Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deep interactive learning for fine-grained opinion mining : single-domain, cross-domain & cross-lingual

Opinion mining or sentiment analysis provides a way to analyze the attitude or emotion of an opinion holder towards an entity or feature of any product. The emergence of opinion mining techniques comes along with the excessive volume of text data from social media made available to the public, such as product reviews, blog posts, forum discussions and Twitter website for social network. Sentiment analysis has been actively studied among the Natural Language Processing (NLP) community since 2000. At this early stage, the main focus of sentiment analysis dealt with the overall sentiment polarity towards a given sentence or document, which we call coarse-grained sentiment analysis. For example, given a review sentence: “The sound is clean and clear”, the desired output should be positive, without knowing the exact object the reviewer is talking about. For this task, various machine learning classifiers and deep learning models were developed to learn opinion-bearing features for the whole sentence or document to make predictions. However, a mere sentiment score is far from enough to provide all the necessary information for decision making. That’s the reason why fine-grained opinion mining becomes more popular in a later stage. Fine-grained opinion mining, or aspect-based sentiment analysis, mainly focuses on finding the opinion targets (aspects) from a given sentence and the emotions expressed towards them. This is more related to information extraction. Take the previous example review sentence, the model should be able to extract sound as the aspect and clean and clear as the opinion. The extracted information can be further used for aspect categorization, aspect sentiment classification and opinion summarization which provides a thorough analysis for the input. In this case, the task is much more difficult than coarsegrained sentiment classification because more fine-grained features are needed to make token-level predictions.
Enhanced heating rate of black carbon above the planetary boundary layer over megacities in summertime

The fast development of a secondary aerosol layer was observed over megacities in eastern Asia during summertime. Within three hours, from midday to early afternoon, the contribution of secondary aerosols above the planetary boundary layer (PBL) increased by a factor of three to five, and the coatings on black carbon (BC) also increased and enhanced its absorption efficiency by 50%. This tended to result from the intensive actinic flux received above the PBL which promoted photochemical reactions. The absorption of BC could be further amplified by the strong reflection of solar radiation over the cloud top across the PBL. This enhanced heating effect of BC introduced by combined processes (intensive solar radiation, secondary formation and cloud reflection) may considerably increase the temperature inversion above the PBL. This mechanism should be considered when evaluating the radiative impact of BC, especially for polluted regions receiving strong solar radiation.
Sustainable Business Models through the Lens of Organizational Design: A Systematic Literature Review

The interest in sustainable business models has grown rapidly in recent years. Although some progress has been made in identifying this concept and making the practices more sustainable, little is known about the organizational design that is most appropriate for creating new business models or implementing changes in existing ones towards a sustainability approach. This paper presents a review of sustainable business models in terms of the key factors that influence firm design based on organization theory. We retrieved 394 Journal Citation Reports papers from the WoK and Scopus databases, identifying 19 papers that have addressed the interplay between both constructs. We used the Galbraith Star Model to analyze the selected papers. We discuss three key findings for the cross-fertilization of both literatures: (i) the extension of the design elements outside the firm boundaries at the inter-organizational and ecosystem levels; (ii) the emphasis on certain design elements (strategy, process, people, structure) rather than others (rewards); and (iii) the use of the organizational design construct as a tactic tool for strategy execution of the sustainable business model. We also present theoretical and practical implications for the use and further development of this framework, as well as future avenues of research.
Building the foundations for measuring learning gain in higher education: a conceptual framework and measurement instrument

ABSTRACT In this paper, we set out the first step towards the measurement of learning gain in higher education by putting forward a conceptual framework for understanding learning gain that is relevant across disciplines. We then introduce the operationalisation of this conceptual framework into a new set of measurement tools. With the use of data from a large-scale survey of 11 English universities and over 4,500 students, we test the reliability and validity of the measurement instrument empirically. We find support in the data for the reliability of most of the measurement scales we put forward, as well as for the validity of the conceptual framework. Based on these results, we reflect on the conceptual framework and associated measurement tools in the context of at-scale deployment and the potential implications for policy and practice in higher education.
Human Resource Management Practices, Emotional Exhaustion, and Organizational Commitment – With the Example of the Hotel Industry

ABSTRACT Hotel industry represents one of the highly interactive service industries. Against this backdrop, hotel employees are likely to suffer an emotional exhaustion and hence experience a lower sense of belongingness to the company. As this will negatively impact organizational effectiveness, this research aims to explore whether and how better practices of Human Resource Management (HRM) serve as a solution to the issue. Due to the limited access, questionnaires were conducted on 410 employees from 10 four/five-star hotels chosen through convenience sampling technique. Results reveal that emotional exhaustion has significant negative impact on organizational commitment (H1); HRM not only has significant negative impact on emotional exhaustion (H2) but also has significant positive impact on organizational commitment (H3), and HRM regulates how emotional exhaustion affects organizational commitment (H4). In conclusion, this research provides some insights into the role in emotional exhaustion and organizational commitment played by HRM practices. The implications of finding were also discussed.
Essays in Behavioural Contract Theory

This thesis investigates the optimal provision of incentives when employment relationships are characterised by moral hazard and individuals have relative income concerns. In contrast to the existing literature, it is assumed that workers' social comparisons are not limited to others within the firm, but extend to larger groups in society. The thesis is organised into three chapters. The first chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the literatures which study incentive contracting when parties' preferences are characterised by the related concepts of inequity aversion or loss aversion. The chapter discusses the similarities between the two literatures, highlights some results which are relevant for both preference specifications and establishes the context in which the subsequent analysis should be placed. The second chapter examines a firm's optimal choice of contract for a worker whose preferences exhibit relative income concerns. This is formalised through use of a stylised model, in which workers have an aversion to falling behind the economy's average income. In this framework, it is shown that the optimal contract takes either a binary or ternary form and that firms benefit from the social comparisons of workers. In addition, there is an interdependence between the contracting of firm-worker pairs which results in an externality effect, so that firms could gain from collective decision making. Moreover, relative income concerns imply a lower economy-wide average wage, as well as a reduced level of inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient. The third chapter extends the foregoing analysis to an environment featuring a frictional labour market and unemployment; this allows for an investigation into how dismissal can be used by firms to create effort incentives. Dismissing workers for poor performance is shown to act as a substitute for explicit incentive pay, allowing firms to reduce wage costs. Some implications for labour market policies are derived. Increases in the minimum wage are found to aid the creation of incentives, lowering the bonus payment necessary to implement effort. In contrast, increases in unemployment benefits have a negative impact on incentives. These effects are shown to be stronger and more pronounced when workers have relative income concerns. Overall, the thesis provides several predictions and insights aimed at improving the understanding of incentive contracts, their structure and their effects on individual behaviour.
An Axiomatic Foundation for the Expected Shortfall

In the recent Basel Accords, the expected shortfall (ES) replaces the value-at-risk (VaR) as the standard risk measure for market risk in the banking sector, making it the most popular risk measure in financial regulation. Although ES is—in addition to many other nice properties—a coherent risk measure, it does not yet have an axiomatic foundation. In this paper, we put forward four intuitive economic axioms for portfolio risk assessment—monotonicity, law invariance, prudence, and no reward for concentration—that uniquely characterize the family of ES. Therefore, the results developed herein provide the first economic foundation for using ES as a globally dominating regulatory risk measure, currently employed in Basel III/IV. Key to the main results, several novel notions such as tail events and risk concentration naturally arise, and we explore them in detail. As a most important feature, ES rewards portfolio diversification and penalizes risk concentration in a special and intuitive way, not shared by any other risk measure. This paper was accepted by Manel Baucells, decision analysis.
Truck Scheduling at Cross-Docking Terminals: A Follow-Up State-Of-The-Art Review

Recent trends in the management of supply chains have witnessed an increasing implementation of the cross-docking strategy. The cross-docking strategy, being the one that can potentially improve supply chain operations, has received a lot of attention from researchers in recent years, especially over the last decade. Cross-docking involves the reception of inbound products, deconsolidation, sorting, consolidation, and shipping of the consolidated products to the end customers. The number of research efforts, aiming to study and improve the cross-docking operations, increases every year. While some studies discuss cross-docking as an integral part of a supply chain, other studies focus on the ways of making cross-docking terminals more efficient and propose different operations research techniques for various decision problems at cross-docking terminals. In order to identify the recent cross-docking trends, this study performs a state-of-the-art review with a particular focus on the truck scheduling problem at cross-docking terminals. A comprehensive evaluation of the reviewed studies is conducted, focusing on the major attributes of the cross-docking operations. These attributes include terminal shape considered, doors considered, door service mode considered, preemption, internal transportation mode used, temporary storage capacity, resource capacity, objectives considered, and solution methods adopted. Based on findings from the review of studies, some common issues are outlined and future research directions are proposed.
Energy Cost Burdens for Low-Income and Minority Households

Abstract Problem, research strategy, and findings: Of the three primary components of housing affordability measures—rent, transportation, and utilities—utility costs are the least understood yet are the one area where the cost burden can be reduced without household relocation. Existing data sources to estimate energy costs are limited to surveys with small samples and low spatial and temporal resolution, such as the American Housing Survey and the Residential Energy Consumption Survey. In this study, we present a new method for small-area estimates of household energy cost burdens (ECBs) that leverages actual building energy use data for approximately 13,000 multifamily properties across five U.S. cities and links energy costs to savings opportunities by analyzing 3,000 energy audit reports. We examine differentials in cost burdens across household demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and analyze spatial, regional, and building-level variations in energy use and expenditures. Our results show the average low-income household has an ECB of 7%, whereas higher income households have an average burden of 2%. Notably, even within defined income bands, minority households experience higher ECBs than non-Hispanic White households. For lower income households, low-cost energy improvements could reduce energy costs by as much as $1,500 per year. Takeaway for practice: In this study we attempt to shift the focus of energy efficiency investments to their impact on household cost burdens and overall housing affordability. Our analysis explores new and unique data generated from measurement-driven urban energy policies and shows low-income households disproportionately bear the burden of poor-quality and energy-inefficient housing. Cities can use these new data resources and methods to develop equity-based energy policies that treat energy efficiency and climate mitigation as issues of environmental justice and that apply data-driven, targeted policies to improve quality of life for the most vulnerable urban residents.
Do Corporate Governance Recommendations Apply to U.S. Agricultural Cooperatives?

A limited inquiry into cooperative governance and performance suggests that best practices from corporate governance literature may not apply uniformly to cooperatives. The rarely addressed issue of endogeneity limits confidence in recommendations for corporations and cooperatives alike and inference of recommendations for cooperatives is complicated by availability of appropriate performance measures. By accounting for the most commonly recognized sources of endogeneity and measuring overall cooperative performance, expectations of better performance by larger cooperatives with smaller boards are confirmed, while limited evidence is obtained on the expected positive effects of seating outside experts on the board.
Rhapsody in Beige: The Impact of SPD Candidate Evaluations on Vote Choice in the 2009, 2013, and 2017 Federal Elections

Previous research has shown that in addition to party identification chancellor candidate evaluations play an important role in determining vote choice in German federal elections. In this article, we evaluate the impact that such evaluations had on vote choice in 2009, 2013, and 2017 using the German Longitudinal Election Study. In contrast to a popular narrative that Chancellor Merkel was less of a factor in 2017 than she had been in the two previous elections where the Union parties ran especially personalised campaigns around Merkel, we find that the Kanzlerbonus (incumbency benefit) and Merkel’s attractiveness to voters was strong in all three elections, especially among non-party identifiers. More importantly, we find that increasingly the Social Democrats had chancellor candidates unattractive to voters and perceived as bland across all of these elections, and demonstrate that this was a factor which significantly weakened their vote. Thus we conclude that beyond the structural weaknesses of the Social Democrats over the last three election cycles the lack of appeal of the party’s chancellor candidates has played a significant role in the SPD’s lack of electoral success.
The Underlying Reasons of the Navigation Control Effect on Performance in a Virtual Reality Endoscopic Surgery Training Simulator

ABSTRACT Navigation control skills of surgeons become very critical for surgical procedures. Strategies improving these skills are important for developing higher-quality surgical training programs. In this study, the underlying reasons of the navigation control effect on performance in a virtual reality-based navigation environment are evaluated. The participants’ performance is measured in conditions: navigation control display and paper-map display. Performance measures were collected from 45 beginners and experienced residents. The results suggest that navigation display significantly improved performance of the participants. Also, navigation was more beneficial for beginners than experienced participants. The underlying reason of the better performance in the navigation condition was due to lower number of looks to the map, which causes attention shifts between information sources. Accordingly, specific training scenarios and user interfaces can be developed to improve the navigation skills of the beginners considering some strategies to lower their number of references to the information sources.
Financial Access and Productivity Dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate whether enhancing financial access influences productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. The research focuses on 25 countries in the region with data for the period 1980–2014. The adopted empirical strategy is the Generalised Method of Moments. The credit channel of financial access is considered and proxied by private domestic credit while four main total factor productivity (TFP) dynamics are adopted for the study, namely: TFP, real TFP, welfare TFP and real welfare TFP. It is apparent from the findings that enhancing financial access positively affects welfare TFP whereas the effect is not significant on TFP, real TFP and welfare TFP. Policy implications are discussed. The study complements the extant literature by engaging hitherto unemployed dynamics of TFP in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Graying of American Debt

Real aggregate debt in the hands of Americans age 50 to 80 increased by 59 percent between 2003 and 2015. Meanwhile, real debt held by Americans in their 20s and 30s was approximately flat. Using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Consumer Credit Panel, we describe the extent of this debt increase and the distribution of debt growth by loan type. Real per capita home-secured debts held by older consumers show the steepest growth, though older borrowers have increased their obligations in all major debt categories. For long-held debts, these developments lead us to evaluate how such changes emerged.
Examination of Short Supply Chains Based on Circular Economy and Sustainability Aspects

The sustainability of global food chains and intense agricultural production has become questionable. At the same time, the consumers’ interest in short supply chains (SSCs) and direct sales from producers has increased. SSCs are connected to sustainability by researchers. Their (supposed) positive sustainability attributes are based mostly on extensive production methods and short transport distances. However, from other points of view, the economic and environmental sustainability of the short chains is questionable. Our research aims to cast light on the SSCs’ role in circular economy and sustainability. By deep literature review and content analysis, we determine the sustainability aspects of short (local) chains and their effects related to economy and environment. Short supply chains are connected most widely to circularity and sustainability by the subjects of environmental burden (transport, production method, emission), health, food quality, consumers’ behavior, producer-consumer relationships, and local economy. According to our experience, these factors cannot be generalised across all kinds of short chains. Their circular economic and sustainability features are dependent on their spatial location, type, and individual attitudes of the involved consumers and producers.
Determinants of Market Outlet Choice of Coffee Producing Farmers in Lalo Assabi District, West Wollege Zone, Ethiopia: An Econometric Approach

This study examines the major determinants of market outlet choice of coffee producing farmers in Lalo Assabi district of West Wollega zone, Ethiopia with the specific objectives of exploring the general characteristics and livelihood activities; and identifying major factors affecting coffee market outlet choice. A Random sample of 141 coffee producers was selected for interview based on the appropriate sample size determination. Both descriptive and inferential statistical methods were employed for data analysis. For the marketing of coffee, 11.3%, 51.8% and 36.9% of the respondents mainly chose end consumer, private trader and cooperative outlets, respectively. The result of a multinomial logistic model showed that the choice of end consumer outlet is positively and significantly affected by access to transportation facilities, access to price information and access to credit compared to private trader outlet, whereas the quantity of coffee sold and access to extension services negatively affected the main choice of end consumer outlet. Similarly, the choice of cooperative outlet is positively and significantly affected by distance to the market, access to transportation facilities, access to price information and access to training compared to private trader outlet. Therefore, these variables require special attention if farmers’ margins from coffee marketing are to be increased.
Sustainability Literacy in a Time of Socio-Ecological Crisis: Using Reaccreditation as a Leverage Point for Innovation in Higher Education

This article presents a case study of innovation in sustainability education in higher education. It does so by explaining the to-date progress of a multi-year reaccreditation process begun in 2016 for the College of Charleston (CofC), a public liberal arts and sciences university in Charleston, South Carolina of approximately 10,000 undergraduates and 1300 graduate students. The question addressed is how can a higher education institute strategically embed sustainability literacy that is focused on social/environmental engagement, in a way that contributes to measurable student learning gains? We argue that the leverage point of institutional reaccreditation provides a strategic entryway into embedding such sustainability across curricular and co-curricular settings in innovative capacities. We do so by discussing how sustainability education was implemented into a co-curricular civic engagement program, alternative break, to build students’ sustainability literacy at the College of Charleston. The article concludes by reflecting on lessons learned at CofC on how to use institutional reaccreditation as a driver of sustainability education through civic engagement in an era of socio-ecological collapse.