Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing the rigor of case study research in supply chain management

Purpose – This paper aims to assess the current practice in research on supply chain management applying a case study method. Two particular research fields, namely sustainable supply chain management (SustSCM) and performance supply chain management (PerformSCM), are used as examples.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a content analysis, where quality criteria for documenting case study research are analyzed. A total of 68 papers from the two research fields (51 SustSCM and 17 PerformSCM) forms the sample. The criteria of analysis chosen are taken from the case study research process.Findings – There are two major findings: first, supply chain researchers have to make a greater effort to collect data from supply chains (i.e. at least two, or better, three or more stages of the supply chains). Second, the research process needs to be more comprehensively documented in related peer‐reviewed journal publications. This way, the value of case study based research might be appreciated more, as.
Phosphate Nutrition and Defoliation Effects on Growth and Root Physiology of Alfalfa

ABSTRACT Phosphorus (P) deficiency reduces forage yield and stand persistence of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.). The objective of this study was to determine the influence of P nutrition and defoliation on alfalfa shoot growth, root carbohydrate and protein metabolism, and steady-state mRNA levels for high-affinity P transporters. In a greenhouse study, P-deprived plants were provided with 0, 0.25, 2, and 6 mM P beginning 7 d before shoot removal. Plants were sampled immediately (day -7) on days -5, -2, 0 (day of shoot removal), and on days 1, 2, 6, and 9 post-shoot removal. Addition of P to P-deficient plants stimulated growth of shoots but not roots. Taproot bark sugar concentrations were reduced significantly in cut plants at any rate of P, whereas only the 6 mM P treatment reduced taproot wood sugar concentrations in uncut plants. There was a significant defoliation-induced decline in both wood and bark sugar and amino-acid concentration that was enhanced at high P rates. Low P reduced utilization of starch and protein reserves in taproots. Transcripts for a high-affinity P transporter were not detected in any root or shoot tissue assayed, irrespective of defoliation or P treatment. The uncertain relationship between P availability and P-transporter transcript abundance in our greenhouse-grown plants requires additional investigation.
Can universally composable cryptographic protocols be practical

The Universal Composability (UC) framework provides provable security guaranties for harsh application environment, where we want to construct protocols which keep security guarantees even when they are concurrently composed with arbitrary number of arbitrary (even hostile) protocols. This is a very strong guarantee. The UC-framework inherently supports the modular design, which allows secure composition of arbitrary number of UC-secure components with an arbitrary protocol. In contrast, traditional analysis and design is a stand alone analysis where security of a single instance is considered, i.e. an instance which is not in potential interaction with any concurrent instances. Furthermore, a typical traditional analysis is informal, i.e. without a formal proof. In spite of these facts, beyond the task of key-exchange this technology have not really took the attention of the community of applied cryptography. From practitioner's point of view the UC-world may seem more or less an academic interest of theoretical cryptographers. Accordingly we take a pragmatic approach, where we concentrate on meaningful compromises between the assumed adversarial strength, ideality wishes and realization complexity while keeping provable security guarantees within the UC-framework. We believe that even modest but provable goals (especially, if tunable to application scenarios) are interesting if a wider penetration of the UC-technology is desired into the daily-practice of protocol applications. Index Terms—Cryptographic protocols, provable security, universal composability.
Role of Financial Development in Economic Growth: Evidence from Savings and Credits Cooperative Societies in Tanzania

In this paper we examine the role of Savings and Credits Cooperative Societies (SACCoS) in the economic growth of Tanzania by answering two main questions. First, are financial services in SACCoS significant factors for economic growth? Second, are financial services in SACCoS Granger causing economic growth? We use credits-real GDP per capita ratio and savings-real GDP per capita ratio as proxy measures for financial services and real GDP per capita for economic growth. We employ Newey-West standard errors regression model and Wald Granger causality tests in analysis. The sample period is 1990-2012. Data are from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Cooperatives, World Economic Outlook (WEO) database, International Monetary Fund (IMF). The findings show that, there is a strong positive association between the financial services and the economic growth, also there istwo-ways Granger causality between them. However, we find out that savings are much important in fostering economic growth as compared to credits/loans. These criteria make SACCoS the distinct microfinance institutions in the economic development in Tanzania and therefore should be promoted with more emphasis on the savings objective.
Productivity growth of dairy farms having conventional vs. automatic milking system

The aim of this study was to determine whether the switch from conventional milking systems (CMS) to automatic milking systems (AMS) has positive effects on the productivity growth. Production function analysis was implemented over a rotating panel data of 323 Finnish dairy farms during the period of 2000–2011. The total factor productivity growth was 1.7% per year on farms that stayed in CMS and 3.1% per year on farms that had switched to AMS. The improvement was linked to overall reforms in production technology and an expansion in herd size but the adoption of AMS intensified the positive development.
Recovery strategies in Serbian mature companies

The main purpose of this study was to assess the impact of key influencing factors on four different recovery strategies such as management changes, financial restructuring, internal and external strategies. The research sample comprised 48 mature companies in Serbia. The Empirical results show that top management would select financial restructuring if inadequate financial control and policy caused acute crisis in mature company, which had medium competitive position in mature industry. The managers in all observed companies implemented internal strategies, especially divestment, regardless the key influencing factors. If competitive weakness caused crisis in a company with medium competitive position, top management would select external strategies.
Do Small and Medium‐Sized IT Firms Form Service Partnerships with Nonlocal IT Firms? An Assessment of Facilitators

For small and medium‐sized information technology firms (s), the service partnerships formed with other firms are strategic instruments to overcome their resource constraints, increase efficiency, and offer complementary services to their customers. Although these firms have a tendency to form local partnerships due to ease of trust building, few of them are engaged in nonlocal partnerships. This research aims to explore the facilitators of this divergent firm behavior. The findings suggest that a firm's alliance capabilities and organizational proximities between distant partners can substitute the lack of geographical proximity and enable s' engagement in nonlocal service partnerships. More importantly, the type of service rendered through the partnership acts as a moderator and determines the extent of the organizational capabilities and proximities.
"On Transit": Changes of Role Identity and Consumer-Brand Relationships during Transition from Student to Professional Life

Andrea Hemetsberger is Professor of Branding at the University of Innsbruck School of Management, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria, Phone: +43/512 507 – 7213, Fax: +43/512 507 – 2842, E-Mail: andrea.hemetsberger@uibk.ac. at. Martina Bauer is PhD Student and Research Assistant at the University of Innsbruck School of Management, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria, Phone: +43/512 507 – 7208, Fax: +43/512 507 – 2842, E-Mail: martina.bauer@ uibk.ac. at. Sylvia von Wallpach is Assistant Professor at the University of Innsbruck School of Management, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria, Phone: +43/512 507 – 7204, Fax: +43/512 507 – 2842, E-Mail: sylvia.von-wallpach@ uibk.ac. at. Katrin Broger is a Graduate of the University of Innsbruck School of Management, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria, Phone: +43/699 181 188 04, E-Mail: k.broger@ broger.info. “On Transit” – Changes of Role Identity and ConsumerBrand Relationships during Transition from Student to Professional Life
Sea surface salinity measurements in the historical database : The role of surface salinity on upper ocean dynamics, air-sea interaction, and climate (SURFSAL)

[1]We have examined historical distributions of sea surface salinity (SSS) observations in a data set consisting of a combination of the World Ocean Database 1998 (WOD98) and a thermosalinograph and bucket salinity database collected from volunteer observing ships. It is well known that SSS in much of the world's ocean is measured infrequently or not at all. We find that 27% of one-degree squares in the world ocean (open and coastal, excluding the Arctic Ocean) had no observations of SSS in the historical database, and 70% had 10 or fewer. Systematic sampling of SSS (more than 10,000 observations per year globally) did not start until after 1960. Most SSS observations in the WOD98 are concentrated in the North Sea and coast of northern Europe, the east and west coasts of North America, and around Japan. About 28% of SSS measurements are in coastal waters. We plotted frequency histograms of SSS for some selected well-sampled one-degree squares in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific. We found most frequency histograms to be non-Gaussian. The main departure from normal distribution is due to anomalous low-salinity measurements creating a negative skewness. This conclusion is verified as a global phenomenon by examining statistics of mean-median SSS difference within one-degree squares. This quantity is found to be predominantly negative over the global ocean. These anomalous low-salinity values may be due to rainfall events, but there are other plausible physical mechanisms, like frontal movement and eddy activity. There were also areas where the distributions were bimodal due to the presence of meandering fronts with little cross-frontal mixing. Examples are shown where the non-Gaussian nature of the distributions in the areas examined is both a short-term and a long-term phenomenon. That is, the distributions are skewed on a nearly instantaneous (∼1 month) basis and averaged over long time periods (1 + years). This has important implications for climatologies because the differences between mean and modal SSS, for the analyzed one-degree squares, is of order 0.1. Furthermore, the implication for validation studies for remote sensing missions is that the studies must make enough measurements of SSS to determine the extent to which the probability density is not Gaussian.
Mechanical Ventilation: Relationship between Body Mass Index and Selected Patients' Outcomes at a University Hospital in Cairo

Background: Mechanical ventilation is a life-saving management approach for critically ill patients. However, it has certain negative consequences which may affect patients' outcomes. Among factors that could adversely influence the prognosis of these patients is the body mass index (BMI). Aim of the study: to investigate the relationship between BMI and selected outcomes of critically ill mechanically ventilated patients. Research Design: A descriptive correlational research design was utilized Research questions: a) what is the BMI profile of mechanically ventilated patients admitted to critical care units over a period of six months? b) What is the relationship between body mass index and frequency of organ dysfunction, length of ICU stay, weaning from mechanical ventilation, and the mortality rate among adult critically ill mechanically ventilated patients? Setting: different intensive care units of a university hospital in Cairo. Sample: A purposive sample of 30 critically ill patients connected to mechanical ventilators for at least 72 hours. Tools of data collection: Three tools were utilized to collect data pertinent to the current study: tool 1: patients’ demographic and medical data, tool 2: BURNS Wean Assessment Program (BWAP) checklist, tool 3: Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA score) tool. Results: More than three quarters (77%) of the studied sample were males, and more than one quarter (26.7 %) were in the age group of 18-28 and 40-50 years old respectively, with a mean age of 39.766 ± 13.51. Two thirds (66.7%) of the studied sample had normal BMI. No significant statistical relationship was found between BMI and ICU length of stay and mortality rate among the studied sample, ( X 2 = 11.31, P value < 0.79), ( X 2 = 0.15, P value < 0.928) respectively. No significant statistical relationship was found between BMI and the weaning trials from mechanical ventilation ( X 2 = 0.15, P value < 0.928). No significant statistical relationship was found between BMI and the occurrence of organ dysfunction ( X 2 = 2.54, P value < 0.637). Conclusion : BMI in the current study was not found to have relationship to weaning from MV, length of ICU stay, occurrence of organ failure, and mortality rate. Recommendations : Nutritional status of critically ill mechanically ventilated patients must be considered in their management; meticulous nutritional assessment must be done for all critically ill mechanically ventilated patients to enable in monitoring their progress and outcomes; development of a comprehensive assessment tool that facilitates inspection and early detection of problems/complications among mechanically ventilated patients' documentation system must include patients' nutritional assessment data such as anthropometric measurements (height, weight) to facilitate calculation of BMI. Keywords: Mechanical ventilation, body mass index, organ dysfunction, length of ICU stay, weaning from mechanical ventilation, mortality rate
Altered hub configurations during propofol-induced loss of consciousness

Graph-theoretical analysis of human brain functional networks based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have supported the existence of highly connected hub regions that may play a key role in brain function and cognition. Here, we investigated the hub distributions of 16 healthy volunteers during wakefulness and propofol-induced loss of consciousness (both light sedation and deep sedation). Functional connectivity between 160 cortical and subcortical regions was measured by correlation analysis and then thresholded to construct undirected graphs. We found that during wakefulness state highly connected hubs included bilateral angular, precuneus, posterior cingulate (PCC), superior frontal gyrus (SFG), ventrolateral frontal cortex (vFC), supplementary motor area (SMA) and pre-SMA, most of the which were in the default-mode network (DMN). However, during light sedation, we observed that hubs were mainly in posterior part of the brain ( inferior parietal lobule , inferior temporal, occipital). And the major hubs during deep sedation were in the occipital lobe and cerebellum. Compared with wakefulness, the hub structures were significantly changed from heteromodal association cortex to unimodal association and primary cortices. Our findings support a reduction in integrated information and a topological reconfiguration during decreasing levels of consciousness.
The Relationship between Organizational Learning Capability and Job Satisfaction

The effectiveness and productivity of an organization depends on its staff and if they don’t be satisfied from their job, continues of living for such organization is impossible. One of the important factors which influence on job satisfaction, is an organizational learning capability (OLC). So, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between organizational learning capability and its dimensions (experimentation, risk taking, interaction with the external environment, dialogue and participative decision making) with job satisfaction. The population of this study was the employees of Tejarat Bank in Sari city, Iran and the sample number became 103. The data of job satisfaction gathered by a single item of Chiva and Alegre’s (2008(questionnaire and for gathering the data of organizational learning capability, we used Chiva et al.’s (2007) OLC measurement instrument. For testing and analyzing the hypotheses, pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression have been used. The results of study show that there is a positive relationship between organizational learning capability with job satisfaction. Furthermore, the results revealed the five dimensions of organizational learning capability (experimentation, risk taking, interaction with the external environment, dialogue and participative decision making) had positive relationship with job satisfaction. Keywords: Organizational learning capability, Job satisfaction, Staff
INTERPLAY BETWEEN RAPID AND SLOW QUENCHING IN PREBIOTIC EVOLUTION

(Abstract) Prebiotic evolution on the primitive Earth could have proceeded through the interplay between the two modes of quenching, rapid and slow, of the synthesized products. The rapid quenching instrumental to stabilizing the synthesized products occurring near the surface of the Earth materializes as traversing from the high temperature specific to the energy source driving synthetic reactions, such as the photons from the sun or the magmatic heat from the core mantle of the Earth, to the normal ambient temperature near the surface. In contrast, the slow quenching as a necessary vehicle for disintegrating the synthesized products into the raw materials for the subsequent synthetic reactions to successively follow materializes as traversing from the normal ambient temperature near the surface of the Earth to the extremely low temperature characterizing deep outer space. A means of reaching out to deep outer space from the Earth is through the emission of the microwave photons. The microwave photons can be emitted in the process of orientational polarization of electric dipole moments intrinsic to the synthesized oligomeric products.
Large-scale structure evolution and sound emission in high-speed jets: real-time visualization with simultaneous acoustic measurements

This investigation presents a unique and elaborate set of experiments relating the generation of noise to the evolution of large-scale turbulence structures within an ideally expanded, Mach 1.28, high-Reynolds-number $(1.03\,{\times}\,10^{6})$ jet. The results appear to indicate many similarities between the noise generation processes of high-speed low-Reynolds-number and high-speed high-Reynolds-number jets. Similar to the rapid changes observed in theregion of noise generation in low-Reynolds-number jets in previous experimental and computational work, a series of robust flow features formed approximately one convective time scale before noise emission and then rapidly disintegrated shortly before the estimated moment of noise emission. Coincident with the disintegration, a positive image intensity fluctuation formed at the jet centreline in a region that is immediately past the endof the potential core. This indicates mixed fluid had reached the jet core. These results are consistent with the formation of large-scale structures within the shear layer, which entrain ambient air into the jet, and their eventual interaction and disintegration apparently result in noise generation. These results are quite different from the evolution of the jet during prolonged periods that lacked significant sound emission. The observations presented in this work were made through the use of well-established technique that were brought together in an unconventional fashion. The sources of large-amplitude sound waves were estimated in time and three-dimensional space using a novel microphone array/beamforming algorithm while the noise-generation region of the mixing layer was simultaneously visualized on two orthogonal planes (one of which was temporally resolved). The flow images were conditionally sampled based on whether or not a sound wave wascreated within the region of the flow while it was being imaged and a series of images was compiled that was roughly phase-locked onto the moment of sound emission. Another set of images was gathered based on a lack of sound waves reaching the microphone array over several convective time scales. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) was then used tocreate a basis for the flow images and this basis was used to reconstruct the evolution of the jet.
Sirex woodwasp range expansion in Australia: performance and parasitism on two commercial pine species

Sirex woodwasp was detected in Queensland in 2009 and rapidly established in softwood plantations (Pinus radiata and P. taeda) in southern border regions. Biocontrol inoculations of Deladenus siricidicola began soon after, and adults were monitored to assess the success of the programme. Wasp size, sex ratios, emergence phenology and nematode parasitism rates were recorded, along with the assessment of wild-caught females. Patterns varied within and among seasons, but overall, P. taeda appeared to be a less suitable host than P. radiata, producing smaller adults, lower fat body content and fewer females. Sirex emerging from P. taeda also showed lower levels of nematode parasitism, possibly due to interactions with the more abundant blue-stain fungus in this host. Sirex adults generally emerged between November and March, with distinct peaks in January and March, separated by a marked drop in emergence in early February. Temperature provided the best correlate of seasonal emergence, with fortnights with higher mean minimum temperatures having higher numbers of Sirex emerging. This has implications for the anticipated northward spread of Sirex into sub-tropical coastal plantation regions. Following four seasons of inundative release of nematodes in Queensland, parasitism rates remain low and have resulted in only partial sterilization of infected females.