Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards High-Resolution Multi-Channel Marketing for Physical Stores

It is widely accepted in E-commerce that highly granular marketing – in the form of timely and personalized offers - is more effective than applying the same marketing policy to all customers. For physical grocery retailers to also benefit from such highly granular marketing, previous literature have identified three obstacles which they must overcome; the stores need the capability to (1) collect data about customer transactions, (2) transform the data into insights and (3) operationalize the results. In the past, with customer loyalty cards and the customer relationship management systems, it was already possible to collect transaction data; the increasing ubiquity of smartphones and tablets make it for the first time economically and technologically feasible to also operationalize multi-channel, personalized marketing for physical grocery retailing, such as through apps and recommendation systems. In spite of the identified technological and economic readiness enabled by these emergent technologies, analytical and methodological challenges remain. Existing methods which give retailers insights about which customers to target – such as models of customer’s lifetime value (CLV) and psychometric measures of customer variety seeking – ignore that customers have heterogeneous buying preferences for different product categories, since traditional mass marketing assumes that customers have uniform purchasing preferences across categories. Additionally, a further challenge is how to leverage the marketing opportunities offered by smartphones – such as eschewing costly price discounts in favor of recommendations and social marketing - to act on such insights. The thesis
Effects of mobile devices on K-12 students' achievement: a meta-analysis

In this meta-analytic study, we investigated the effects of mobile devices on student achievement in science, mathematics and reading in grades K–12. Based on our inclusion criteria, we searched the ERIC and PsycINFO databases and identified 14 peer-reviewed research articles published between 2010 and 2014. We identified the device type, subject area, intervention language, grade level, study design and implementer (i.e., of the intervention) as potential moderator variables that may influence student achievement in the targeted content areas. We followed a three-level meta-analytic procedure to estimate the overall effect of these variables and explain the variation in outcomes. The results suggest that use of mobile devices in teaching yielded higher achievement scores than traditional teaching in all subject areas. With regard to the analysis of moderator variables, the results suggest that using mobile devices in reading is significantly more effective than doing so in mathematics.
Examination of the Use of Online and Offline Networks by Housing Social Movement Organizations

OF DISSERTATION EXAMINATION OF THE USE OF ONLINE AND OFFLINE NETWORKS BY HOUSING SOCIAL MOVEMENT ORGANIZATIONS Resource mobilization theory and political opportunity theory are often used to describe separate portions of social movements. This dissertation proposes a combined model of these two theoretical perspectives which describes how social movement organizations effectively engage in social marketing both online and offline. The field of social marketing highlights the utility of standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals. I argue that, while commercial marketing practices may benefit social movement organizations and are more cost effective given emerging technology, momentum for gathering resources, will be stifled unless a political opportunity presents itself. Guided by theory about the ways that political opportunities are translated into action by organizations, and momentum acquired through mobilizing resources, cycles of opportunity and resulting resource responses by housing social movement organizations are examined over time to present a case study for this theoretical model. The seemingly endless cycle of resource gathering underscores organizational mobilization of resources as a process rather than an outcome. My model outlines numerous forces that shape an organization’s ability to mobilize in two distinct ways, through resources deployed (online and offline) and resources gathered. Resources will be discussed in three categories: organizational characteristics, network structure/position, and media/Internet presence. The relative importance of these factors and this process are described at length in the review of theoretical literature and will be illustrated in the case study that I provide: the housing social movement. Data for this case study has been collected through hyperlink network analysis, general webometrics, and congressional archives. My research aims to provide suggestions for the strategic sociotechnical networking and social marketing of social movement organizations.
An investigation into e-learning acceptance and gender amongst final year students : original research

Background: The use of electronic learning (e-learning) systems is gaining popularity especially within a Higher Education (HE) context. However, scholars have identified some factors that affect the utilisation and the acceptance of such systems, one of which is the gender divide, which favours mostly males ahead of females. Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate the acceptance of the e-learning system within a South African HE setting, including the influential role of gender in the acceptance of such a system. Method: Quantitative data was collected through a cross-sectional survey using 113 registered final year students at a South African university who were making use of an e-learning system as part of their teaching delivery. The measuring instrument used was the technology acceptance instrument (TAI) and included measures of computer self-efficacy (CSE), perceived ease of use (PEU), perceived usefulness (PU), and behavioural intention to use (BIU). Results: The presence of a gender divide was found to exist in this study. Women’s ratings of the acceptance of e-learning systems were found to be slightly higher than those of the male respondents. In addition to this, elements of the TAI were found to be related to one another. Conclusion: The study concludes by arguing that lecturers and facilitators need to pay attention to usage patterns of e-learning systems as they affect how such systems are adopted by their students. Therefore, preceding student acceptance of electronic learning systems should be efforts to address any issues that affect the acceptance and effective utilisation of such systems.
Public Sector Pension Policies and Capital Accumulation in Emerging Economies

In many emerging economies pension programs of public sector workers are more generous than pension programs of private sector workers. In this paper we investigate public pension reforms that improve efficiency and welfare by reallocating government resources from non-productive public pensions to productive public education and infrastructure investments. We argue that the opportunity costs of running generous public pension schemes for civil servants are potentially large in emerging economies that often suffer from low public investments in education and infrastructure. In addition, we quantitfy the savings distortions as well as the tax distortions from running a generous public pension program. Calculating transitions to the post-reform steady state, we find that welfare losses for the generation born before the reform are offset by welfare gains by the generations born after the reform.
The role of collaboration in supply chain resilience

Purpose – This paper aims to explore how collaboration influences supply chain resilience. Collaborative activities and their underlying mechanisms in relation to visibility, velocity and flexibility are investigated. Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory case study consisting of eight buyer–supplier relationships in the food processing industry was conducted. Findings – Key findings show how specific collaborative activities (information-sharing, collaborative communication, mutually created knowledge and joint relationship efforts) increase supply chain resilience via increased visibility, velocity and flexibility. Underlying mechanisms and interdependencies of these factors within the supply chain network are identified. Originality/value – This is one of the first papers to provide in-depth insights into collaboration as a formative element of resilience in a supply chain setting. A series of propositions explain the specific influence of collaborative activities on supply chain resilience beyond a single company perspective.
The Floating Mass Transducer for External Auditory Canal and Middle Ear Malformations

Objective: The indications for the Med-El Vibrant Soundbridge, currently limited to patients with sensorineural hearing loss and normal middle ear function, have been extended to include patients with conductive or mixed hearing loss because of severe acquired or congenital ossicular chain defects. Patients with congenital aural atresia have combined malformations of the external auditory canal and the middle ear, often accompanied by severe mixed hearing impairment. Long-term results of traditional surgical techniques for treatment of congenital aural atresia show a persistent air-bone gap in most patients, suggesting that new and better techniques for hearing rehabilitation in these patients would be of value. This study demonstrates that placement of the floating mass transducer of the Med-El Vibrant Soundbridge on the round window (RW) allows optimal amplification and enables the restoration of good hearing in these patients. Study Design: Retrospective case review. Setting: Tertiary referral center. Patients: The study population comprised 12 patients-5 adults and 7 children-with severe external auditory canal and middle ear malformations. The patients were either judged not to be candidates for air conduction hearing aids or declined bone conduction and Bone-Anchored Hearing Aids. Intervention: RW implantation. Main Outcome Measures: Pure-tone threshold and speech understanding. Results: Significant improvements were observed in pure-tone threshold and speech understanding immediately after surgery and at follow-up intervals ranging from 12 to 48 months. No complications or instances of device extrusion were observed in these patients. Conclusion: The results suggest that RW implantation offers a viable and improved treatment option for patients with severe mixed hearing loss and congenital malformation of the outer and middle ear.
Uptake of OER by staff in distance education in South Africa

Open Educational Resources (OER) emerged within the context of open education which is typically characterized by the sharing of knowledge and resources and the exchange of ideas. Unisa as a mega open distance learning (ODL) university has publicly communicated its intention to take part in the use and creation of OER. As global and local university research on OER is limited, this prompted an investigation to gauge the uptake of OER at Unisa, by staff, with the purpose of institutional information gathering for decision making and planning in this area. During 2014, a survey was undertaken for this reason. The survey examined knowledge of OER, Intellectual Property (IP) Rights and Licensing, participation in OER, barriers to OER and OER in the Unisa context with a view to determining the stage at which the institution is in terms of adopting and engaging with the OER initiative. The results indicated that although there is knowledge and understanding of OER, this has not been converted into active participation. It further highlighted the barriers that are prohibiting the operationalization of OER and resulted in recommendations for planning and activities in respect of OER. The constructs investigated and the results thereof might not be generalizable to other contexts, although commonalities are likely. The insights should prove useful to a variety of contexts. The paper illustrates the need for institutions, irrespective of context, to take stock of the impact of initiatives and in this case evaluate how the institution and staff mature through various phases in the uptake of OER in order to guide effective planning, decision making and implementation.
The role of other customer effect in corporate marketing

Purpose – By drawing on theories of social identity, attraction, social comparison and consumer identification, this research seeks to examine how consumers' perceptions of other customers of an organisation (the other customer effect) may have an influence on corporate image and consumer‐company identification. This study aims to test a model integrating these constructs in two contexts, i.e. products and services. It also seeks to investigate the attitudinal and behavioural consequences of a favourable corporate image in order to provide more insights to the argument that a corporate marketing approach helps to enhance marketing performance.Design/methodology/approach – A survey of a convenience sample of 383 adult consumers is conducted. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is employed in order to test the proposed model. An alternative model is examined both in products and in services contexts.Findings – The results indicate that perceptions about other customers influence customers' affective and beh.
Pyramidal neurons in layer 5 of the rat visual cortex. II. Development of electrophysiological properties

Two major classes of pyramidal neurons can be distinguished in layer 5 of the adult rat visual cortex. Cells of the “thick/tufted” type have stout apical dendrites with terminal tufts, and most of them project to the superior colliculus (Larkman and Mason: J Neurosci 10:407, '90; Kasper et al.: J Comp Neurol, this issue, 339:459–474). “Slender/untufted” cells have thinner apical trunks with no obvious terminal tufts, and a substantial proportion of them project to the contralateral visual cortex. These two types also differ in their intrinsic electrophysiological features. In this study we describe the postnatal maturation of the electrophysiological and synaptic properties of layer 5 pyramidal neurons and relate these findings to the morphological development and divergence of the two cell types.
Global Property Investment: Strategies, Structures, Decisions

Developments in the sophistication of global real estate markets mean that global real estate investment is now being executed professionally. Thanks to academic enquiry, professional analysis and entrepreneurial activity, backed by the globalisation of all investment activity, there is now an available body of material which forms the basis of this scholarly but practical summary of the new state of this art. The measurement, benchmarking, forecasting and quantitative management techniques applied to property investments are now compatible with those used in other asset classes, and advances in property research have at last put the ongoing debate about the role of real estate onto a footing of solid evidence. The truly global scope and authorship of this book is unique, and both authors here are singularly well qualified to summarise the impact and likely future of global innovations in property research and fund management. Between them, they have experienced three real estate crashes, and have observed at first hand the creation of the real estate debt and equity instruments that led to the global crisis of 2008-9.
Kernelized View Adaptive Subspace Learning for Person Re-identification

Person re-identification refers to the task of recognizing the same person under different non-overlapping camera views and across different time and places. Many successful methods exploit complex feature representations or sophisticated learners. A recent trend to tackle this problem is to learn a suitable distance metric, the aim of which is to minimize the distance between true matches while maximize the distance between mismatched pairs. However, most of the existing metric learning algorithms directly take the difference of pairwise features in the original feature space as input. By doing so, they implicitly assume that there exists a projection matrix which can map feature vectors in two different subspaces into an identical subspace where desired feature distribution (features of the same person come closely and faraway otherwise) can be achieved. In this paper, we propose to learn different projection matrices for different camera views, thereby the learned matrices are adaptive to different camera views and a common subspace satisfying the desired feature distribution is more likely to be pursued. To better adapt to the different variations encountered by different views, the kernel trick is adopted to catch more information such that nonlinear transformation is possible. During test phase, the features under different camera views are projected into the learned subspace and a simple nearest neighbor classification is performed. Extensive experiments on four challenging datasets (VIPeR, iLIDS, CAVIAR4REID and ETHZ) demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
ANALYSIS OF COWPEA RETAIL MARKETING IN ABEOKUTA NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, OGUN STATE

The broad objective of this study was to carry out structure conduct and performance of cowpea retail marketers. To achieve this objective, two markets were selected in one Local Government Areas Abeokuta north local government area. The result of the analysis of the socio-economic characteristics of the sampled marketers showed that majority of the marketers were educated. Most of them attained both primary and secondary education. Majority of the marketers were male and most of them are the age range of 20 â€“ 50 years. Majority of the marketers had been in the business for period between 1 â€“ 10 years and most of them buy the product from other states (northern part). This study found that most of the marketers buy from the producer and sell to the consumers. Some of the problem facing the cowpea marketers were found to include; lack of storage facilities, price variation, high cost of transportation, inadequate government policies and economic instability. These are some of the suggestion made based on result of the study, these includes; 1. Government and private institution should make credit facilities available to the marketers through rural and urban banking system at low interest rates. 2. Government should embark on price control system to reduce problem of price variation. 3. Provision of good storage facilities. 4. Regular provision of fuel at all times, provision of good and motorable roads and provision of federal assisted mass transit buses at affordable prices to ease transportation problems. 5. The marketers should be encouraged to form and operate through adaptive cooperative associations specifically for cowpea marketing.
Making knowledge the basis of a dynamic theory of the firm

Knowledge is too problematic a concept to make the task of building a dynamic knowledge-based theory of the firm easy. We must also distinguish the theory from the resource-based and evolutionary views. The paper begins with a multitype epistemology which admits both the pre- and subconscious modes of human knowing and, reframing the concept of the cognizing individual, the collective knowledge of social groups. While both Nelson and Winter, and Nonaka and Takeuchi, successfully sketch theories of the dynamic interactions of these types of organizational knowledge, neither indicates how they are to be contained. Callon and Latour suggest knowledge itself is dynamic and contained within actor networks, so moving us from knowledge as a resource toward knowledge as a process. To simplify this approach, we revisit sociotechnical systems theory, adopt three heuristics from the social constructionist literature, and make a distinction between the systemic and component attributes of the actor network. The result is a very different mode of theorizing, less an objective statement about the nature of firms ‘out there’ than a tool to help managers discover their place in the firm as a dynamic knowledge-based activity system.
Nonsynonymous polymorphic sites in the apolipoprotein (apo) A-IV gene are associated with changes in the concentration of apo B- and apo A-I-containing lipoproteins in a normal population.

The aims of this study were to detect polymorphic sites in the apolipoprotein (apo) A-IV gene, to establish their frequencies, to determine potential haplotypes, and to investigate the role of these polymorphisms in lipid metabolism. A sequencing study of four individuals led to the identification of two synonymous mutations (codons 9 and 54) and three nonsynonymous mutations (Val-8----Met, Gln360----His, and Thr347----Ser) and of a VNTR polymorphism within a series of three or four CTGT repeats in the noncoding region of exon 3. Frequencies of these polymorphisms were determined in 291 students by using naturally occurring (BstEII for the synonymous mutation in codon 54, HinfI for Thr347----Ser, and Fnu4HI for Gln360----His) or artificially introduced restriction-enzyme cutting sites (BstEII for the synonymous mutation in codon 9 and MamI for Val-8----Met), subsequent to PCR amplification. The four-base deletion/insertion polymorphism and its localization cis or trans to the mutations in codons 347 and 360 were studied by direct sequencing of PCR-amplified DNA from 87 students. Frequencies of the rarer alleles were . 007 for apo A-IV-8:Met, . 04 for the synonymous mutation in codon 9, . 14 for the synonymous mutation in codon 54, . 16 for apo A-IV347:Ser, . 07 for apo A-IV360:His, and . 39 for the four-base of insertion. Apo A-IV360:His in all cases was cis-localized to the (CTGT)3 repeat and apo A-IV347:Thr; and apo A-IV347:Ser was cis-localized to the (CTGT)4 repeat and apo A-IV360:Gln. Four haplotypes formed from these three polymorphic sites were thus found. The apo A-IV347:Ser allele was associated both with significantly lower plasma apo B concentrations in both sexes and with significantly lower LDL-cholesterol concentrations in men. Heterozygous carriers of apo A-IV360:His exhibited significantly higher concentrations of LDL-cholesterol and lower Lp(a) concentrations, compared with apo A-IV360:Gln homozygotes. We could not confirm the previously reported association of apo A-IV360:His with elevated HDL-cholesterol concentrations. In the population, the Val-8----Met polymorphism was not associated with significantly different lipid concentrations, but in a family study the Met-8 allele was associated with lower HDL-cholesterol and higher LDL-cholesterol concentrations. In conclusion, our results indicate an important role of the apo A-IV gene locus in the metabolism of apo B and, to a lesser extent, apo A-I containing lipoproteins.