Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of on-site mentoring on expatriate socialization: a structural equation modelling approach

While the literature on expatriate adjustment has focused on the importance of back-home mentors and their instrumentality for future career advancement, this research explores the importance of on-site mentors for the effective socialization of expatriates into their current overseas assignments. Using a sample of 179 expatriates located in nineteen countries, this paper presents a structural equation model illustrating the relationships among mentoring received, expatriate socialization and socialization outcomes. Amount of mentoring received positively impacts on expatriate socialization, which in turn positively influences job attitudes, intention to finish the expatriate assignment and expatriate understanding of global business issues. Using Hofstede's typology of national cultures, this research also suggests that the international context of the overseas assignment affects how much on-site mentoring expatriates receive. Specifically, expatriates are more likely to receive mentoring in small power .
Agent‐Based Modeling in Systems Pharmacology

Modeling and simulation (M&S) techniques provide a platform for knowledge integration and hypothesis testing to gain insights into biological systems that would not be possible a priori. Agent‐based modeling (ABM) is an M&S technique that focuses on describing individual components rather than homogenous populations. This tutorial introduces ABM to systems pharmacologists, using relevant case studies to highlight how ABM‐specific strengths have yielded success in the area of preclinical mechanistic modeling.
Trends and Determinants of Household Saving in South Africa

South Africa managed to have a gross saving rate of 30% to GDP before 1994 but 16% in 2009 (compared to China 52%, Russia 22%). No coincidence that China and Russia are among the economies enjoying rapid growth compared to South Africa. Could the prevalence of an ‘aspirational’ culture negatively impact the South African household savings in which consumption is encouraged by access to credit facilities- necessitated by the sophisticated financial sector? Econometric analysis found the following among others to be statistically significant determinants of household saving rate: level of income, uncertainty (expected inflation), public sector savings and financial development collaborating with many other studies. As both saving and consumer behaviour evolve slowly, the study estimated the correlations by means of an error correction model. This allowed me to estimate a long-run correlation between the variables and to model behaviour in the short run and 2SLS for robustness checks. The study results have diverse policy implications and the following proposals can be made: policy makers must consider fiscal tools e.g. tax incentives to encourage savings (this have been introduced in 2012 national Budget for SA), also consumer education on financial matters.
Managerial values in local government - Victoria, Australia

This article explores the values that local government senior managers assume in their day‐to‐day relationship with elected officials (councillors). The study is set in the state of Victoria, Australia which, along with the two other levels of Australian government, has a strong historical association with the Westminster system of public management. The findings demonstrate that local government senior managers practice the fundamental values and beliefs of public management neutrality.
Brand Alliance Research: In Search of a New Perspective and Directions forFuture Research

The lack of firm side research is a fundamental limitation in the extant brand alliance literature. In this paper, we discuss some of the potential avenues for research into firm brand alliance behavior. Importantly, we propose a conceptual framework for the antecedents of brand alliance formation. The issues raised in this paper are of interest for marketing and brand managers because brand alliances are an important strategy for leveraging brand strength and growing brand value. Future research should conceptually explore some of the research questions raised by this work and empirically test the conceptual framework developed in this paper.
Pharyngeal Flap Surgery: Long-Term Outcomes at the University of Iowa

The pharyngeal flap is the most often used surgical approach to treat the problem of velopharyngeal insufficiency, a common challenge encountered in cleft palate and craniofacial clinics. The authors retrospectively reviewed short-term and long-term measures of children treated with the pharyngeal flap at the University of Iowa Cleft and Craniofacial Center. All patients who underwent pharyngeal flap surgery between January of 1970 and December of 2000, with at least one postoperative speech assessment between 2 and 5 years after the operation, were identified. Both hypernasality and hyponasality were evaluated on a scale from 1 to 6, with 1 indicating no involvement and 6 indicating severe effect on resonance. Velopharyngeal competence was also rated on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 indicating competence and 3 indicating incompetence. These short-term data were then compared. The results showed that overall resonance performance continues to be adequate and may even improve as the patient continues to grow and mature. These findings support the use of the pharyngeal flap in the treatment of children with velopharyngeal insufficiency.
Examining the Determinants of Olive Oil Demand in Nonproducing Countries: Evidence from Germany and the UK

Consumption patterns of olive oil have changed over recent years influencing the supply chain. The consumption has increased in countries where olive oil is not part of the traditional diet, as for example Germany and the UK, where the average consumption grew by 11% and 13% respectively during the period 1995–2003. The opening of new nontraditional markets has shifted exports and restructured the supply chain. Mediterranean countries have been the traditional suppliers of olive oil with the EU Mediterranean Member States being the main exporters, while the non-EU Mediterranean countries try to gain market shares in the EU markets in an attempt to benefit from the preferential access due to the Barcelona Agreement. This article tries to identify which factors influenced olive oil demand of nontraditional consumers using evidence from Germany and the with the help of a gravity model. The results of the random effects models corrected for serial correlation and heteroskedasticity indicate that being a Mediterranean Partner Country enhances olive oil exports to Germany and the UK. Moreover olive oil exports are positively related to direct marketing strategies and tourism, implying that these factors have the largest impact on the olive oil exports from producing countries and consequently on the overall supply chain.
The Impact of Dual Class Structure on Earnings Management Activities

This paper hypothesizes and finds that firms with dual class structure are less likely to engage in earnings management activities than firms with single class structure. The paper also finds that within the sample of firms with dual class structure, earnings management activities are positively associated with managerial cash flow rights, but marginally and negatively associated with managerial voting rights. In addition, the divergence between voting rights and cash flow rights has a marginally negative impact on earnings management. Finally, in a sample of firms switching from dual class structure to single class structure, earnings management activities increase following the switch. Copyright (c) 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Professional accounting bodies' disciplinary procedures: accountable, transparent and in the public interest?

This paper critiques the public interest proclamations of accounting professions with particular reference to the role of disciplinary procedures in protecting these interests. It is argued that professions' widely declared concerns for the public interest, often conceptualized as encompassing a commitment to public accountability and transparency, are frequently used as a convenient mechanism for avoiding criticism and maintaining the power and privilege of delegated self-regulation. This argument is developed by examining the role played by disciplinary procedures, in particular the reporting of their results, in creating a perception that the profession acts in the public interest. The critique is supported with data derived from an investigation of the disciplinary procedures of one accounting body, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI). The results of this examination indicate that the ICAI process appears deficient in terms of its accountability and transparency and further that there is little fairness or equity in terms of the penalties applied to members for offences committed. This tends to support prior research which suggests that disciplinary procedures (and the ethical codes they purportedly enforce) fulfil a ‘profession protection’ as opposed to a ‘society protection’ role aimed at insulating the profession from inspection and assessment from outside parties. Implications for the accounting profession and for future research are discussed.
Natural Language Inference over Interaction Space

Natural Language Inference (NLI) task requires an agent to determine the logical relationship between a natural language premise and a natural language hypothesis. We introduce Interactive Inference Network (IIN), a novel class of neural network architectures that is able to achieve high-level understanding of the sentence pair by hierarchically extracting semantic features from interaction space. We show that an interaction tensor (attention weight) contains semantic information to solve natural language inference, and a denser interaction tensor contains richer semantic information. One instance of such architecture, Densely Interactive Inference Network (DIIN), demonstrates the state-of-the-art performance on large scale NLI copora and large-scale NLI alike corpus. It's noteworthy that DIIN achieve a greater than 20% error reduction on the challenging Multi-Genre NLI (MultiNLI) dataset with respect to the strongest published system.
Induction of emphysema and bronchial mucus cell hyperplasia by intratracheal instillation of lipopolysaccharide in the hamster

The aim of this study was to determine whether lipopolysaccharide‐induced elastase release from recruited neutrophils in the hamster lung would induce emphysema, measured by mean linear intercept (Lm) and bronchial mucus cell hyperplasia (BMCH), scored in tissue sections stained with periodic acid‐Schiff. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was instilled transorally twice a week for up to 5 weeks in hamsters. At 4 weeks after seven LPS instillations, Lm amounted to 87.6 ± 1. 2μm, while it was 68.3 ± 1.5 μm after seven saline instillations (P < 0.01). At 6 months after the sixth LPS instillation, the Lm of these lungs was 83.3 ± 1.6 μm, indicating irreversible tissue destruction. LPS‐treated hamsters showed marked to severe BMCH, which was most evident in large intrapulmonary airways. Instillations of highly selective inhibitor of hamster PMN elastase resulted in 50 per cent inhibition of LPS‐induced emphysema. The development of BMCH was inhibited by approximately 35 per cent by this agent.
Characteristics of children with positive coeliac serology and normal villous morphology: potential coeliac disease

Positive coeliac serology with normal villous morphology (NVM) indicates potential coeliac disease (CD). Few studies have compared characteristics of NVM vs villous atrophy in patients with positive serology. Our aim was to determine the independent clinical predictors of NVM in children with positive CD serology. We performed a structured medical record review of patients aged 1–19 years who presented for an initial CD evaluation between 2000 and 2010 at a large teaching hospital. Data collection included demographics, medical history, prior history of gluten avoidance, CD‐specific serology, oesophagogastroduodenoscopy and histopathology. Predictors of NVM (vs Marsh III) were determined using multivariable logistic regression. Among 320 patients with positive serology, we identified 62 patients (19%, 95% CI 15–24) with NVM (i.e. potential CD). Younger children may have been more likely to exhibit NVM (p = 0.06). Three significant predictors of NVM were prior gluten avoidance (OR 4.17, 95% CI 1.02–17.13), positive tissue transglutaminase antibody but <100 U/mL (OR 14.75, 95% CI 3.33–65.30), and absence of gross duodenal abnormalities (OR 3.48, 95% CI 1.51–8.03). Among children with positive CD serology, prior gluten avoidance predicts NVM. Future studies are warranted on the impact of gluten intake and CD testing in children without prior established CD diagnosis.
The incentive effects of minimum pensions

The main purpose of minimum pension benefit programs and old-age social assistance programs is to guarantee a minimum standard of living after retirement and thus to alleviate poverty in old age. In many developing and developed countries, the minimum pension program is a key welfare program and a major influence on the retirement decisions of low-income workers and workers with erratic work histories. The design of many minimum pension programs tends to create strong incentives for low-income workers to retire as soon as they become eligible for the program, which is often earlier than the normal retirement age.
FRONTIERS IN ENERGY DEMAND MODELING

principally be­ cause it helps inf orm market valuations of the stock of available policy models and suggests directions for future model development. To borrow the terminologies of capital theory and the theory of technological change, a body of policy models constitutes a capital stock of varying vintages, efficiencies, and stages of obsolescence. As new modeling techniques, para­ digms, and data bases are developed and exploited, they are added to the stock of models. The attendant stages of invention/innova tion, exploitation, and diffusion of modeling techniques are genealogically quite similar to those of an emerging technology. In the face of such capital accretion, model review permits a reflection upon the directions and value of past modeling development, its neutral or non-neutral biases, and the desirable induced direction of future model development. The major purposes of this paper reflect such motives. The paper first introduces and critiques an array of models that constitute the capital stock IThe author gratefully acknowledges the comments of David Wood, Drew Bottaro, and Gary Oleson. The research reftected in this paper was performed while at the MIT Energy Laboratory. zThe activity of critically reviewing a group of positive or normative models for the social or physical sciences can be a thankl ess task for several reasons. In the first place, the process of model review usually takes the approach of constructive criticism; as a result, while aimed at being constructive, the criticism is still criticism and can alfront those modelers whose models are being reviewed. In the second place, the review function perforce limits the group of models discussed to those felt to be most relevant to the particular purposes at hand; as a result the review can also affront those who feel certain crucial or seminal efforts have been excluded. In spite of such potential difficulties, the process is important.
The Future of Antibiotics: Preserving a Precious Commodity

The mortality rate for Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia, for example, was 82% in the 1940s compared with 1.3% to 23.4% for methicillin-susceptible and methicillin-resistant S. aureus, respectively, in the early 2000s (Figure). Another illustration of this is the dramatic 97% decrease in pediatric pneumonia-related mortality between 1939 and 1996, which was made possible by the availability of new antibiotics, expanded access to medical care, and immunizations. These examples demonstrate the lifesaving capacity of antibiotics. Very few other drugs are able to affect mortality in a similar fashion. Unfortunately, these lifesaving drugs have been taken for granted, and as a society we have become complacent about their overuse and abuse.
Arbitrage, Liquidity, and the Valuation of Exchange Traded Funds

This paper investigates the performance of U.S. and country exchange traded funds currently traded in the United States and provides new insight into their pricing. While the U.S. funds are priced closely to their net asset values, the country funds are not and can exhibit large, positive autocorrelations in fund premium. The mispricing of country funds is related to momentum, illiquidity, and size effects. We also find an inverted U-shaped relationship between fund premium and market liquidity, which suggests that more active trading does lead to lower mispricing but only after a certain level of liquidity is reached.
Municipal waste generation and the EKC hypothesis new evidence exploiting province-based panel data

This article provides empirical evidence on delinking and Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) for municipal waste generation in Italy. A disaggregated panel data-set on Italian Provinces is exploited. The empirical analysis of different specifications shows a first evidence in favour of an EKC relationship with regard to waste generation. Nevertheless, the turning point (TP) is at very high levels of added value per capita (around 23 000–26 000€), which concern a very limited number of wealthy Northern Italian provinces. Finally, the test on some waste management instruments proxies, leads to the conclusion that they are not yet impacting waste generation. To lower the TPs and to avoid an increasing gap between geographical areas, market based and more effective policy instruments should be implemented. In particular, the weight of waste policies should be rebalanced towards waste prevention targets according to the European waste hierarchy.
Testing for weekday anomaly in international stock index returns with non-normal errors

Minimum Absolute Deviation (MAD) estimation method is used to examine weekday anomaly in 18 international stock exchanges between 1990 and 2003. Weekday return anomaly is found with OLS method in two and with MAD method in eight stock exchanges. Empirical test distributions of F-type test for OLS and MAD estimators with Laplace errors were derived with simulations.
Morbidity from nonrespiratory diseases and mortality in dairy heifers during the first three months of life.

OBJECTIVE To describe causes of death, mortality, and morbidity from nonrespiratory diseases in dairy calves. DESIGN Prospective observational cohort study. ANIMALS Convenience sample of 410 dairy heifers born between January and December 1990 in 18 south-western New York herds. PROCEDURE Heifers were examined weekly by a veterinary clinician during the first 3 months of life and all disease conditions were recorded. RESULTS Crude risks for diarrhea, umbilical infection, and umbilical hernia were 28.8, 14.2, and 15.1%, and the median ages at first diagnoses were 2, 1, and 3 weeks, respectively. Mean durations of umbilical infection and umbilical hernia were 3.7 and 6.7 weeks, respectively. Crude mortality was 5.6%. Case-fatality risks were 12.8% for diarrhea during the first week of life, 5.1% for diarrhea after the first week of life, and 0% for umbilical infection and umbilical hernia. Diarrhea was diagnosed by the caretaker of the clinician; umbilical conditions were diagnosed by the clinician. The primary cause of death was diarrhea in 43%, pneumonia in 24%, septicemia in 10%, and other single causes in the rest of the 21 necropsied calves. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS The high incidence and somewhat long duration of umbilical infection, the finding that diarrhea was the primary cause of death, and the high case-fatality risk for diarrhea during the first week of life suggested that calf caretakers need training in the prevention and treatment of these conditions.
Merkel Cell Carcinoma and Multiple Primary Cancers

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an aggressive neuroendocrine tumor of the skin for which causative factors remain largely unknown. The site-specific risks of multiple primary cancers associated with MCC, which may provide insight into etiologic influences, have not been quantified in large population-based studies. We estimated the long-term risk of subsequent primary tumors after a first primary MCC (1,306 patients) and the risk of second primary MCC following other first primary cancers (2,048,739 patients) within 11 population-based cancer registries which report to the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (1986-2002). Patients with first primary MCC were at significantly increased risk of developing a subsequent cancer [standardized incidence ratio (SIR), 1.22; 95% confidence intervals (95% CI), 1.01-1.45; observed (O = 122)], with significant excesses restricted to the first year after diagnosis (SIR, 1.71; 95% CI, 1.21-2.33; O = 39). Significantly elevated site-specific risks were observed for cancers of salivary gland (SIR, 11.55; 95% CI, 2.32-33.76; O = 3), biliary sites other than liver and gallbladder (SIR, 7.24; 95% CI, 1.46-21.16; O = 3), and non–Hodgkin lymphoma (SIR, 2.56; 95% CI, 1.23-4.71; O = 10). Nonsignificantly increased risks of 2-fold or higher were seen for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and cancers of the small intestine and brain. A significantly increased 1.36-fold risk (95% CI, 1.19-1.55; O = 221) of MCC as a second primary malignancy was observed among patients with all other first primary cancers taken together. In particular, significant 3- to 7-fold excesses of MCC followed multiple myeloma (SIR, 3.70; 95% CI, 1.01-9.47; O = 4), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (SIR, 6.89; 95% CI, 3.77-11.57; O = 14), non–Hodgkin lymphoma (SIR, 3.37; 95% CI, 1.93-5.47; O = 16), and malignant melanoma (SIR, 3.05; 95% CI, 1.74-4.95; O = 16). Although enhanced medical surveillance may play a role, increased reciprocal risks suggest that MCC may share etiologic influences with other malignancies. Heightened awareness of the associations of lymphohematopoietic malignancies with MCC may facilitate early clinical recognition. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(8):1545–9)
‘They Seem to Divide Us’: Social Mix and Inclusion in Two Traditional Urbanist Communities

Mixed tenure communities have become an important element of UK housing policy in recent decades. Whilst valued by policy-makers for generating a range of benefits, particularly for residents living in social rented housing, the empirical literature suggests that tenure mixing is neither a sufficient nor a reliable remedy for addressing issues associated with concentrations of poverty, disadvantage and social exclusion. This paper reports on a doctoral research study that considered tenure mixing practices at two traditional urbanist communities in the UK: Poundbury, Dorchester, and New Gorbals, Glasgow. Conceptually, the paper uses Young's critiques of residential segregation and the integration ideal to evaluate the two communities. Methodologically, it draws on qualitative interviews with residents, planners and social housing providers. The research findings contradict many aspects of Young's ideal and highlight the complex and multidimensional nature of integration in practice. Reflecting on these findings, the paper identifies five housing policy and research priorities that might usefully be pursued in future work.