Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of cassava value chain in Nigeria: pro-poor approach and gender perspective

In Nigeria, cassava has moved from a little yielding deprivation standby crop to a great bouncy money yielding products with its many other usages for livestock feeds, food and agro-industry raw materials. This study examines chain processes of cassava processes and identifies value along the chain with gendered perspective. The study was conducted in Southwest, Nigeria and choice was done systematically to select 250 cassava growers. Data were analysed by means of factor analysis and Poisson model. Results showed that most cassava male growers traded cassava in garden-fresh form exclusive of value, while female growers transformed cassava from its garden-fresh form and thus adding value along the chain for income increase. Female cassava farmers recognise that there are markets when cassava is transformed from its garden-fresh form. Consequently, it is essential to encourage suitable processing technologies for cassava products and effective contact to marketing information. Women need to be motivated to effectively use these resources. The study discovered that the advantages of women's partaking in agricultural value chains are defined by their power over valuable resources and their strength in household level rulings. This strategy could be a means to pro-poor gendered route out of poverty in many Nigerian homes.
Food information presentation: consumer preferences when eating out

Purpose Advances have been made in the provision of nutritional and ingredient information on packaged food, however, there is a need to translate this to eating out reflecting consumer desire for greater transparency and knowledge of menu content. The purpose of this paper is to assess consumer’s preferences for food information presentation in four European countries (UK, Greece, Denmark and France) in a workplace dining setting. Design/methodology/approach This study focusses on workplace canteens since the regularity in which they are used provides an important context and potential for behaviour change. An exploratory phase designed iteratively in collaboration with experts, end-users and researchers (qualitative) informed a survey (quantitative) conducted in four European countries. The survey was used to examine workplace diners’ preferences towards food information presentation. Findings Differences were found and clustered (n=5) to “heuristic processors” (33 per cent) “brand orientated” (25 per cent) “systematic processors” (17.3 per cent) “independent processors” (16.1 per cent) and “tech-savvy” (8.6 per cent). Dual-process theories were used to analyse the findings and produce new insight into how menu information can be most effectively delivered. Originality/value When eating-out consumers struggle to make choices or make the wrong choice from a health perspective, partly caused by a lack of nutrient profile information as well as other criteria of concern. Giving catering managers the understanding of preferred communication channels can enable a more competitive operator. Traffic light labelling was the optimal presentation with the opportunity for consumers to discover more detailed information if desired. For the first time this research has given operational clarity whilst allowing food providers to be considered as part of corporate health.
A Bibliometric Analysis of Open Strategy: A new Concept in Strategic Management

Strategy development has traditionally been an exclusive and secretive matter. However, some organizations have recently used IT to enable openness for making a strategy. The aim of this paper was to research the trends of open strategy by applying bibliometric mapping. The method involves identifying open strategy-related documents, including a sample of 1717 existing documents from 2000 to 2016. Major trends in open strategy research literature including variations across publication years, identifying active research areas, co-authorship collaboration, and contribution of different countries were explored. The results indicated that the use of open strategy concept is growing in strategic management, despite the initial nature of strategy making. Based on the results and according to the amount of published documents, the most productive year has been 2015.
Small to medium private enterprise: aligning shareholder, director and manager interests

Research into the corporate governance practices of small to medium sized private enterprises has been limited, as most of the current literature has focused on larger public corporations. Spectrum Resource Group Inc. (Spectrum) was utilized as the partner company in conducting this research, analysis and recommendations. The research focused on family, private, small to medium sized enterprises and employee owned companies to act as a foundation to analyze and compare to Spectrum's existing structure. This project focuses on the shareholder, director, manager relationships and the associated agency issues and costs. Furthermore, the project focuses on aligning appropriate incentives for different management levels considering both owner-managers and non-owner managers. Lastly, this research results in recommendations about the appropriate size, context and scope of board structures and director alignment. Overall it was found that incentives need to correspond to the type of job that is performed smaller boards have significant advantageous over larger boards, and finally, that the positions of shareholder, director and manager need to be clearly delineated. --P. ii.
Lower bounds on the quantum Fisher information based on the variance and various types of entropies

We examine important properties of the difference between the variance and the quantum Fisher information over four, i.e., $(\Delta A)^2-F_{\rm Q}[\varrho,A]/4. $ We find that it is equal to a generalized variance defined in Petz [J. Phys. A 35, 929 (2002)] and Gibilisco, Hiai, and Petz [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 55, 439 (2009)]. We present an upper bound on this quantity that is proportional to the linear entropy. As expected, our relation shows that for states that are close to being pure, the quantum Fisher information over four is close to the variance. We also obtain the variance and the quantum Fisher information averaged over all Hermitian operators, and examine its relation to the von Neumann entropy. Apart from the usual quantum Fisher information, we also consider the Kubo-Mori-Bogoliubov quantum Fisher information.
Diagonal Cumulation and Sourcing Decisions

Products must fulfill predetermined rules of origin to be exported under the preferential access granted by a free trade area member. In turn, rules of cumulation establish which countries' inputs qualify when computing the extent of origin of a product. Recent literature shows that restrictive rules of origin affect sourcing decision by reducing imports of intermediate goods from third countries relative to free trade area partners. This paper uses the introduction of the Pan-European Cumulation System in 1997 to explore the effects of rules of cumulation on trade in intermediate goods. The system provided the European Union Free Trade Area's peripheral partners (''spokes'') the possibility of cumulating stages of production from more countries to qualify for preferential access to the European Union market. Therefore, the system might have altered the organization of production in European Union centric value chains. The paper estimates a triple difference-in-differences specification and exploits different control groups. The results show that the effects of rules of cumulation on trade in intermediates are larger, with the stricter rules of origin applied to the related final good. When switching from bilateral to diagonal cumulation, the analysis finds a reduction in spokes' imports of intermediates from the rest of the world relative to those from spoke, reinforcing value chain connections within the cumulation zone. The analysis also finds a reduction in spokes' imports from the European Union 15 relative to the rest of the world and the Spokes. The findings suggest that the Pan-European Cumulation System allowed a reassessment of sourcing decisions: thanks to the possibility to cumulate, peripheral countries re-organized global value chain links.
A Brief Survey of Corporate Social Responsibility in Malaysia

Over the years, the awareness of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been increasing and viewed as an integral part of business to cater to the increasing expectations for a wide spectrum of stakeholders in pursuing their trade responsibly. As a worldwide issue, CSR has resulted in the increasing number of studies done globally as well as in Malaysia. In general, this study aims to provide an overview of CSR research that has been conducted in Malaysia. Besides that, this study also evaluates the implementation of CSR among Malaysian companies. Based on the previous literature, most of the studies focused on the disclosure, determinants and perception towards CSR. Findings indicate that most of the studies in Malaysia mainly focused on the disclosure and less on awareness and perception. The findings of this study, in general, would benefit researchers, business entities, relevant authorities and policy makers in Malaysia in that they could focus more on the perception towards CSR, structure and plan the CSR activities and devise detailed and specific CSR requirements respectively so that the existing gap can be minimized.
), Demographics and Investor Biases at the Nairobi Securities Exchange, Kenya

The purpose of the study was to determine how demographics influence the effect of investor biases among individual investors at the Nairobi Securities Exchange, Kenya. A crosssectional study was carried out for the year 2015 among 279 investors. Data was analyzed using ANOVA. The findings depicted that men were more affected than women and the difference was significant. In terms of individual biases (Representativeness bias, availability bias, confirmation bias and disposition effect), gender had a significant effect on anchoring bias only. The effect of the investor biases did not differ significantly in terms of age, education and experience.
Housing Consumption and Investment: Evidence from Shared Equity Mortgages

Academics have proposed hybrid products with equity features for the financing of housing. In spite of their risk-sharing benefits these products have not become mainstream. This paper studies an important exception, a UK government scheme which in the five years since its inception has provided almost £10 billion of equity financing. The analysis of the origination and prepayment behavior of households who have used the scheme highlights housing affordability constraints. A difference-in-difference analysis of an increase in the maximum government equity limit shows that households took advantage of the increase to buy more expensive properties, and not to reduce their mortgage debt and house price risk exposure. A counterfactual study of homebuyers who, instead of using the equity available, relied on high loan-to-value mortgages shows that their financing choices can be rationalized by an expected rate of house price appreciation of 7.7% per year. We draw general implications for how households approach their house purchase and financing decisions, taking advantage of the fact that the shared equity mortgages that we study allow the separation of the consumption and investment dimensions of housing.
Nudges for Privacy and Security

Advancements in information technology often task users with complex and consequential privacy and security decisions. A growing body of research has investigated individuals’ choices in the presence of privacy and information security tradeoffs, the decision-making hurdles affecting those choices, and ways to mitigate such hurdles. This article provides a multi-disciplinary assessment of the literature pertaining to privacy and security decision making. It focuses on research on assisting individuals’ privacy and security choices with soft paternalistic interventions that nudge users toward more beneficial choices. The article discusses potential benefits of those interventions, highlights their shortcomings, and identifies key ethical, design, and research challenges.
Determinants of farm certification compliance for sustainable cocoa production in Ondo state, Nigeria

There is a remarkable downturn in cocoa production of recent due to low output and uncompetitive market prices. The situation has therefore led to an enormous gap in demand and supply of the produce to cocoa industries. The challenge now is how producers can sustainably cope with the needs of the ever growing and quality-inclined market. The study therefore investigates how farm certification is positioning the farmers to take advantage of the huge cocoa export market. Using multi-stage sampling procedure, 90 respondents were selected from the participating cooperatives societies in the study area. Interview schedule was used to collect data on socio-economic characteristics of the farmers, access to agricultural support services, farmers’ knowledge on farm certification measures, level of compliance and cocoa outputs. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics (percentages, frequencies and means) and inferential statistics. (Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Regression Analysis) The results showed that majority (97.8%) of the farmers were male with mean age of 48 years. The farmers indicated good access to all the components of the support services except supply of fertilizers. The farmers had good knowledge in 18 out of the 19 knowledge test questions and had full compliance with farm certification measures. There was a significant relationship between farmers’ knowledge of farm certification measures and compliance with agronomic practices (r= 0.503, p≤ 0.01). The result of the regression analysis indicated farmers’ age (β=0.425), output (β=0.300), access to support services (β=0.262) and knowledge of agronomic practices (β=0.249) as the leading determinants of farm certification compliance among cocoa farmers in the study area. The farmers’ high level of compliance with agronomic practices indicated that they are prepared to derive economic benefits from the dynamics in cocoa export market. For sustainable compliance with farm certification, experienced cocoa farmers with track record of productivity should be enlisted into the subsequent schemes.
From Individual to Collective Personas Modeling Realistic Groups and Communities of Users (and not Only Realistic Individual Users)

Personas are user models that are represented as specific, realistic humans. Initially focused on the modeling of individual users, the Persona method (see, e.g., Cooper) is gradually changing towards the inclusion of collectives of users (groups, communities, etc.). In other words, a " Collective Personas " trend is emerging. This paper reports a literature review reflecting this emerging trend. It synthesizes some issues and avenues related to collective personas development.
Real-time rendering of large building information models: Current state vs. state-of-the-art

With the use of Building Information Models (BIM), real-time 3D visualisations have become a natural tool in order to communicate ideas and share information between all involved parties in a project. Currently, several different BIM viewers are available for the purpose of interactive presentations and design reviews. However, as BIMs become larger and more detailed, it provides a challenge for available software solutions to manage them interactively. In this paper we present our findings from analysing three commonly used BIM viewers - Tekla BIMSight, Autodesk Navisworks and Solibri Model Viewer - in terms of real-time rendering performance. In addition we have developed a prototype BIM viewer to test modern approaches for efficient real-time rendering. Specifically, we have implemented the latest version of the Coherent Hierarchical Culling algorithm. Our results show that existing BIM viewers all share limitations in their ability to handle large and complex BIMs interactively. However, for the same test models, our prototype BIM viewer enables smooth real-time performance with no visual artefacts. The results from our tests thus shows that the technology to enable correct real-time rendering of large and complex BIMs is already accessible, but are currently not utilised by any of the tested BIM viewers.
Neural Networks in Electrical Engineering

Neural networks are a subject thought by some to be a branch of artificial intelligence (AI). Although neural network research dates back about sixty years, it is generally considered a newer problem solving technique than AI. Whereas AI is applied in the form of “if-then” rules, neural networks attempt to model the structure of the human brain and are based on selflearning. The structure is highly parallel, resulting in the ability to selforganize to represent information and rapidly solve problems in real time. However, even with today’s high-speed computers, artificial neural networks are limited by the fact that they can only replicate a small fraction of the brain’s total structure. Early work in neural networks was researched primarily by neuroscientists and psychologists, whose interests were in learning more about the brain. Soon after, mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists joined in. Engineers were attracted to the subject by recognizing its potential for solving problems for which other techniques, such as traditional computer programming, may not have been feasible or economical. Neural networks tend to do well at recognizing patterns within seemingly random data, as opposed to applications involving rules of logic. As a result, they have been applied to areas of business such as evaluation of loan applications and stock market pattern prediction, and to other areas such as handwriting and speech recognition and the detection of signals in a noisy environment. This paper will present a brief overview of a simple two-layer neural network structure and a supervised learning algorithm called Perceptron. In supervised learning the network is trained to map a given set of input patterns to known outputs. After the patterns have been “learned” the network can be tested for patterns with errors present. With the aid of MATLAB programs created by the author, Perceptron learning is first applied to a problem of alphabetic character recognition, which relates to the application of handwriting analysis. The algorithm is then used to train a network to distinguish among square, triangular and sinusoidal waveforms. The network is then tested by, superimposing a given level of “random” noise on each waveform, and determining whether the “noisy” waveforms can still be distinguished from each other. A third example
Simulation and realization on adaptive secondary synchronization signal detection in TD-LTE system

This paper introduced the detection method of the adaptive secondary synchronization signal in the LTE-TDD system.Firstly,using adaptive feedback method to correct the frequency-domain channel impulsed response which estimated by the primary synchronization signal.Through the coherent detection,enormously improved the detection success rate for secondary synchronization signal.Moreover,the method of using indices to detect secondary synchronization sequences greatly reduced the computational complexity.Both theory analysis and simulation results show that proposed algorithm has good performance in different channel conditions,and can satisfy the performance demand by the detection of secondary synchronization signal in TD-LTE system.
DATA COMPRESSION METHODS

Currently, there is a sharp worldwide increase in the volumes of the transmitted, stored, and processed information. Despite a certain share of superficiality, the term "information explosion" rather precisely describes the existing situation. According to the American research statistics, the volume of information created by the mankind by the year 2007 and stored on the artificial carriers amounted to 295 billion gigabytes (2.95×1020 bytes). These volumes determine the great importance of the "data compression" field of knowledge. The concept of "data compression" (DC) is very broad. Therefore, this article makes an attempt of the DC systematization (classification), which can facilitate the study of the problem as a whole as well as the choice of an appropriate method for solving a particular problem. The most known areas and specific examples of the DC application are concerned.
Statistical Parser on the PARC DepBank

We evaluate the accuracy of an unlexicalized statistical parser, trained on 4K treebanked sentences from balanced data and tested on the PARC DepBank. We demonstrate that a parser which is competitive in accuracy (without sacrificing processing speed) can be quickly tuned without reliance on large in-domain manuallyconstructed treebanks. This makes it more practical to use statistical parsers in applications that need access to aspects of predicate-argument structure. The comparison of systems using DepBank is not straightforward, so we extend and validate DepBank and highlight a number of representation and scoring issues for relational evaluation schemes.
Longitudinal And Panel Data Analysis And Applications In The Social Sciences

longitudinal and panel data: analysis and applications for longitudinal and panel data library of congress longitudinal and panel data analysis and applications in longitudinal and panel data analysis and applications in longitudinal and panel data analysis and applications in longitudinal and panel data analysis and applications in longitudinal analysis michael l. berbaum institute for ps2701 advanced methodology: longitudinal analysis course august, 2003 longitudinal and panel data: analysis and an overview of methods for the analysis of panel pol 574: quantitative analysis iv q-apsinceton longitudinal data analysis icpsr data analysis an introduction quantitative applications in home syllabus university of iowa department of 22s:162 applied generalized regression, spring 2010 poli 803: longitudinal data analysis multivariate longitudinal data analysis for actuarial growth mixture models in longitudinal research statmodel browse the table of contents, or select an option from by robert a. yaffee september 2003 portland state university biostatistics 537: longitudinal data analysis econometrics institute of information theory and automation sociology 7140—longitudinal data analysis (fall semester data analysis an introduction quantitative applications in by robert a. yaffee september 2003 sites.google analyzing panel data quantitative applications in the time series 10 panel data [read-only] thus spake vm mixture models for longitudinal analysis: applications of quantitative approaches to longitudinal research vijayamohanan pillai n thusspakevmles.wordpress an experience rating approach to insurer projected loss ratios g93.2314 longitudinal statistics course description/syllabus using panel data techniques for social science unirioja missing data quantitative applications in the social sciences download applied longitudinal data analysis: modeling sociology 7140—longitudinal data analysis (spring semester quantitative longitudinal research: references / resources