Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Member Values Over Time. A Study of the Relationship Between Member Values, Age and Length Of Membership

ABSTRACT Expectations of association members change over time depending on two factors: age and length of membership. In the product- and service-marketing literature, the fact of changing needs and expectations during a customer’s life cycle is already well explored. So far, this is not the case in the research on members of nonprofit organizations. This paper closes this research gap from a member-value perspective by discussing the links among age, length of membership, and value perception. Survey data from 1,613 members of a Swiss hiking trail association reveal that both temporal metrics show significant positive relationships with all member-value dimensions: enjoyment, affection, identity, power, participation, understanding, and safety. In this respect, length of membership shows stronger effects than age and the only member value unaffected by time is that of individual economic goals. The paper closes with practical implications for the management of membership associations.
Designing a customer communication system for critical incidents

The starting point for this thesis was a major incident on the entire Swiss rail network following a power cut. For several hours, rail traffic came to a standstill, with all trains stopped in their tracks. This situation caused the Swiss Federal Railway (SFR) to come under considerable fire. As a result, several projects were initiated which were intended to prevent a similar situation from reoccurring in the future. The optimisation of customer information in the event of incidents is one of these projects. As very little concrete literature exists on the subject of customer information in the rail environment, various subjects were studied in order to provide possible explanations. These include research areas such as customer satisfaction research, customer segmentation, and technological and sociological trends. Other dimensions, such as crisis and incident management and stakeholder management, provide best practice approaches which offer ideas for improvement. Propositions were formulated which deal with customer satisfaction and how this can be maintained. Methodologically, the thesis follows the case study approach. The first part deals with qualitative interviews carried out within the SFR organisation in order to examine the existing situation. The second part consists of an analysis of secondary quantitative data, using surveys to examine customers and their attitudes towards the company. It generally appears that customers accept breakdowns in a complex technological environment. However, it is vital to provide them with proactive and thorough information. This allows customer satisfaction to be maintained. On the basis of the propositions and interviews, it was possible to define various measures for improvement. It became apparent that a firm strategy, improved organisation and more customer contact can lead to optimisation. It was revealed that customer information during critical incidents is a basic factor according to the Kano model. No enthusiasm can therefore be generated for the suggested measures. However, it is possible to stabilise customer satisfaction. Customer
Factors and characteristics that influence consumers’ participation in social commerce

Purpose The popularity of social networks has created business opportunities to the electronic commerce environment, being recently named as social commerce. The purpose of this paper is to analyze – from the perspective of the consumer – the main factors and characteristics (personal or related to the products bought) that have influenced consumers to participate in social commerce buying, recommending, comparing and sharing information about products and services in online marketplace and communities. Design/methodology/approach The study is characterized as an exploratory descriptive research, operationalized through a survey, applied to 229 participants of the social network Facebook. The research involves a qualitative stage for identifying potential variables that influence the participation of consumers in social commerce, followed by a quantitative one, including data collection procedures, validation and data analysis. Findings The results show trust, perceived usefulness and information quality as the factors that most influence consumer participation in social commerce, being trust in the website the main predictor. Concerning the characteristics, the findings also show that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics use ratings, recommendations and comments online more intensively than books, travel, household appliances and fashion products. Research limitations/implications As limitations of the study, the authors highlight the small number of interviews conducted during the qualitative stage, which may have left out other relevant factors of the analysis on consumers’ participation in social commerce. Another limitation refers to the selection of the participants of the study; all members of the social network Facebook are identified by the contact net of the authors – though it has been tried to enlarge this contact list by requesting the respondents to share the questionnaire link with their acquaintances, we should be cautious about the generalization of the results. Originality/value The study proposes an instrument to identify factors and characteristics that are taken into consideration by the consumers when participating in social commerce. Such a tool can be replicated by firms included in this type of commerce, in order to evaluate the behavior and perception of their customers about their performance in the online environment. This study also highlights trust, information quality and perceived usefulness of the website as the most influencing factors of the consumers’ participation in social commerce. In addition, the authors identified that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics seem to use more intensively ratings, recommendations and comments online provided by other people. This fact supports the research literature that (positive or negative) online recommendations influence the consumers purchase behavior, reducing uncertainties about the products and increasing credibility and trust.
Asthma and sex hormones

A chronic in ammatory state of the airways is considered the hallmark of asthma (1). However, the incidence, severity, and prognosis of asthma can be affected by a number of factors, including the patient's sex and age. The sex of the fetus seems to in uence the development of the respiratory apparatus. In fact, between weeks 28 and 40 of gestation, the lungs are in a more advanced state in females than in males (2), a fact which could explain, at least in part, the higher incidence of respiratory distress in male infants (3). Clinical observations and epidemiologic studies agree that childhood asthma is more frequent in boys than in girls (4). Moreover, in some children, usually boys, asthmatic symptoms that started in infancy disappear around puberty (5), while many girls have the disease only during adolescence (6). Age has been implicated in the severity of asthma. Asthma beginning during adulthood is generally more severe than childhood-onset asthma (7). Asthma that starts around the menopause or in old age is generally quite severe (5). According to two recent epidemiologic investigations, the patient's sex and age affect the hospitalization rate for asthma (8, 9), which is a marker of severity. In the ®rst study (a retrospective study of 33 269 patients), the admission rate of boys in the 0±10-year age group was almost twice that of girls. In the next decade, sex differences in the hospitalization rate were irrelevant, although there was a small, but signi®cant prevalence of females. At all ages above 20 years, hospital admission rates were higher in women than men, with a female/ male ratio ranging from 3:1 in subjects aged 20±50 years to 2.5:1 in those over 50 years of age (8). Similar data were reported by Elliasson (9). Both studies found a relationship between the age and sex of the patient and the severity of the asthma attack as indicated by duration of hospitalization. In fact, the duration of hospitalization increased with age in both sexes; moreover, hospital stays were longer in women over 30 years of age than in men of the same age (8, 9). Abbreviations. FSH: follicle-stimulating hormone; LH: luteinizing hormone; NK cell: natural killer cell; IL-1, -4, -5, -6: interleukin-1, -4, -5, -6; TGF-b: tumor growth factor-beta; PEFR: peak expiratory ow rate. Allergy 2001: 56: 13±20 Printed in UK. All rights reserved Copyright # Munksgaard 2001
Modélisation non linéaire et étude expérimentale des bandes de cisaillement dans les sables

Une etude de la rupture des sols granulaires par localisation de la deformation en bandes de cisaillement est presentee. L'approche theorique de ce phenomene met en ouvre l'analyse de bifurcation en mode localise, dans laquelle la loi decrivant le comportement du sol joue un role preponderant. Une nouvelle loi incrementallement non lineaire est developpe pour decrire le comportement monotone des sables. Cette loi est concue de facon a rendre une meilleure description de l'apparition de la bande de cisaillement et de son orientation. La formulation choisie de la loi, bien qu'elle soit non lineaire, permet une analyse generale et explicite de la bifurcation. Une attention particuliere est accordee a la coherence des formulations de la loi pour les calculs au voisinage de la surface limite du sol. Avec des choix relativement simples, la loi developpe rend une bonne description des grands aspects du comportement des sables. L'analyse de bifurcation par la loi revele des resultats conformes aux tendances experimentales de la rupture localisee. Dans un cadre experimental, le meme sujet est etudie a l'essai biaxial. Dans ces conditions homogenes, de nouveaux elements sont obtenus concernant l'influence du niveau de la contrainte moyenne et la densite sur la localisation de la deformation. Les resultats experimentaux servent, avec l'analyse de bifurcation, a identifier les modules de cisaillement de la loi de comportement mentionnee
Medulloblastoma with extreme nodularity.

Gaurav Arora 1 , Ajay Garg 1 , Geetika Singh 2 , Sharad Shashank Kale 3 , 1 Department of Neuroradiology, Neurosciences Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India 2 Department of Pathology, Neurosciences Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India 3 Department of Neurosurgery, Neurosciences Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India
EVIDENCE OF SELF-SCHEMATIC COGNITIVE PROCESSING IN WOMEN WITH DIFFERING SEXUAL SELF-VIEWS.

Sexual self-schemas have been defined as cognitive representations about sexual aspects of the self (Andersen & Cyranowski, 1994). Women's sexual self-views include both positive and negative dimensions, and are associated with systematic patterns of sexual-romantic affects and behaviors (Cyranowski & Andersen, 1998a). The current research explores cognitive components of the sexual self-schema construct. Specifically, we examine how women with Positive, Co-Schematic, Aschematic, and Negative sexual self-views cognitively process sexual-romantic information about the self. Results indicate that these groups exhibit consistent differences in their retrieval of sexual-romantic personal experience, prediction of future sexual-romantic responses, and the manner and speed with which they make sexually-relevant self-judgments.
Mergers and acquisitions between Taiwanese enterprises

In recent years merger and acquisition (M &A) activities have increasingly claimed the attention of government officials, company management and the public in Taiwan. The primary purpose of this study is to examine merger motives and methods of payment and to compare the preand posttransaction performance of Taiwanese enterprises. The samples of mergers and acquisitions in Taiwan analysed in this study are relatively comprehensive and are the largest which have ever been collected for academic reséarch. So the conclusions of this study have much greater validity than those found in previous work carried out on Taiwanese mergers. In brief, securing operational synergies is a very important merger motive for firms of all sizes. Large enterprises are motivated to take -over other firms by the desire to acquire market share while increasing corporate debt capacity or financing was more important for small acquiring enterprises than for large ones. Payment is made either by means of a cash offer or by an exchange of shares depending on tax and government regulations, the future prospects of the acquiring enterprise as perceived by the acquired enterprise's shareholders and the level of activity of the stock market. The results indicate that large and medium -sized acquiring enterprises achieve greater increases in their posttransaction operational and financial performance than do small and smallmedium sized acquiring enterprises. The results of logit analysis indicate that profitability and changes in profitability are important variables for discriminating between acquired and non -acquired firms. The findings mean that firms with lower profitability have a significantly increased probability of being taken -over, but that smaller firms do not see a significant increase in the likelihood of being acquired. This implies that take -over discipline is strong for low profitability firms but is not strong for small firms. The take -over threat forces firms to improve their profitability rather than to increase their size. The empirical evidence as to the nature of the take -over mechanism of acquired firms supports the traditional theory of the firm. MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS BETWEEN TAIWANESE ENTERPRISES
Quantitative Analysis of Drosophila period Gene Transcription in Living Animals

To determine the in vivo regulatory pattern of the clock gene period (per), the authors recently developed transgenic Drosophila carrying a luciferase cDNA fused to the promoter region of per. They have now carried out noninvasive, high time-resolution experiments allowing high-throughput monitoring of circadian bioluminescence rhythms in individual living adults for several days. This immediately solved several problems (resulting directly from individual asyn chrony within a population) that have accompanied previous biochemical ex periments in which groups of animals were sacrificed at each time point. Furthermore, the authors have developed numerical analysis methods for auto matically determining rhythmicity associated with bioluminescence records from single flies. This has revealed some features of per gene transcription that were previously unappreciated and provides a general strategy for the analysis of rhythmic time series in the study of molecular rhythms.
Attentional networks and visuospatial working memory capacity in social anxiety

ABSTRACT Social anxiety is associated with attentional bias and working memory for emotional stimuli; however, the ways in which social anxiety affects cognitive functions involving non-emotional stimuli remains unclear. The present study focused on the role of attentional networks (i.e. alerting, orienting, and executive control networks) and visuospatial working memory capacity (WMC) for non-emotional stimuli in the context of social anxiety. One hundred and seventeen undergraduates completed questionnaires on social anxiety. They then performed an attentional network test and a change detection task to measure visuospatial WMC. Orienting network and visuospatial WMC were positively correlated with social anxiety. A multiple regression analysis showed significant positive associations of alerting, orienting, and visuospatial WMC with social anxiety. Alerting, orienting networks, and high visuospatial WMC for non-emotional stimuli may predict degree of social anxiety.
Morphological analysis in school-age children: dynamic assessment of a word learning strategy.

PURPOSE Morphological analysis is the ability to use knowledge of root words and affixes to determine the meanings of unfamiliar, morphologically complex words. Beginning in the early elementary grades and continuing into the college years, it is a primary strategy that is used to increase one's knowledge of difficult vocabulary. The purpose of this study was to investigate how well school-age children could use morphological analysis to explain word meanings. The study was also designed to examine individual differences in this domain in relation to children's broader literacy skills. METHOD The ability of 50 typically developing sixth-grade children to explain the meanings of 15 low-frequency morphologically complex words was measured using a dynamic assessment procedure. Children were individually interviewed and were asked to define each word. As needed, varying degrees of adult scaffolding were provided. Children were also assessed for their word knowledge and reading comprehension. RESULTS Performance on the dynamic assessment task revealed a wide range of skill levels in these children and was positively related to the children's literacy levels. Although some children readily used morphological analysis to explain the meanings of unfamiliar words, others required greater amounts of adult scaffolding to be successful. IMPLICATIONS Suggestions are offered for ways to employ dynamic assessment to examine children's ability to use morphological analysis as a word learning strategy.
Are Green Tourists a Managerially Useful Target Segment?

ABSTRACT Environmental sustainability in tourism has received significant attention among destination managers and researchers alike. Yet the range of measures proposed to reduce the environmental footprints of tourists at a destination remains limited to measures taken at the destination, as opposed to marketing measures which aim to attract truly green tourists. The potential of using green tourists as a market segment, however, has not been established. We review published profiles of green tourists and assess the managerial usefulness of this segment using theoretical criteria of segment attractiveness. Results indicate that much is known about the distinctive characteristics of green tourists. Very little, however, has been done to assess whether green tourists are substantial enough to represent a useful target market, whether a customized marketing mix can be designed, whether they can be reached through specific communication channels and whether green tourists can be identified repeatedly. These results provide a clear direction for future research into the green tourist market segment, which is essential for a marketing-oriented approach to sustainable tourism to be successful.
Families of regular matroids

This is an introductory paper about the category of regular oriented matroids (ROMs). We compare the homotopy types of the categories of regular and binary matroids. For example, in the unoriented case, they have the same fundamental group but we show that the higher homotopy groups are different for rank three regular and binary matroids. We also speculate on the possible impact of a recent theorem of Galatius [Gal] computing the stable cohomology of the category of graphs and on possible applications to higher Reidemeister torsion.
Does Comorbid Alcohol and Substance Abuse Affect Electroconvulsive Therapy Outcome in the Treatment of Mood Disorders?

Introduction Antidepressant medications remain the principal agents used to treat patients with mood disorders, although 30% to 40% of these patients do not improve. One of the factors associated with poor medication response is alcohol and substance abuse. Persons with mood disorders are at the greatest risk for suicide, and alcoholism is a significant additional risk factor. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is shown to be the most effective treatment for major depression especially when associated with psychosis, catatonia, and suicide intent. However, similar to most antidepressant trials, patients with depression and comorbid alcohol and substance abuse are excluded from ECT efficacy studies. Method Through a retrospective chart review, we compared response to ECT in patients with mood disorder and comorbid alcohol and drug abuse to those with mood disorder only. From 2004 to 2010, 80 patients with mood disorder received ECT. Fifty of these had comorbid alcohol or drug abuse. Using a 10-item psychopathology scale, we compared pre- and post-ECT symptom severity between the 2 groups. Outcome was determined by measuring a decrease in the pre-ECT and post-ECT score using Wilcoxon rank tests, with statistical significance at P = 0.05. Results There was no difference between the 2 groups in most demographics, ECT medication, or seizure quality. There was no difference in ECT outcome between those with comorbid alcohol abuse and those without based on percent decrease in pre- and post-ECT symptom scores (abuse: mean [SD], 0.89 [0.2] vs nonabuse: mean [SD], 0.93 [0.16]; Wilcoxon, 1332; P = 0.086). When we compared those who met the criteria for alcohol or drug dependence (19 patients) with those with no abuse, there was a trend for the dependence group to not do as well (dependence: mean [SD], 0.83 [0.25] vs nonabuse: mean [SD], 0.93 [0.16]; Wilcoxon, 405; P = 0.053). Those with combined drug and alcohol abuse (18 patients) did have a significantly worse outcome (combined: mean [SD], 0.82 [0.25] vs nonabuse: mean [SD], 0.93 [0.16]; Wilcoxon, 372; P = 0.033). Conclusion Our results indicate that comorbid alcohol and drug abuse may influence the response to ECT in the treatment of mood disorders. Based on our results, patients with comorbid dependence and combined drug and alcohol abuse showed symptom improvement but did not do as well as those with nonabuse.
Changes in electrophysiological parameters after open carpal tunnel release

Background: Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most frequent compressive mononeuropathy, affecting mostly females. Few studies have been performed to assess the electrophysiological parameters before and after carpal tunnel release. The purpose of our study was to evaluate these changes postoperatively and in the course of a 9-month period after operation in comparison with the preoperative values. Materials and Methods: A case-series study was carried out and included 17 cases of moderate or severe electrophysiologically confirmed CTS, who underwent open carpal tunnel release (CTR) from December 2010 to May 2011. Severity grade was assigned following American Association of the Electrodiagnostic Medicine criteria of CTS. Distal motor and sensory latencies and sensory nerve conduction velocity of the median nerve across the carpal tunnel were evaluated and compared before, at 6, and 9 months after surgery. Results: From the 17 evaluated hand with moderate, moderate to severe and severe CTS, severity improvement was reported in 82.3% 6 months and in 88.2% 9 months after surgery, but only 47% had satisfied or completely satisfied opinion about the results. Others, though still complaining of serious symptoms, had improved or normal NCS. Discussion: Electrophysiological investigations outlined severity improvement after CTR. In the current study, the electrophysiological studies were not meaningful in determining outcome.