Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Cultures on Shaping Earnings Benchmarks

Purpose: This paper studies the influence of the Egyptian context on shaping earnings benchmarks. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted interpretive approach as research philosophy and interviewing as research method. Findings: This paper finds that firms model their published profit figures to the prevailing level of profits in its sector, these findings are consistent with the cultural-collectivist feature of Egyptian society that refer to a very tight social framework among Egyptians, leading to imitate each other. This study finds, unlike research conducted in developed countries, in Egypt, a one of emerging economics, financial analysts' forecasts are not generally considered an earnings benchmark; however, increasing profits and retaining this pattern; and industrial norms are prevailing profits levels, and hence they are completely regarded as important targets for firms to beat in order to ensure their economic and social fitness and their management effectiveness. It also is found that firms are interested in meeting all these earnings targets as one set in a sequential manner, starting with the most important one. Originality/value: This paper contributes to literature by shedding light on the fact that there are no earnings benchmarks which can be generalised among contexts; differences in the situations and circumstances of contexts play key role in shaping earnings targets a firm seeks to achieve. It also sheds light on industrial earnings norms as an important earnings benchmark.
Recombinant Factor VIIa–Mediated Activation of Prothrombin Complex Concentrates

Recombinant factor VIIa (rFVIIa) is used in the management of bleeding in patients with hemophilia. A generic biosimilar version of NovoSeven is also developed (AryoSeven). To compare the activation profile of NovoSeven and AryoSeven, 2 commercially available protein complex concentrates (PCCs) were used. Profilnine activated by RecombiPlasTin 2G resulted in conversions of prothrombin to prethrombin and thrombin at 5 to 30 minutes. However, addition of rFVIIa at final concentration range of 0.25 to 0.5 µg/mL to the same mixture resulted in total conversion of prothrombin to thrombin with a doublet at 36 kDa. Recombinant factor VIIa alone did not generate thrombin in native Beriplex, and the addition of rFVIIa to Beriplex failed to generate thrombin. Beriplex activated by RecombiPlasTin 2G resulted in complete conversion of prothrombin to thrombin. Both NovoSeven and AryoSeven exhibited similar activation profiles. These studies indicate that the activation of PCCs by both rFVIIa preparations results in comparable generation of thrombin.
FORWARD CONTRACTING OF INPUTS: A FARM-LEVEL ANALYSIS

Forward contracting of inputs in production agriculture is becoming increasingly important as more farmers attempt to manage risk. Using a logit model and farm-level data, this analysis estimates the effect of factors on the probability of a producer using forward input contracting. Results suggest that use of contracting in selling of crops and livestock, technology, farm size, geographic location, participation in government commodity programs, and use of extension services are important factors affecting the choice to forward contract inputs.
Decent work: Concept and indicators

The concept of “decent work” was launched in these terms in 1999, in the Report of the Director-General to the International Labour Conference meeting in its 87th Session. The idea both conveys the broad and varied dimensions associated with work today and encapsulates them in an expression that everyone can appreciate. But what does the notion of decent work really comprise? Four components of the notion are elaborated in the same Report of the Director-General: employment, social protection, workers’ rights and social dialogue. Employment here covers work of all kinds and has both quantitative and qualitative dimensions. Thus, decent work applies not just to workers in the formal economy but also to unregulated wage workers, the self-employed and home workers. It also refers to adequate opportunities for work, remuneration (in cash and in kind), and embraces safety at work and healthy working conditions. Social security and income security are also essential components ‐ defined according to each society’s capacity and level of development. The two other components emphasize the social relations of workers: the fundamental rights of workers (freedom of association, nondiscrimination at work, and the absence of forced labour and child labour); and social dialogue, in which workers exercise their right to present their views, defend their interests and engage in discussions to negotiate work-related matters with employers and authorities. But how to find measures encompassing all these notions and expressing their interconnectedness? How to assess the current state and future progress of decent work in the world? Researchers are tackling
A Two-tiered Earnings Frontier Estimation of Employer and Employee Information in the Labor Market

This pap er develops a "two-tiered frontier" estimation procedure to decompose the residual of an earnings function into three components. The first component can be interpreted as being purely random. Search theory is used to show that the other two components represent employee and employer ignorance of offer and reservation wages respectively. Relative employee and employer ignorance estimates are presented for various population strata. Copyright 1987 by MIT Press.
Openness in the Canadian economy: 1870–1988

The causal relation between openness and GDP and between exports and imports are examined. Causality test carried out in growth rates showed that over the period 1870–1988 openness, both narrowly and broadly defined, Granger-causes GDP growth; tests for the inverse causality produced mixed results, validating causality from GDP growth to export plus import growth, but rejecting causlaity from GDP growth to export growth; it was also found that export growth causes import growth, but not the opposite. Causality tests over four subperiods indicated the importance of openness for only the earliest phase of Canadian economic development. While the absence of causality in the later subperiods is largely compatible with the experience of the industrial countries, no meaningful comparison can be made between the experience of Canada and that of developing countries owing to causality variations of openness and to large differences in resource endowments.
DIFFERENTIATED KNOWLEDGE BASES AND VARIETIES OF REGIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS

This article introduces a theoretical and analytical framework for discussing regional development and regional advantage with reference to a regional innovation system strategy. It uses the differentiated knowledge base approach to transcend the traditional codified–tacit dichotomy of knowledge, and for providing a trans-sectoral understanding of economic activities. Different regional innovation systems are presented and described. The discussion of various types of regional innovation systems is contextualized using a variety of capitalist perspectives. The article concludes by discussing the question if regional innovation systems can exist.
Multiple-Target Visual Search Errors

Visual search—the ability to locate visual targets among distractors—is a fundamental part of professional performance for many careers, including radiology, airport security screening, cytology, lifeguarding, and more. Successful execution of visual search in these settings is critically important because the consequences of a missed target can be horrific. Unfortunately, many of these professions place high demands on the people performing the searches, and either the task or the environment (or both) could lead to significant errors. One known source of error that exists across many fields is “multiple-target visual search” errors—a target is less likely to be detected if another target was already found in the same search than if the target was the only one present. These errors have proven to be stubborn and not easily eliminated. This article offers a brief overview of the existing research on multiple-target visual search errors and discusses possible policy implications of the errors for airport security screening. The policy suggestions are based on empirical research, with the hope of providing food for thought on using scientific data and theory to improve performance. Specifically, three policy suggestions are raised: shift screening to a remote location away from the checkpoint, reduce the number of prohibited items to lessen the searchers’ cognitive burden, and emphasize search consistency in the training process. Note that the focus here is on airport security screening, as this is a domain most readers can relate to, but the suggestions can equally apply to many search environments.
Old Farmer Pension Program and Farm Succession: Evidence from a Population‐Based Survey of Farm Households in Taiwan

This article examines the effect of the old farmers' pension program on farm succession in Taiwan. Using an agricultural census survey of 160,380 crop farms in 2005 and an analytical framework of regression discontinuity design, we find evidence that the pension program induced elderly farmers to work more on the farm and less off the farm. Although the primary policy objective of the pension program is to secure the well-being of elderly farmers, an undesired negative effect on farm succession is found. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.
Exploring the Relationships Among Trust, Employee Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment

Abstract This research seeks to answer two questions. The first question is this: ‘Does trust matter for employee satisfaction and commitment? ’ In the business management field, one can find many empirical studies investigating trust as a valuable resource within organizations. The public management field, however, has paid less attention to this issue. This research investigates the role of trust within one US federal agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), by examining the relationships among several managerial practices, trust, and employee attitudes, including employee satisfaction and organizational commitment. Related to this is our second research question: ‘How much is the effect of trust varied across different types of trust? ’ There are multiple trust relationships within organizations, among which we consider three types of trust based on the referent: trust in the immediate supervisor; trust in co-workers; and trust in management. We test whether each trust has a positive association with the given outcomes and which trust has the largest influence within the FAA. Using the data from the 2003 Employee Attitude Survey by the FAA, we test the above ideas. The structural equation model (SEM) analysis demonstrates the substantial relationships between trust and both employee satisfaction and organizational commitment. Among the three kinds of trust, trust in management has the strongest ties to both outcomes. Based on the findings, we insist that building trust deserves more attention in managing public organizations.
Tourism and Heritage Are Not Strangers: A Study of Opportunities for Rural Heritage Museums to Maximize Tourism Visitation

Heritage tourism is growing rapidly in popularity as people seek to rediscover the past. One obvious group of attractions heritage tourists seek out are museums. Many museums are outside the government sector, and for these museums, tourism offers considerable scope to generate revenue to fund new displays and pay recurrent costs. This study reports on a survey of three Queensland rural heritage museums designed to discover visitors’ reactions to the communication channels used to alert them to the existence of the museums and to identify the visitors’ preferred methods of advertising. The outcome of the survey identifies the need for museum custodians to reconsider the promotional strategies employed to advertise rural museums to the drive tourist market and suggests a simple checklist of low-cost yet effective advertising methods that can be used by rural museums.
TESTS OF THE EFFICIENCY PERFORMANCE OF CONGLOMERATE FIRMS

MANY ASPECTS of conglomerate firms have now been studied. The literature on portfolio theory is relevant for appraising diversification aspects of conglomerate firm performance. ' Other aspects of the economic theory of conglomerates have been treated in various papers.2 A comprehensive analysis of legal aspects has been made.3 Business motivations for conglomerate diversifications have been described.4 The conglomerate merger movement has also received considerable scrutiny with regard to its public policy effects. ' Most empirical work tests aspects of the effects of mergers generally.6 Only three statistical studies of conglomerate performance have been published.7 Professor Samuel R. Reid's studies include data evaluating a sample of conglomerate firms for the decade ending in 1961. He utilized three measures he characterized as reflecting the interests of managers and three reflecting the interests of stockholders. Professor Reid concluded that more actively merging firms and firms that diversified to a greater extent in their merging activity scored higher on the criteria related to managers' interests and lower on criteria related to stockholders' interests.8 Lorie and Halpern studied the performance of 117 mergers taken from the Federal Trade Commission listing for 1954-1967 of all mergers in manufactur-
Sensitivity of fish embryos to weathered crude oil: Part II. Increased mortality of pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) embryos incubating downstream from weathered Exxon valdez crude oil

We incubated pink salmon embryos under three exposure conditions, direct contact with oil‐coated gravel, effluent from oil‐coated gravel, and direct contact with gravel coated with very weathered oil (VWO). Embryo mortalities and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) accumulation in embryo tissues during the direct‐contact and effluent exposure experiments were not significantly different, indicating that PAH accumulation was mediated by aqueous transport. Mortality rates for embryos exposed initially to a total PAH concentration (TPAH) of 1.0 ppb were significantly higher than controls when the PAH were derived from VWO. The same aqueous TPAH concentration failed to increase mortality rates when the PAH were derived from less weathered oil, indicating that toxicity of effluents from the VWO was primarily associated with the larger PAH. We conclude that water quality standards for TPAH above 1.0 ppb may fail to protect fish embryos. Further, pink salmon embryos incubating in Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez oil spill may have accumulated lethal concentrations of PAH from interstitial water that was contaminated when it percolated through oil reservoirs located upstream from salmon redds.
Cross-Sectional Return Dispersion and Time Variation in Value and Momentum Premiums

Abstract We find that the market’s recent cross-sectional dispersion in stock returns is positively related to the subsequent value book-to-market premium and negatively related to the subsequent momentum premium. The partial relation between return dispersion (RD) and the subsequent value and momentum premiums remains strong when controlling for macroeconomic state variables suggested by the literature. Our findings are consistent with recent theoretical insights and empirical evidence that suggest that the market’s RD may serve as a leading countercyclical state variable, that the value premium is countercyclical, and that the momentum premium is procyclical.
Sexual Desire in Women Presenting for Antiandrogen Therapy

Women presenting with hirsuties/polycystic ovary syndrome have increased production of androgens. Clinical lore suggests that these women may have increased sexual desire. Treatment of hirsuties commonly involves antiandrogen therapy, a form of therapy with a potential for reducing sexual desire. The present study investigated sexual desire in 29 hirsute women aged 19 to 43 years presenting for therapy. We conducted a questionnaire appraisal of the women’s sexual desire, body and self-esteem, and affect at baseline, 3 months, and 12 months and compared the data with a control group of 30 nonhirsute women of similar mean age. Those in the treatment group also had their Ferriman and Gallwey scores and body mass indices calculated at baseline and end of study for those in the treatment group. We determined hormone levels for those in the treatment group with baseline blood tests. Our hypotheses were that the hirsute women would experience different levels of sexual desire than the control group prior to therapy and that therapy would have a demonstrable effect on the self-reported sexual desire of these women. The study demonstrated that women with hirsuties had mean levels of sexual desire and body esteem that were significantly lower than the control group women. During the year-long course of therapy, the sexual desire levels of the hirsute women decreased progressively, while their self-esteem increased. The women’s Ferriman and Gallwey scores fell, indicating diminishing hirsutism. These findings provide empirical data upon which clinicians can base advice to patients seeking therapy.
Caching Strategy for Scalable Lookup of Personal Content

Today’s trend is to create and share personal content, such as music files, digital photos and digital movies. The result is an explosive growth of a user’s personal content archive. Managing such an often distributed collection becomes a complex and time consuming task, which indicates the need for a personal content management system that provides storage space transparently, is quality-aware, and is available at any time and at any place to end-users. A solution that fulfills this need is a Personal Content Storage Service (PCSS). A key feature of a PCSS is the ability to search worldwide through the dataset of personal files. Due to the extremely large size of the dataset of personal content, a centralized approach is no longer feasible; therefore the PCSS uses a structured peer-to-peer network: the Distributed Hash Table (DHT). In order to further increase the lookup performance, a caching layer is used between the application layer and the DHT. In this article we present the caching layer and introduce the Request Times Distance (RTD) caching algorithm, which uses popularity and distance metrics to increase the lookup performance. By extending the RTD algorithm with a sliding window and cooperative caching, a more efficient solution than standard algorithms is obtained. The cooperative RTD caching algorithm is evaluated using the PlanetSim simulation framework and shows a performance increase of up to 16% compared to the Least Frequently Used (LFU) caching algorithm.
Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Effects on the U . S . of an H 1 N 1 Epidemic : Analysis with a Quarterly CGE Model

We simulate the effects of a hypothetical H1N1 epidemic in the U.S. using a quarterly CGE model. Quarterly periodicity allows us to capture the short-run nature of an epidemic. We find potentially severe economic effects in the peak quarter. Averaged over the epidemic year, the effects are considerably damped. Our results indicate that the macroeconomic consequences of an epidemic are more sensitive to demand-side effects, such as reductions in international tourism and leisure activities, than to supply-side effects, such as reductions in productivity. This suggests that demand stimulus policies might be an appropriate economic response to a serious epidemic.
Velocity of sarcomere shortening in rat cardiac muscle: relationship to force, sarcomere length, calcium and time.

The relation between force and velocity was determined in sixteen trabeculae of rat right ventricle as a function of time during a twitch, of sarcomere length and of external Ca2+ concentration, [Ca2+]o. The trabeculae were studied in modified Krebs‐Henseleit solution at 25 degrees C. Force was measured with a semiconductor strain gauge. Sarcomere length was measured with a laser diffraction system. A servomotor system was used in which control could be switched between sarcomere length, muscle length and force. Force‐velocity relations were derived from load clamps and from contractions in which sarcomere length was initially held constant followed by a quick release and slower release of the sarcomeres at controlled velocity. Force‐velocity relations were fitted by Hill's equation (Hill, 1938), (Po‐P) b = (P+a) V, where P = force, V = velocity, Po = isometric force in mN/mm2 and a and b are constants. For [Ca2+]o = 2.5 mM, with both interventions the values (mean +/‐ S.D.) were: b = 1.00 +/‐ 0.45 micron/s; a = 9.52 +/‐ 5.60 mN/mm2; Vo measured = 13.6 +/‐ 3.0 micron/s; Vo calculated = 13.4 +/‐ 3.4 micron/s; Po measured = 96.5 +/‐ 25.0 mN/mm2; Po calculated = 119.3 +/‐ 34.5 mN/mm2. Vo rose with [Ca2+]o to a maximum at [Ca2+]o = 1.2 mM when Po was about 50% of maximum, while Po rose with [Ca2+]o to a maximum at above 2.5 mM. Vo rose with time during the twitch to a maximum at 25 ms following onset of contraction; Po was then about 50% of the maximum that was obtained at 120 ms. Vo increased with sarcomere length from zero at a sarcomere length of 1.6 micron to a maximum at 1.85 micron. Between 1.85 micron and 2.3 micron, Vo was constant. At 1.85 micron, Po was about 60% of maximum Po. These results are compatible with the hypothesis that Vo is more sensitive than Po to the amount of Ca2+ bound to the contractile proteins, and that Vo reaches a maximal value with an amount of Ca2+ bound to the contractile proteins at which Po has obtained only about 50% of its maximal value.
GDNF gene delivery to injured adult CNS motor neurons promotes axonal growth, expression of the trophic neuropeptide CGRP, and cellular protection

Glial‐cell‐line–derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) has been identified as a potent survival and differentiation factor for several neuronal populations in the central nervous system (CNS), but to date, distinct effects of GDNF on motor axon growth and regeneration in the adult have not been demonstrated. In the present study, ex vivo gene delivery was used to directly examine whether GDNF can influence axonal growth, expression of neuronal regeneration‐related genes, and sustain the motor neuronal phenotype after adult CNS injury. Adult Fischer 344 rats underwent unilateral transections of the hypoglossal nerve, followed by intramedullary grafts of fibroblasts genetically modified to secrete GDNF. Control animals received lesions and grafts of cells expressing a reporter gene. Two weeks later, GDNF gene delivery (1) robustly promoted the growth of lesioned hypoglossal motor axons, (2) altered the expression and intracellular trafficking of the growth‐related protein calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP), and (3) significantly sustained the cholinergic phenotype in 84 ± 6% of hypoglossal neurons compared with 39 ± 6% in control animals (P < 0.001). This is the first neurotrophic factor identified to increase the in vivo expression of the trophic peptide CGRP and the first report that GDNF promotes motor axonal growth in vivo in the adult CNS. Taken together with previous in vitro studies, these findings serve as the foundation for a model wherein GDNF and CGRP interact in a paracrine manner to regulate neuromuscular development and regeneration. J. Comp. Neurol. 436:399–410, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.