Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Managing Uncertainty And Conflict In It Project Portfolio Management

Abstract Maximizing the outcome of IT project investments has been a major concern for years. Several approaches have been suggested one of them being Project Portfolio Management (PPM). Even though PPM offers valuable techniques for aligning IT project portfolios with organizational needs and maximizing the outcome of project portfolios, practitioners find it difficult to implement. Our research suggests one of the reasons being the fact that PPM builds upon classic rational ideals about decision-making in organizations that are hard to realize and in some aspects counterproductive for non-routine decision-making. Especially, we focus on the importance of incorporating mechanisms that deal with uncertainty and conflict during portfolio decision-making, and on the importance of identifying and understanding dysfunctional decision- making patterns as part of improving PPM practice. Reducing the reliance on classic rational decision-making ideals and incorporating other decision-making styles more aligned with decision-making practices in organizations might ease PPM implementation and improve the outcome of systematic PPM efforts. The research is based upon a multisite case study from public sector organizations attempting to improve their PPM capabilities.
Model of Adoption and Technology in Households: A Baseline Model Test and Extension Incorporating Household Life Cycle

Individual adoption of technology has been studied extensively in the workplace. Far less attention has been paid to adoption of technology in the household. In this paper, we performed the first quantitative test of the recently developed model of adoption of technology in households (MATH). Further, we proposed and tested a theoretical extension of MATH by arguing that key demographic characteristics that vary across different life cycle stages would play moderating roles. Survey responses were collected from 746 U.S. households that had not yet adopted a personal computer. The results showed that the integrated model, including MATH constructs and life cycle characteristics, explained 74 percent of the variance in intention to adopt a PC for home use, a significant increase over baseline MATH that explained 50 percent of the variance. Finally, we compared the importance of various factors across household life cycle stages and gained a more refined understanding of the moderating role of household life cycle stage.
Real Estate Development With Financial Frictions And Collateralized Debt

This paper introduces financial frictions and the collateralized debt capacity of a company into real estate development within an options theory framework. The financial frictions affect option value by forced acceleration of development or forced delay which harms option value. Yet the land and properties in the firm can be used as collateral to ease financial constraints. This financial flexibility interacts with real flexibility and affects firm performance. The firm with more assets to collateralize or high market value may imply larger financial flexibility due to the presence of available collateral. This financial flexibility functions to reduce the distortion of option exercise and improves the firm’s investment performance. As the value of collateral moves with the value of underlying assets, the collateral channel may amplify real estate cycles by encouraging overbuilding in expanding markets.
Personal Bankruptcy and Social Insurance

The IMF defines social insurance schemes as “collectively organized insurance schemes in which employees and/or others are obliged or encouraged to spread risk by taking out insurance against certain social risks. Such schemes require contributions, actual or imputed, to secure entitlement to social benefits. ” (Pitzer 2003, p. 15). Governments compel individuals to contribute to social insurance plans as a means of spreading out the risk of adverse events across society as broadly as possible; and individuals can collect payments from social insurance if an adverse event strikes them. Classic examples of social insurance schemes include unemployment insurance, government-funded health care systems, public pension plans, income assistance to the poor, and payments to disabled workers.
Activation treatment of recipient oocytes affects the subsequent development and ploidy of bovine parthenogenetic and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) embryos

We evaluated the potential effect of anisomycin, an antibiotic produced by Streptomyces griseolus, on the parthenogenetic activation of bovine oocytes and reconstructed somatic‐cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) embryos. A higher cleavage and blastocyst rate were achieved with anisomycin (70.3% and 27.8%) and 6‐dimethylaminopurine (DMAP) (73.3% and 30.2%), relative to oocytes parthenogenetically activated with cycloheximide (CHX) (54.1% and 20.2%). In reconstructed SCNT embryos, a greater proportion of embryos reached the blastocyst stage after anisomycin (32.2%) compared to DMAP (22.3%) and CHX (23.5%) treatment. Furthermore, the quality of embryos—assessed by the total number of cells and the inner cell mass‐to‐total‐cell ratio—was higher with anisomycin (166.2 ± 6.9 and 26.9 ± 1.9) compared to DMAP (135.0 ± 8.7 and 39.4 ± 3.5) and CHX (149.1 ± 8.4 and 36.3 ± 2.5), while a lower percentage of chromosomal abnormalities was observed with anisomycin compared to DMAP and CHX treatments, both in parthenotes (though not significant) and in SCNT embryos (P < 0.05). Therefore, anisomycin can enhance the in vitro developmental potential in parthenotes and reconstructed SCNT embryos, specifically improving the quality of SCNT embryos and decreasing the abnormal ploidy of parthenotes and SCNT embryos compared to the traditional protocols of chemical activation with DMAP and CHX. These results may have important implications for the success of reproductive technologies, including SCNT and intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in different mammalian species. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 82: 441–449, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance Elements Converging in Ethics Applied to Businesses

The awareness on issues relating to business ethics in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Good Corporate Governance (GCG) and Environmental Social Governance (ESG) has significantly increased in the last decade in the academic and professional fields. As a consequence, a large number of theoretical and empirical studies, research and professional publications and guidelines have been published. This trend is a significant change to the traditional way of understanding corporate governance and has led to an increasing number and diversity of stakeholders to which the corporations must be accountable. Traditionally, Corporate Governance has focused in “financial” aspects to improve the protection of corporate stakeholders and the CSR approach has considered only economic, social and environmental issues. However, those concepts are converging and more frequently are jointly studied by academics and practitioners. A clear example of this convergence is the use of ESG (Environmental Social Governance) criteria in the assessment of sustainable investment portfolios.In this context, the aim of this paper is to present the current state of the research on convergence themes for CSR and GCG, in order to present the framework as a basis for the subsequent analysis of the relationship between good governance practices, CSR and financial performance and to assess the effectiveness of such practices and strategies.
Fatigue Properties and Strength Degradation of Carbon Fibber Reinforced Composites

A two-parameter fatigue model explicitly accounting for the cyclic as well as the mean stress was used to fit static and fatigue data available in literature concerning carbon fiber reinforced composite laminates subjected tension-tension fatigue. The model confirms the strength–life equal rank assumption and predicts reasonably the probability of failure under cyclic loading. The model parameters were found by best fitting procedures and required a minimum of experimental tests. Keywords—Fatigue life, strength, composites, Weibull distribution.
Alcohol-Assisted Debridement in PRK with Intraoperative Mitomycin C

Purpose To compare corneal stromal and endothelial cells after photorefractive keratectomy with intraoperative mitomycin C in alcohol-assisted versus mechanical epithelial debridement using confocal microscopy. Methods This prospective randomized comparative study was performed on 88 eyes (44 patients) with myopia up to −6.00 diopters. The right eye of each patient was randomly assigned to either mechanical or alcohol-assisted groups, and the left eye was assigned to the alternate group. Confocal microscopy was performed preoperatively and at 3 months postoperatively. The main outcome measures were epithelial thickness; number of keratocytes in the anterior, mid-, and posterior stroma; and characteristics of the central corneal endothelial cells in terms of density, mean cell area, and polymegathism and hexagonality. Results Three months after surgery, no statistically significant difference was noted between the study groups in terms of epithelial thickness. We also found no statistically significant difference in central corneal endothelial cells regarding cell density, mean cell area, hexagonality, or polymegathism. Compared with baseline values, the density of mid- and posterior stromal keratocytes showed no significant change in either group, whereas it decreased significantly in the anterior stroma in both groups 3 months after surgery. Conclusions We found that the adverse effects of photorefractive keratectomy with mitomycin C on central corneal endothelial cells were comparable between the mechanical and alcohol-assisted epithelial debridement groups and the significant decrease in postoperative keratocyte density in anterior stroma was comparable between the two groups. The choice of their application could be left to the discretion of the ophthalmologist.
Effect of online 3D advertising on consumer responses: the mediating role of telepresence

Abstract This study develops a conceptual framework for measuring the effectiveness of Internet-based 3D advertisements. The study uses an interdisciplinary literature review (marketing, information systems, and human–computer interaction) to enhance the understanding of the impact of using 3D visualisation in online advertisements, and to identify the most relevant conditions for application. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of such ads in the case of a geometric product, as well as in the case of a material product. This study's results highlight the significance of telepresence as a mediator. The findings reveal that telepresence determines how ad format (2D versus 3D) influences the range of variables used to measure advertising effectiveness.
MUSCLE RESPONSE TO HEAVY RESISTANCE EXERCISE IN CHILDREN WITH SPASTIC CEREBRAL PALSY

Fourteen ambulatory children with spastic diplegia participated in a bilateral quadriceps. strengthening program in an attempt to decrease the amount of knee crouch during gait. Each chid exercised three times a week for six weeks using free ankle weights at a load of 65 per cent of maximum. A normal comparison group of 25 children was also tested under identical conditions. Children with cerebral palsy were significantly weaker in the quadriceps and hamstrings muscle groups than controls. Quadriceps strength increased signficantly at all three angles of knee flexion as a result of the weight‐training program and did not differ statistically from normal at the end of the program. Quadriceps weakness was shown to be a factor in crouch gait; restoring strength through resistance exercise may be a useful adjunct in the treatment of cerebral palsy.
Helping Behaviors During Video Game Play

Research suggests that video games are becoming a social activity. Previous research has neglected the complicated social context in which people now play video games. However, a growing body of literature suggests that playing violent video games cooperatively with others can attenuate their aggression-facilitating effects and increase prosocial behaviors between players. To better understand which types of social game play can foster helping behaviors between players and which players may be engaging in these helping behaviors during game play, the current study administered a survey to 252 students who self-identified as video game players. The results suggest that participants who reported playing cooperatively/competitively with other players were more likely to report engaging in helping behaviors during game play. Additionally, participants who reported being motivated to play specialized roles in group game play and have an altruistic personality were more likely to report engaging in helping beha.
High Throughput Parallel Fano Decoding

In this paper, a bidirectional Fano algorithm (BFA) is proposed, in which a forward decoder (FD) and a backward decoder (BD) search in the opposite direction in the code tree simultaneously. It is shown that the proposed BFA can achieve more than twice the decoding throughput compared to the conventional unidirectional Fano algorithm (UFA) and there is higher throughput improvement at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This new BFA decoding technique is applied in the parallel convolutional decoding architecture in very high throughput systems, such as the WirelessHD system. Due to the variability in the decoding delays of the parallel codewords, a scheduler is introduced in the parallel Fano decoding architecture which can dynamically allocate the idle decoders to assist with decoding the other parallel codewords in a bidirectional manner. It is shown that the proposed parallel Fano decoding with scheduling can dramatically increase the decoding throughput compared to the parallel Fano decoding without scheduling, and its computational complexity is much lower than that of parallel Viterbi decoding, especially at high SNR. The performance of the parallel Fano decoding with different scheduling schemes is also compared and analyzed in detail in the paper.
Downregulations of B‐cell lymphoma 2 and myeloid cell leukemia sequence 1 by microRNA 153 induce apoptosis in a glioblastoma cell line DBTRG‐05MG

MicroRNA‐153 (miR‐153) is a brain‐specific miRNA that is expressed at a significantly lower level in glioblastoma (GBM) relative to non‐neoplastic brain tissue. Although the expression pattern of miR‐153 has been extensively established, its target genes and cellular mechanism remain undefined. To investigate into the potential function of miR‐153 in glioblastmas, we transfected a GBM cell line DBTRG‐05MG with synthetic miR‐153 oligos and observed decreased cell proliferation and increased apoptosis. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that anti‐apoptosis family member B‐cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl‐2) and myeloid cell leukemia sequence 1 (Mcl‐1) are potential targets of miR‐153. Indeed, Western blot analysis indicated that miR‐153 downregulated both Bcl‐2 and Mcl‐1 at the protein levels. Single strand miR‐153 inhibitor, which forms complementary base‐pair with endogenous miR‐153, efficiently blocked the apoptosis and target protein degradation induced by overexpression of miR‐153. By luciferase reporter assays, we further showed that miR‐153 inhibited Bcl‐2 and Mcl‐1 expressions by directly targeting the 3′UTR regions of their respective mRNAs.
Antioxidant properties of fullerenol C60(OH)24 in rat kidneys, testes, and lungs treated with doxorubicin

Clinical use of doxorubicin continues to be challenged by its undesirable systematic toxicity, caused mainly by oxidative stress. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of fullerenol C60(OH)24 polyanion nanoparticles, an antioxidant agent, against doxorubicin-induced nephro-, testicular, and pulmonary toxicity. Results obtained in vitro suggest that fullerenol’s anti-proliferative property and protective effect against doxorubicin cytotoxicity are mediated by the antioxidative and radical scavenging activity. Male Wistar rats were divided into five treatment groups: the control group (I) received 0.9% NaCl (1 mL/kg, i.p.). Groups II, III, IV, and V received a single dose of doxorubicin (10 mg/kg i.p.), doxorubicin/fullerenol (100 and 50 mg/kg i.p. of fullerenol 30 min prior to 10 mg/kg i.p. of doxorubicin), and fullerenol (100 mg/kg i.p.), respectively. On the 2nd and 14th days, organ samples were taken for the measurement of lipid peroxidation and activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione-peroxidase, -reductase, and -transferase. Doxorubicin induced a significant increase of lipid peroxidation and alterations of antioxidant enzyme activities, while the fullerenol pre-treatment prevented the effects of doxorubicin on investigated parameters. Fullerenol, applied alone, did not alter basal values of the investigated animals. Considering the mechanisms of doxorubicin toxicity, it can be concluded that fullerenol exerts its protective role by acting as a free radical sponge and/or by removing free iron through formation of fullerenol-iron complex. Results of this study support the hypothesis of testicular, pulmo-, and nephroprotective efficacy of fullerenol in preventing oxidative stress induced by doxorubicin.
Degradation of intestinal glycoproteins by pathogenic Shigella flexneri

Intestinal mucin glycoproteins were examined for their ability to sustain growth of pathogenic shigella. Inoculation of germfree cecal mucin glycoproteins with Shigella flexneri 4b resulted at 48 h in a 940-fold increase in the enteropathogen concentration. Investigation in vitro of enzymatic degradation by the pathogen led to the identification of a blood group B-degrading glycosidase produced by the bacteria. In in vivo experiments, fecal supernatants of mice monocontaminated with S. flexneri 4b contained an alpha-galactosidase active against the p-nitrophenyl-glycoside. This fecal alpha-galactosidase peaked 5 days after shigella contamination, showing 2.8 +/- 1.4 mU of enzyme activity per mg of protein. Contaminated fecal supernatants similarly destroyed the blood group B reactivity of cecal mucin glycoproteins. These data suggested that S. flexneri 4b could proliferate within ileocolonic environment by enzymatically degrading mucin glycoprotein sugars.
Integrated approach to understanding consumer behavior at bottom of pyramid

Purpose – It is estimated that the poorest of the world, termed as being economically at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP), have a purchasing power of $5 trillion. This paper aims to study what and why they consume, and how firms can best address those needs, an area that is relatively new.Design/methodology/approach – The authors categorize the products and services people at the bottom of the pyramid consume with specific examples of both products and companies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and look at the theoretical frameworks that could explain those consumption patterns.Findings – The authors find that despite income and resource constraints, BoP consumers are sophisticated and creative. They are motivated not just by survival and physiological needs but seek to fulfill higher order needs either to build social capital, for cultural reasons or as a compensatory mechanism. They also find that when firms offer products that also fulfill these higher order needs, especially through linkages to educ.
The Use of Internet Facilities among the Tertiary Institution Students: Ogun State Institute of Technology, Igbesa, Nigeria, Under Study

Studies have shown that students and the young people misuse the internet facilities in the society. This study was conducted, therefore, to investigate the mis-use of internet facilities among the students of tertiary Institution in Nigeria. A survey of design was implemented in carrying out the research with emphasis on quantitative method. Questionnaires were administered among the students (n = 100) as research tool of gathering information and data from them. The research setting (Ogun State Institute of Technology) was conveniently sampled, while accidental sampling was employed to select the student respondents who participated in the study. The study discovered that most of the sites visited by the students were not academic websites and that they spend many hours on the websites that are not educationally productive. The study recommends enactment of rules that will govern the use of internet among the students, the disability of the websites that are not academically oriented and the re-orientation of the students on how to make judicious use of internet, enhance their academic performances in the school.
Some Characteristics of One Type of High Reliability Organization

This paper is concerned with defining organizational processes necessary to operate safely technologically complex organizations that can do great physical harm to themselves and their surrounding environments. The paper first argues that existing organizational research is little help in understanding organizational processes in such organizations. It then identifies nuclear powered aircraft carriers as examples of potentially hazardous organizations with histories of excellent operations. The paper then examines a set of components of “risk” identified by Perrow (1984) and antecedents to catastrophe elucidated by Shrivastava (1986) and discusses how carriers deal with these factors to lessen their potentially negative effects. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research.
Consumer perceptions and attitudes of organic food products in Eastern China

Purpose – In response to food scares related to high levels of agro-chemical residues sometimes found on foods, consumers in China increasingly demand for organic foods. As little is known on consumer perceptions and attitudes toward organic food products, the purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the purchase of organic food products by consumers and to explore the main factors driving this process. Design/methodology/approach – Mixed (quantitative and qualitative) market survey approaches were used to provide a potentially deeper insight into consumer’s perspective and could help get a better picture of the complex factors involved. Findings – The main trigger for purchasing organic food products is that consumers expect them to be healthier and safer. The respondents who have bought organic food products tend to have a higher education level and disposable incomes, be families with children and be older than those who have not bought them. The main barriers to increasing the market share of org.