Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The year 2007 survey

Purpose – This study attempts to provide insight into the dynamics of the third party logistics (3PL) industry in the Asia‐Pacific (APAC) region.Design/methodology/approach – The data reported in this paper were generated through a survey of the chief executive officer (CEOs) of ten of the largest 3PLs operating in the region.Findings – Those companies anticipate substantial regional revenue growth, with nearly one‐quarter of that growth coming from acquisitions. Private equity (PE) investors have been active in the region, and the CEOs are divided as to whether that is a positive or negative development. Price compression, market entrance of foreign 3PLs, and increased pressure to internationalize services were identified as the most important regional market dynamics. Continued growth of intra‐Asian business and possible expansion of transportation services were cited as the most important regional opportunities. A continuing shortage of management talent, the region's regulatory structure, and inferior.
PENGARUH PROFITABILITAS, PERTUMBUHAN AKTIVA, STRUKTUR AKTIVA, DAN PAJAK TERHADAP STRUKTUR MODAL

Tercapainya tujuan perusahaan tidak terlepas dari penentuan struktur modal yang tepat. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui pengaruh profitabilitas, pertumbuhan aktiva, struktur aktiva dan pajak terhadap struktur modal. Sampel dalam penelitian ini adalah Perusahaan Property dan Real Estate yang terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia. Alat analisis yang digunakan adalah analisis regresi linear berganda. Berdasarkan pembahasan hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa profitabilitas tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap struktur modal, pertumbuhan aktiva tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap struktur modal, struktur aktiva berpengaruh positif atau signifikan terhadap struktur modal, dan pajak berpengaruh positif atau signifikan terhadap struktur modal.
Managing employee attitudes and behaviors in the tourism and hospitality industry

The tourism industry, of which the hospitality industry is the core element, is one of the largest and the fastest growing industries world-wide. According to World Tourism Organisation forecasts, the industry will continue to grow and employ more people in the twenty-first century. In parallel with the growth of the tourism and hospitality industry world-wide, consumer expectations and demands for quality are rising while consumer tastes are varying on the one hand, and competition among the firms, both nationally and internationally, is intensifying on the other. In this business environment of heightened consumer expectations, distinct market segments that demand unique products and services, and stiff competition, tourism and hospitality organisations are looking for ways to excel in service quality, customer satisfaction, competition and performance. This book takes the view that employees are one of the most, if not the most, important resources or assets for tourism and hospitality organisations in their endeavour to provide excellent service, meet and exceed consumer expectations, achieve competitive advantage and exceptional organisational performance. The purpose of this book is to emphasise the critical role of employees for tourism and hospitality organisations and to examine the ways and means of managing their attitudes and behaviours for the mutual benefit of both parties: tourism and hospitality organisations and their employees.
Corporate governance systems and ownership structures : implications for corporate performance - evidence from Hong Kong

Corporate governance is an important variable that can serve to enhance firm performance. This dissertation focuses on a key corporate governance variable, that of managerial ownership. While Jensen and Meckling's (1976) "convergence of interest" hypothesis suggests that increases in managerial ownership can enhance firm performance, Fama and Jensen (1983) and La Porta et al. (1999) argue that at high levels of managerial ownership there are "entrenchment effects" (that is, managers will pursue their own interests). Although there are mixed results, the UK and US literature in general suggests that the relationship between managerial ownership and firm performance is non-linear in nature and conforms to a cubic relationship corresponding to "alignment-entrenchment-alignment" (that is, alignment at low levels of managerial ownership, followed by entrenchment at intermediate levels of managerial ownership and alignment once again at high levels of managerial ownership). It is doubtful whether this relationship is the same under different corporate ownership structures. Claessens et al. (2000) document the fact that most of the firms in the East-Asian region are characterised by a concentrated form of familycontrolled ownership, in contrast to the diffuse form of ownership in the UK and the US. Hong Kong is a prime example of an economy dominated by a family-controlled ownership structure. The thesis contributes to the academic literature on corporate governance by its examination of the relationship between managerial ownership and corporate performance III Hong Kong. Based on the regressIOn results of 1406 firm-year
Instructional support for distance education and faculty motivation, commitment, satisfaction

The purpose of this study is to examine the faculty perceptions of instructional support in relation to faculty members' motivation, commitment, and satisfaction associated with distance teaching. Findings indicated that faculty motivation and commitment toward distance teaching were strong in general. However, faculty motivation and commitment were higher in the institutions with well-provided instructional support.
Genetic variation of hepatitis B surface antigen coding region among infants with chronic hepatitis B virus infection

Variants in the amino acid composition of the primary antibody‐binding site of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) have been identified in a number of populations with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Direct sequencing of amplified or cloned PCR products, solid phase detection of sequence‐specific PCR products (SP‐PCR), and limiting dilution cloning PCR (LDC‐PCR) were compared to determine their sensitivity in detecting differing concentrations of HBsAg variants. LDC‐PCR had the greatest sensitivity and could detect HBsAg variants at a concentration of 0.1% of the total viral population. HBsAg variants were detected in 51% of infants with chronic HBV infection acquired after postexposure prophylaxis, and more than half of the variants were detected only by the most sensitive methods. J. Med. Virol. 68:319–327, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
System Cost Growth Associated with Technology-Readiness Level

Introduction Today most cost-estimating tools being used by the Air Force and other DOD organizations fail to take into account the technical maturity of various technologies required for successful completion of the program. In this paper, we develop a methodology to account for anticipated cost growth as technologies mature across the scale of 1-9 Technology-Readiness Levels (TRLs) defined by NASA (See Appendix A). We recognize that numerous programs in the Air Force, DOD, and NASA have their initial cost estimate prepared early in the cycle of technological maturity. At those early TRLs (3-5) much knowledge of how the technology will mature has yet to be revealed to the program engineers and hence to the cost estimators. As investments are made in these programs, the technologies mature, and updated cost estimates show a growth over initial estimates. This cost growth tends to require increased budgets and occasionally results in program managers getting fired or, at best, blaming cost estimators for not providing good initial estimates. This study offers a method for planning more accurately for cost growth associated with the time to mature technologies associated with each specific system under development, thereby reducing the risk of incurring unanticipated overruns to the plan.
The influence of socio-demographic factors on work performance among employees of government agricuture agencies in Malaysia.

Work performance has been identified as the significant key for organizations to gain competitive advantage and superior productivity. Thus, this study intends to discover what exactly affect work performance among employees of government agriculture agencies in Malaysia. A total of 180 employees were selected as the respondents for this study. The respondents were chosen from ten government agriculture agencies in Malaysia. From the ANOVA and independent t-test conducted, type of residential house was found to have significant difference with work performance while Pearson Correlation employed indicated that age, working experience and gross monthly salary has significant and positive relationship with work performance.
Cytokine Production by Natural Killer Lymphocytes in Follicular and Luteal Phase of the Ovarian Cycle in Humans

PROBLEM: The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that, during luteal phase of the ovarian cycle, as compared with follicular phase, the cytokine productive capacity of peripheral natural killer (NK)‐lymphocytes in humans is shifted towards a “Th2‐type”‐like response. METHOD OF STUDY: Intracellular Th1 and Th2 cytokine production by in vitro activated peripheral NK‐lymphocytes in a whole blood preparation of the follicular and the luteal phase of the ovarian cycle was measured by flow cytometry. RESULTS: There was no difference in interferon (IFN)(‐γ, interleukin (IL)‐2, IL‐4, and IL‐10 cytokine production in activated NK‐lymphocytes when comparing luteal phase with follicular phase of the ovarian cycle. However, there was a significant increase in peripheral NK‐lymphocyte number in luteal phase compared with follicular phase. CONCLUSION: The cytokine productive capacity of peripheral NK‐lymphocytes is not shifted towards a “Th2‐type”‐like response in the luteal phase as compared with the follicular phase of the ovarian cycle in humans.
Self-similar patterns of nature: insect diversity at local to global scales

The insects are probably the most hyperdiverse and economically important metazoans on the planet, but there is no consensus on the best way to model the dimensions of their diversity at multiple spatial scales, and the huge amount of information involved hinders data synthesis and the revelation of ‘patterns of nature’. Using a sample of more than 600k insect species in the size range 1–100 mm, we analysed insect body sizes and revealed self-similar patterns persisting across spatial scales from several hectares to the World. The same patterns were found in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The patterns include: parallel rank-abundance distributions; flatter species–area curves in smaller insects—indicating their wider geographical distribution; the recurrence of the same species-rich family in the same body-size class at all spatial scales—which generates self-similar size-frequency distributions (SFDs)—and the discovery that with decreasing mean body size, local species richness represents an increasing fraction of global species richness. We describe how these ‘rationalizing’ patterns can be translated into methods for monitoring and predicting species diversity and community structure at all spatial scales.
On the Choice of Alternative Measures in Importance Sampling with Markov Chains

In the simulation of Markov chains, importance sampling involves replacing the original transition matrix, say P, with a suitably chosen transition matrix Q that tends to visit the states of interest more frequently. The likelihood ratio of P relative to Q is an important random variable in the importance sampling method. It always has expectation one, and for any interesting pair of transition matrices P and Q, there is a sample path length that causes the likelihood ratio to be close to zero with probability close to one. This may cause the variance of the importance sampling estimator to be larger than the variance of the traditional estimator. We develop sufficient conditions for ensuring the tightness of the distribution of the logarithm of the likelihood ratio for all sample path lengths, and we show that when these conditions are satisfied, the likelihood ratio is approximately lognormally distributed with expected value one. These conditions can be used to eliminate some choices of the alternative transition matrix Q that are likely to result in a variance increase. We also show that if the likelihood ratio is to remain well behaved for all sample path lengths, the alternative transition matrix Q has to approach the original transition matrix P as the sample path length increases. The practical significance of this result is that importance sampling can be difficult to apply successfully in simulations that involve long sample paths.
Intra- and inter-session reliability of vertical jump performance in healthy middle-aged and older men and women

Abstract Despite its widespread use in performance assessment, the reliability of vertical jump in an ageing population has not been addressed properly. The aim of the present study was to assess intra- and inter-day reliability of countermovement jump in healthy middle-aged (55–65 years) and older (66–75 years) men and women. Eighty-two participants were recruited and asked to perform countermovement jumps on two different occasions interspersed by 4 weeks. The middle-aged groups exhibited excellent absolute reliability for flight height, jump height, peak force, peak power, peak force/body mass, and peak power/body mass, with coefficients of variation ranging from 2.9% to 7.2% in men and from 3.6% to 6.9% in women and moderate-to-high intraclass correlations (0.75 to 0.97 in men; 0.77 to 0.95 in women). The older groups displayed good coefficients of variation (4.2% to 10.8% in men and 3.4% to 9.5% in women), but the intraclass correlations were low-to-high (0.43 to 0.84 in men; 0.42 to 0.93 in women). Overall, intra-session reliability was higher than inter-session reliability. Peak power was by far the most consistent variable, whereas flight and jump height had the most marked variability. The minimum detectable change varied from 10.5% to 33%, depending on the variable examined, suggesting important implications for intervention studies.
Randomized Comparison of 3 Methods to Screen for Domestic Violence in Family Practice

PURPOSE We undertook a study to compare 3 ways of administering brief domestic violence screening questionnaires: self-administered questionnaire, medical staff interview, and physician interview. METHODS We conducted a randomized trial of 3 screening protocols for domestic violence in 4 urban family medicine practices with mostly minority patients. We randomly assigned 523 female patients, aged 18 years or older and currently involved with a partner, to 1 of 3 screening protocols. Each included 2 brief screening tools: HITS and WAST-Short. Outcome measures were domestic violence disclosure, patient and clinician comfort with the screening, and time spent screening. RESULTS Overall prevalence of domestic violence was 14%. Most patients (93.4%) and clinicians (84.5%) were comfortable with the screening questions and method of administering them. Average time spent screening was 4.4 minutes. Disclosure rates, patient and clinician comfort with screening, and time spent screening were similar among the 3 protocols. In addition, WAST-Short was validated in this sample of minority women by comparison with HITS and with the 8-item WAST. CONCLUSIONS Domestic violence is common, and we found that most patients and clinicians are comfortable with domestic violence screening in urban family medicine settings. Patient self-administered domestic violence screening is as effective as clinician interview in terms of disclosure, comfort, and time spent screening.
Utility of single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography imaging in evaluation of chronic low back pain

Introduction: Abnormal morphologic findings in imaging were thought to explain the etiology of low back pain (LBP). However, it is now known that variety of morphologic abnormalities is noted even in asymptomatic individuals. Single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography (SPECT/CT) could be used to differentiate incidental findings from clinically significant findings. Objective: This study was performed to define the SPECT/CT patterns in patients with LBP and to correlate these with clinical and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings. Materials and Methods: Thirty adult patients with LBP of duration 3 months or more were prospectively evaluated in this study. Patients with known or suspected malignancy, trauma or infectious processes were excluded. A detailed history of sensory and motor symptoms and neurologic examination was performed. All the patients were subjected to MRI and bone scintigraphy with hybrid SPECT/CT of the lumbo-sacral spine within 1 month of each other. The patients were classified into those with and without neurologic symptoms, activity limitation. The findings of clinical examination and imaging were compared. MRI and SPECT/CT findings were also compared. Results: Thirty patients (18 men and 12 women; mean age 38 years; range 17-64 years) were eligible for the study. Clinically, 14 of 30 (46%) had neurologic signs and or symptoms. Six of the 30 patients (20%) had positive straight leg raising test (SLRT). Twenty-two of the 30 patients (73%) had SPECT abnormality. Most frequent SPECT/CT abnormality was tracer uptake in the anterior part of vertebral body with osteophytes/sclerotic changes. Significant positive agreement was noted between this finding and MRI evidence of degenerative disc disease. Only 13% of patients had more than one abnormality in SPECT. All 30 patients had MRI abnormalities. The most frequent abnormality was degenerative disc disease and facet joint arthropathy. MRI showed single intervertebral disc abnormality in 36% of the patients and more than one intervertebral disc abnormality in remaining 64% patients. Fifteen of the 30 patients had facet joint arthropathy. 60% of these patients had involvement of more than one level facet joints while 38% had associated inter vertebral disc disease. 83% of the patients with positive SLRT had SPECT and MRI abnormalities. 100% of patients with neurologic symptoms had SPECT and MRI abnormalities. Conclusion: Addition of hybrid SPECT/CT data will help differentiate incidental from significant MRI abnormalities as all patients with LBP have MRI abnormalities and most have MRI abnormalities at multiple sites. Tracer uptake in the anterior part of the vertebral body represents degenerative disc disease. MRI is sensitive and SPECT/CT is specific for facet joint arthropathy. Both investigations are best used complementary to each other.
Data in Action: Data-Driven Decision Making in U.S. Manufacturing

Manufacturing in America has become significantly more data-intensive. We investigate the adoption, performance effects and organizational complementarities of data-driven decision making (DDD) in the U.S. Using data collected by the Census Bureau for 2005 and 2010, we observe the extent to which manufacturing firms track and use data to guide decision making, as well as their investments in information technology (IT) and the use of other structured management practices. Examining a representative sample of over 18,000 plans, we find that adoption of DDD is earlier and more prevalent among larger, older plants belonging to multi-unit firms. Smaller single-establishment firms adopt later but have a higher correlation with performance than similar non-adopters. Using a fixed-effects estimator, we find the average value-added for later DDD adopters to be 3% greater than non-adopters, controlling for other inputs to production. This effect is distinct from that associated with IT and other structured management practices and is concentrated among single-unit firms. Performance improves after plants adopt DDD, but not before – consistent with a causal relationship. However, DDD-related performance differentials decrease over time for early and late adopters, consistent with firm learning and development of organizational complementarities. Formal complementarity tests suggest that DDD and high levels of IT capital reinforce each other, as do DDD and skilled workers. For some industries, the benefits of DDD adoption appear to be greater for plants that delegate some decision making to frontline workers.
APC-Independent NK Cell Activation

Last year, The Journal of Immunology published Kerstin N. Schmidt’s work titled “APC-Independent Activation of NK Cells by the Toll-Like Receptor 3 Agonist Double-Stranded RNA” ([1][1]). In this paper there is an unclear issue about NK cell cytotoxicity assay. The effector cells were human
Foundations of Business

1. Exploring the World of Business and Economics. 2. Being Ethical and Socially Responsible. 3. Exploring Global Business. 4. Choosing a Form of Business Ownership. 5. Small Business, Entrepreneurship, and Franchises. 6. Understanding the Management Process. 7. Creating a Flexible Organization. 8. Producing Quality Goods and Services. 9. Attracting and Retaining the Best Employees. 10. Motivating and Satisfying Employees and Teams. 11. Building Customer Relationships through Effective Marketing. 12. Creating and Pricing Products That Satisfy Customers. 13. Distributing and Promoting Products. 14. Understanding Information and e-Business. 15. Using Accounting Information. 16. Mastering Financial Management. Glossary. Appendix A. Understanding Personal Finances and Investments. Appendix B. Careers in Business. Appendix C. Enhancing Union-Management Relations (on companion Web site). Appendix D. Risk Management and Insurance (on companion Web site). Appendix E. Business Law, Regulation, and Taxation (on companion Web site).
Beef Cattle Marketing and Illegal Trading in North Western Amhara, Ethiopia

An assessment of cattle marketing, trading systems and its chains was conducted in North and west Gondar and Gojam zones, northern Ethiopia. An exploratory field survey was considered to characterize beef marketing and illegal cattle trading system. Beef marketing constraints prioritized by the respondents in the study area included live animal exporting, taxation in Ethiopia and no taxes in Sudan, Sudan demand deflation and absence of quarantine. Most respondents frequently mentioned taxation in Ethiopia and non-taxes (Free) in Sudan as the first ranked constraint in all districts followed by Sudan demand deflation as the second major problem. Absence of quarantine between Ethiopia and Sudan was the bottleneck of cattle marketing in Maksegnit district in particular and in north Gondar zone in general where exportation of live animals was identified as a common limitation in all districts. The main actors of beef cattle marketing in the study area include brokers, licensed traders and illegal traders with the proportion of 34%, 48% and 88%, respectively. Beef marketing mainly practiced in the local market is correlated with seasons and traders. Identification constraints are routinely affected by the resources in the country.