed in both public and private sector Iranian organizations, and those working in MNCs. This enables us to specify those factors which appear to influence the differential development of HRM in Iran.