Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of certain determinants on the ethical perceptions and attitudes of corporate managers in Malaysia

[Abstract]: The study of business ethics is an area that has gained a lot of attention around the world and is an ever-growing one in light of the many corporate scandals that have rocked economies in many countries around the globe. In many of the cases concerning corporate scandals, many have taken place in developed nations, and authors have devoted much attention to investigating the possible causes, including those that analyse the problem from an individual’s ethical behaviour standpoint. As a developing nation, Malaysia has seen its share of corporate irregularities, and accusations of breaches of ethical conduct by those who have an interest in corporate transparency and governance have made local headlines. What factors or determinants influence an individual’s ethical behaviour would be useful in these cases, but a dearth of studies from a Malaysian context does not allow this analysis to take place. Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the impact of certain determinants on the perceptions of ethical behaviour of corporate managers in Malaysia. The demographic and situational determinants used in this study -- such as age, gender, level of education, and the presence of a code of ethics in the organisation -- are those commonly scrutinized in attempts to understand individual ethical behaviour. Information analysed quantitatively was obtained from a self-administered questionnaire distributed by e-mail to 750 individuals who are corporate managers in Malaysia. It is hoped that this study contributes to knowledge by assisting Malaysian managers to understand the factors that affect individual ethical behaviour and designing relevant policies and procedures that take the results of this study into account.
Alpha Clusters: Creative Innovation in Local Economies

This article examines a set of industries including financial investment, fashion, and culture that tend to predominate in certain cities such as New York and London. Using data on business establishments and wages for the United States and Canada, the author shows that these industries exhibit a very high level of spatial concentration and a related high level of wage variation among metropolitan areas. The author proposes that these industries are very cluster dependent because of an inherently rapid pace of product innovation. The implications of this for economic development analysis are considered in the context of cluster and innovation policy. The author suggests that fostering innovation in these industries requires a substantially different approach from that commonly being deployed for technology industries.
Price stickiness in Portugal evidence from survey data

This paper analyses the results of a survey conducted on a sample of Portuguese firms, with the main purpose of investigating their price setting behaviour. The evidence points to a considerable degree of price stickiness: most firms do not change prices more than once a year; time lags in price reactions to shocks are significant; and more than half of the firms follow time-dependent price reviewing and build their price decisions disregarding any indication of future economic developments. Implicit contracts between firms and their customers under which the former pledge to stabilise their prices as a way to increase customers' loyalty are apparently the main reason preventing firms from changing their prices more frequently. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Derivatives: The Ultimate Financial Innovation

Derivatives are financial contracts whose value is derived from some underlying asset. These assets can include equities and equity indices, bonds, loans, interest rates, exchange rates, commodities, residential and commercial mortgages, and even catastrophes like earthquakes and hurricanes. The contracts come in many forms, but the more common ones include options, forwards/futures and swaps. It is not an exaggeration to state that a considerable portion of financial innovation over the last 30 years has come from the emergence of derivative markets. EXCHANGE TRADED derivatives are dominated by equity derivatives and commodity derivatives. OTC derivatives are mainly in fixed income and currencies. Interest rate derivatives have a notional outstanding of $500 trillion while currency derivatives have a notional outstanding of $60 trillion. Total CDS notional outstanding is $50 trillion. The benefits of derivatives are threefold: (i) risk management, (ii) price discovery, and (iii) enhancement of liquidity. We briefly describe each of these in turn.
Classics in production and operations management

Contends that most collections of classic works are the result, primarily, of subjective criteria applied by one editor or a small group of editors. Provides a list of authors and classic works in the field of production and operations management (POM) arrived at by applying more objective criteria. Maintains that this listing was developed, not from the preferences of the researchers, but rather on the basis of results of a survey of those persons most involved in the field: POM educators and scholars.
The impact of HIV/AIDS on food security and household vulnerability in Swaziland

Abstract This study investigated the impact of HIV/AIDS on food security and household vulnerability in Swaziland. Personal interviews with 847 selected farming households revealed an increase in sales of crops and livestock to finance funerals and healthcare, a decrease in expenditure on agricultural inputs, and an increase in expenditure on medical bills and funerals. Most households were vulnerable to food insecurity. The affected households therefore need assistance in order to maintain food production and security, including support in the form of agricultural inputs such as fertilisers and seeds through the markets and special arrangements to allow them access to affordable inputs. Therapeutic feeding and home based care will be needed for the chronically ill in vulnerable households.
Microfinance and its Impact in Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria: A Case Study of some Microfinance Banks in Edo State.

This research examines the relationship microfinance and poverty alleviation in Nigeria, to understand the effectiveness of micro credit within the context of its current practice in Edo State in particular, and the nation as a whole as a tool for wealth creation and capital accumulation among the poverty stricken populace and low income earners. The study made use of primary data obtained through field survey from the selected microfinance banks in Edo State and utilized quantitative tools to analyze these data so as to bring out any existing relationship between microfinance and poverty alleviation. The results obtained showed that microfinance has the potential of alleviating poverty by ensuring wealth creation and its attendant self-sufficiency. From our result, about 70% of the sampled population agreed that there is a positive relationship between microfinance and improved standard of living of the recipients of these micro credits; 78% attested that they obtained some sort of credit from microfinance banks to set up their small scale businesses, without which it would be impossible to do so; about 67% said they have used loan collected to expand their business while 24% said they used the loan collected to invest on new technology for their business and the remaining 9% of the respondents obtained loans to facilitate the export of their products. Focus of microfinance programmes in poor communities for it to be meaningful; a massive educational drive on the importance of microfinance in fighting widespread poverty should be launched in the country; etc were some of the recommendations made in this study
Yield Spreads and the Corporate Bond Rollover Channel

Structural credit risk models following He and Xiong (2012) argue that market liquidity aects credit risk via the rollover channel. This paper explores this relation in the US corporate bond market based on a complete set of transactions data over the period from 2005 to 2011, for a representative sample of rms with large exposures to corporate bond
Heritage asset in Italian local governements

Culture has always been an important factor for economic development and local attractiveness in European regions and cities. In Italy, there are over 4,100 museums, 1,400 theatres, 11,400 libraries, 6,000 archaeological sites, 367 archaeological areas, 85,000 National Trust churches, and 40,000 historical residences, whose property, traditionally, is entrusted to public administration, and local entities in particular. For this reason it would be particularly interesting to analyze the Italian case in order to assess the political and institutional changes of the cultural public sector which have made it necessary to introduce governmental criteria and adopt methods and instrumentation marked by a logic of economic rationality in the governance of cultural heritage. The present contribution proposes a definition of the political-institutional context in which the Italian cultural “services” are allocated along with an interpretational scheme of analysis regarding the variables relevant to their governance. It also analyzes in depth the dimension of the cultural sector in Italy, in comparison with other European countries, and the effects of the present financial crisis on the amount of resources devoted to Italian local cultural assets.
Multiple-Father Families and Welfare

In the United States, multipartnered fertility (MPF) has become commonplace. This study provides the first nationally representative measures of women’s MPF, across multiple years, using the U.S. Census Bureau’s Surveys of Income and Program Participation. Because welfare rules contain strong incentives for MPF, and because MPF is especially common among welfare recipients, the authors also examine the relationship between welfare and MPF. Focusing on the pre-TANF period 1985 to 1996, when welfare rules were more comparable across states and the absence of time limits made the incentives for MPF larger, the authors find little behavioral response. Among low-income mothers, MPF does not appear to be driven by program design. Because the incentives were relatively large and reached well up the income distribution, the findings amplify those of earlier studies that show little demographic response to antipoverty programs and invite reconsideration of how much these incentives should constrain transfer programs that target children.
Intertemporal Substitution and Terms-of-Trade Shocks

The paper examines the relationship between transitory terms-of-trade shocks and private saving. Using a model allowing for nonseparability between the consumption of tradables and nontradables, the paper estimates the intertemporal elasticity of substitution while accounting for the intratemporal elasticity of substitution between the consumption of tradables and nontradables. Empirical analysis of data for five industrial countries indicates that in response to transitory terms-of-trade shocks, intertemporal substitution of consumption and intratemporal substitution of consumption between tradables and nontradables both have large effects on private saving.
Muscle and skin sympathetic nerve traffic during physician and nurse blood pressure measurement

Objective: Previous studies have shown that blood pressure assessment by a nurse markedly attenuates the pressor and tachicardic responses triggered by the physician blood pressure measurement. Whether and to what extent this attenuation reflects a different pattern of the neuroadrenergic responses to doctor or nurse blood pressure evaluation is unknown. Methods: In 19 lean untreated mild essential hypertensive patients (age 39.1 ± 2.4 years, mean ± SEM), we measured beat-to-beat mean arterial pressure (Finapres), heart rate (ECG), and efferent postganglionic muscle and skin sympathetic nerve traffic [muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) and skin sympathetic nerve activity (SSNA), respectively, by microneurography], before, during, and following a 10-min sphygmomanometric BP measurement by a doctor or by a nurse unfamiliar to the patients. Measurements were repeated at a 30-min interval to obtain, in separate periods, muscle and skin sympathetic nerve traffic recordings. Both the sequences (doctor vs. nurse and muscle vs. skin sympathetic nerve traffic) were randomized. Results: A doctor visit induced sudden, marked, and prolonged blood pressure and heart rate increases, accompanied by a muscle sympathetic nerve traffic inhibition (average response: −18.1 ± 4.3%, P < 0.01) coupled with a skin sympathetic nerve traffic excitation (average response: +46.1 ± 5.5%, P < 0.01). In contrast, a nurse visit elicited blood pressure and heart rate responses markedly and significantly reduced (−72.1 ± 11 and −81.7 ± 13% respectively, P < 0.01) as compared with those seen during the doctor's visit. This was the case also for muscle and skin sympathetic neural responses (−44.3 ± 9 and −65.6 ± 13%, P < 0.01). Conclusion: These data provide the first evidence that the blunted pressor and tachicardic responses to nurse's blood pressure measurements are accompanied by an attenuation of the adrenergic neural responses seen during the alerting reaction accompanying doctor's blood pressure measurement.
Efficient pass-pipelined VLSI architecture for context modeling of JPEG2000

In this paper, a design of pass-pipelined architecture for context modeling implemented on FPGA is proposed. The architecture is separated into 4 pipelined stages. As a result, the processing time and the critical path delay can be reduced while the multiple symbol context pairs are allowed to be generated simultaneously. Moreover, dual memories and data multiplexer are employed in order to accelerate the memory access. The proposed pass-pipelined architecture can process with the speed greater than 100 MHz and can generate up to 22 context-data pairs in one clock cycle.
The juxtamembrane region of MuSK has a critical role in agrin‐mediated signaling

MuSK is a receptor tyrosine kinase expressed selectively in skeletal muscle and localized to neuromuscular synapses. Agrin activates MuSK and stimulates phosphorylation and clustering of acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) at synaptic sites. We expressed wild‐type or mutant MuSK in MuSK−/− myotubes and identified tyrosine residues in the MuSK cytoplasmic domain that are necessary for agrin‐stimulated phosphorylation and clustering of AChRs. The activation loop tyrosines and the single juxtamembrane tyrosine were found to be essential for agrin‐stimulated phosphorylation and clustering of AChRs. Further, we show that the juxtamembrane tyrosine, contained within an NPXY motif, is phosphorylated in vivo by agrin stimulation. We constructed chimeras containing extracellular and transmembrane domains from MuSK and cytoplasmic sequences from TrkA and found that inclusion of 13 amino acids from the MuSK juxtamembrane region, including the NPXY motif, is sufficient to convert a phosphorylated but inactive MuSK–TrkA chimera into a phosphorylated active chimera. These data suggest that phosphorylation of the MuSK NPXY site leads to recruitment of a phosphotyrosine‐binding domain‐containing protein that functions to stimulate phosphorylation and clustering of AChRs.
No reduction in cerebral metabolism as a result of early moderate hyperventilation following severe traumatic brain injury.

OBJECT Hyperventilation has been used for many years in the management of patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Concern has been raised that hyperventilation could lead to cerebral ischemia; these concerns have been magnified by reports of reduced cerebral blood flow (CBF) early after severe TBI. The authors tested the hypothesis that moderate hyperventilation induced early after TBI would not produce a reduction in CBF severe enough to cause cerebral energy failure (CBF that is insufficient to meet metabolic needs). METHODS Nine patients were studied a mean of 11.2+/-1.6 hours (range 8-14 hours) after TBI occurred. The patients' mean Glasgow Coma Scale score was 5.6+/-1.8 and their mean age 27+/-9 years; eight of the patients were male. Intracranial pressure (ICP), mean arterial blood pressure, and jugular venous oxygen content were monitored and cerebral perfusion pressure was maintained at a level higher than 70 mm Hg by using vasopressors when needed. Measurements of CBF, cerebral blood volume (CBV), cerebral metabolic rate for oxygen (CMRO2), oxygen extraction fraction (OEF), and cerebral venous oxygen content (CvO2) were made before and after 30 minutes of hyperventilation to a PaCO2 of 30+/-2 mm Hg. Ten age-matched healthy volunteers were used as normocapnic controls. Global CBF, CBV, and CvO2 did not differ between the two groups, but in the TBI patients CMRO2 and OEF were reduced (1.59+/-0.44 ml/100 g/minute [p < 0.01] and 0.31+/-0.06 [p < 0.0001], respectively). During hyperventilation, global CBF decreased to 25.5+/-8.7 ml/100 g/minute (p < 0.0009), CBV fell to 2.8+/-0.56 ml/100 g (p < 0.001), OEF rose to 0.45+/-0.13 (p < 0.02), and CvO2 fell to 8.3+/-3 vol% (p < 0.02); CMRO2 remained unchanged. CONCLUSIONS The authors conclude that early, brief, moderate hyperventilation does not impair global cerebral metabolism in patients with severe TBI and, thus, is unlikely to cause further neurological injury. Additional studies are needed to assess focal changes, the effects of more severe hyperventilation, and the effects of hyperventilation in the setting of increased ICP.
Perceived brand globalness in emerging markets and the moderating role of consumer ethnocentrism

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to study the impact of perceived brand globalness (PBG) on consumers' purchase intention (PI) and the mediating role of perceived brand quality (PBQ) and perceived brand prestige (PBP) in this relation, among consumers in emergent markets. The paper also investigate the moderating role of consumer ethnocentrism (CE) on the relation between PBG and both PBQ and PBP.Design/methodology/approach – A web‐based survey was conducted in an emerging market (Pakistan) using both global and local brands. The model was tested using structural equation modeling.Findings – PBG positively impacts both PBQ and PBP while PBQ appears to be a stronger mediator than PBP. The moderating role of CE between PBG and PBQ and between PBG and PBP has been demonstrated; the weaker the CE the stronger the relationships.Research limitations/implications – A convenience sample was used and caution must be taken when generalizing findings from this study. Managers of global brands must meet consumer.
Decommodification and activation in social democratic policy: resolving the paradox

In Esping-Andersen's influential work decommodification appears as the central characteristic of the welfare state, and efforts to decommodify labour are posited to be the main goal of social democracy. Since decommodification is defined as exit from the labour market with little or no loss of income, social democrats' emphasis on decommodification clashes with another purported goal of social democracy, high labour force participation. Drawing on research demonstrating the divergent employment effects of various decommodifying social policies, we resolve the existing paradox by showing that social democratic parties are supportive of decommodifying social policies insofar as these policies do not reduce aggregate levels of employment. Pooled time series analysis of employment-impeding policies (long-term unemployment replacement rate, social security and payroll taxes, and employment protection) suggests that they are associated with Christian democracy rather than social democracy. Instead, we find that social democracy is a key determinant of employment-friendly policies, such as active labour market spending and short-term unemployment replacement rate. Given the radically divergent employment effects of different types of decommodifying social policies and the importance of employment-friendly policies for the viability of generous welfare states, our analysis further underlines the future viability of the social democratic model.
Perforation Peritonitis:A Two Year Experience

Four hundred patients who presented in the emergency of GMC Jammu as a case of perforation peritonitis over a period of two years were studied. In most of the cases diagnosis was made by clinical examination supplemented by investigations in the form of standing X-ray chest PA view with domes of diaphragm, Ultrasound abdomen and abdominal paracentesis. Contrast enhanced CT scans of abdomen were conducted on patients where the diagnosis of perforation peritonitis was doubtful. After resuscitation, Laparotomy was done in all the patients and thorough peritoneal lavage was done. A note of the site, size, type, number of perforations was made and biopsy was taken from the edge of the perforation whenever indicated. The most common cause of gastrointestinal perforation in our study was duodenal ulcer perforation, followed by appendicitis, typhoid perforation, blunt/penetrating trauma, gastric perforation, obstruction, iatrogenic, malignancy, and recurrent perforation. Primary closure of the perforation was most commonly done procedure, followed by appendectomy , resection anastomosis of the gut and exteriorization of the gut. The overall mortality was 6 % and morbidity in the form of wound infection, fever, respiratory complications, residual abscess, dyselectrolytemia, burst abdomen, jaundice, sepsis, cardiac complications, anastomotic disruption was present
Crime and Growth

This paper analyzes the link between crime and economic performance in U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Using the lagged abortion rate as an instrumental variable, we find a strong negative impact of the local crime rate on per capita earnings growth. For the average MSA, a reduction in crime by 10 percent is predicted to increase the growth rate of per-capita earnings by about half a percentage point. In contrast, we do not find any effect of crime on the growth of per capita income from sources other than earnings.
Evolución de la brecha salarial de género en México

El articulo analiza la brecha salarial de genero en Mexico entre 1990 y 2010 utilizando los censos de poblacion. En promedio, la brecha salarial ha disminuido en el periodo. En 2010 la brecha salarial de genero fue de 6%. El promedio no describe el comportamiento de la brecha en la distribucion. Hallamos un patron estable de “piso pegajoso” y un patron decreciente de “techo de cristal” a lo largo de la distribucion en este periodo. Utilizamos un metodo semiparametrico para descomponer la brecha salarial en caracteristicas y precios, y corregimos por la seleccion de las mujeres al mercado laboral. La mayor parte de la brecha salarial se debe al efecto de precios y no de caracteristicas. Al corregir por seleccion la brecha salarial resulta mayor, lo cual sugiere que existe seleccion positiva de las mujeres; esta se acentua en el caso de las mujeres de baja educacion y en cuantiles bajos.
Energy-efficient design for combined relay selection and power allocation AF-relay network

A wireless relay network is an effective communication scheme for energy efficient transmission. Further improvement of this scheme can be achieved by combining relay-selection and power-allocation strategies. In this paper, we consider a combined relay selection and power allocation approach under maximized output signal to noise ratio (SNR) to enhance the energy efficiency (EE) of a wireless amplify and forward relay network. With this strategy, the best relay is selected first and, then the optimal power for all nodes is allocated to optimize the EE. Simulation results show that the proposed model achieves better EE and throughput performance compared to models proposed in other studies. Further, a new model to examine the behavior between EE and spectrum efficiency (SE) has been proposed in this paper.