Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fatigue and fracture resistance of zirconia crowns prepared with different finish line designs.

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of finish line design on the fatigue, fracture resistance, and failure type of veneered zirconia restorations. MATERIALS AND METHODS A CAD/CAM system (Cercon) was used to prepare zirconia frameworks (0.5 mm thick) for a maxillary central incisor. Three finish line designs were evaluated: a complete narrow chamfer, a narrow chamfer with a lingual ledge, and a complete ledge. The prepared frameworks were veneered using a press-on ceramic (Ceram Press) and were cemented on the corresponding prepared teeth using a resin cement (Panavia F2.0). The cemented specimens were thermocycled, subjected to dynamic fatigue, and finally loaded till fracture. Fractured specimens were examined under a scanning electron microscope to assess fracture type. One-way ANOVA and Bonferroni post hoc tests were used to analyze the data (α= 0.05). RESULTS The finish line design did not have any significant statistical influence on the fracture resistance (F = 1.9, p= 0.346) or on the failure type of the tested specimens. Adjusted R squared value (R = 0.049) indicated a weak correlation between finish line design and fracture load of the tested specimens. All specimens failed due to cracking and fracture of the veneer ceramic. Meanwhile, the framework remained entirely intact. Three narrow chamfer finish line specimens demonstrated adhesive fracture of the veneer ceramic during dynamic fatigue testing, related to overextension of the veneer ceramic during the layering procedure. CONCLUSION Within the limitations of this study, the finish line design did not influence the fatigue or the fracture resistance of veneered zirconia crowns. Selection of any of the finish line designs should be based on the clinical condition of the restored tooth.
International Corporate Investment and the Role of Financial Constraints

International evidence over the 1987-1997 period suggests that the capital expenditures of firms that are financially constrained are much less sensitive to the availability of internal funds than unconstrained firms. The evidence is particularly strong when firms are classified according to financial health, but is also prevalent for groups formed according to dividend behavior and firm size. The results provide strong support for the generality of the results of Kaplan and Zingales (1997) and Cleary (1999). A major reason for the weak investment-cash flow sensitivity displayed by unhealthy firms is that they appear to be busy building up financial slack, which has long-term value, as postulated by Myers and Majluf (1984).
Value modes effect and analysis (ValMEA): a PLS-based theory validation

Value modes effect and analysis (ValMEA) suggests that the concept of customer value can be categorised according to its existence in three different contexts (i.e. production/supply, buying/purchasing, and use) and these three 'modes' of value are interrelated. Based on the collected customer survey data in the house-building construction, two structural models of ValMEA are tested using partial least squares (PLS). The findings from this study confirm previous theory propositions by various researchers. Firstly, these modes of value construct a chain (serial) interconnection, meaning that value in the production/supply context influences the value in the purchasing (buying) context, and the value in the buying context influences the value in use. Individually, value in the production/supply context and purchase value has significant effect on the value in use. Secondly, value in the buying context is a function of core value and added value. Thirdly, value in the buying context can only partially explain the richness of value in use.
Factors affecting the performance of entrepreneurial service firms

In the current climate, the importance of the role played by entrepreneurship as a palpable reality that enables economic growth at a macroeconomic level, and as a factor that favours the progress of companies at a microeconomic level, has made it the subject of continual analyses from many different perspectives and in a variety of contexts by researchers from around the world. In this study, Spanish entrepreneurial firms in the service sector are analysed in order to determine the factors that influence their performance.
On the evolution of wage inequality in Acemoglu's model of directed technical change

In Acemoglu's model of directed technical change, the skill-premium increases in consequence of an increase in the relative supply of skilled labour. In this article, I argue that other measures of wage inequality such as the Gini-coefficient do not necessarily rise as well. The Gini-coefficient depends positively on the skill-premium, but the effect of an increase in the relative supply of skilled labour is ambiguous. A simulation of Acemoglu's model shows that the growth in the relative supply of skilled labour has led to increased wage inequality in the past, but will lead to decreasing wage inequality in the future.
ABO glycosyltransferases as potential source of minor histocompatibility antigens in allogeneic peripheral blood progenitor cell transplantation

BACKGROUND: Most studies indicate that the incidence of graft‐versus‐host disease (GVHD) is not increased in ABO‐mismatched allogeneic peripheral blood progenitor cell transplantation. These studies exclusively looked at ABO phenotypes without considering the fact that different genotypes hide behind identical phenotypes that encode for different sets of glycosyltransferases, thus providing a source for minor histocompatibility antigens (mHags).
The Effects of Reward Type on Employee Goal Setting, Goal Commitment, and Performance

The use of tangible rewards in the form of non-cash incentives with a monetary value has become increasingly common in many organizations (Peltier et al. 2005). Despite their use, the behavioral and performance effects of tangible rewards have received minimal research attention. Relative to cash rewards, we predict tangible rewards will have positive effects on goal commitment and performance but will lead employees to set easier goals, which will negatively affect performance. The overall performance impact of tangible rewards will depend on the relative strength of these competing effects. We conduct a quasi-experiment at five call centers of a financial services company. Employees at two locations earned cash rewards for goal attainment while employees at three locations earned points, with equivalent retail value to cash rewards, redeemable for merchandise. Results show that cash rewards lead to better performance through their effects on the difficulty of the goals employees selected. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Improving Development Ownership Among Vulnerable People: Challenges of NGOs’ Community Empowerment Projects in Bangladesh

This paper exposed the major challenges that the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) face in improving development ownership among vulnerable people in community empowerment projects in Bangladesh. The finding, based on a qualitative research approach, used multi-method data collection procedures. Data were collected from two NGOs, Proshika and Practical Action Bangladesh (PAB), working with two vulnerable communities—blacksmiths and goldsmiths. The results showed that NGOs faced a number of challenges, including lack of understanding about the local context, initiatives to localize global development tools, developing partnership, and space for local people in the development processes. The paper argued that, without securing development ownership, the NGOs’ activities toward community empowerment of vulnerable people would not be possible. The findings of the paper would be valuable guidelines for policy makers, development practitioners, NGO workers, and academicians.
An index based task assignment policy for achieving optimal power-delay tradeoff in edge cloud systems

Edge cloud is a promising architecture in order to address the latency problem in mobile cloud computing. However, as compared with remote clouds, edge clouds have limited computational resources, and higher operating costs. In this paper, we design policies which carry out the assignment of tasks that are generated at the mobile subscribers with edge clouds in an online fashion. The proposed policies achieve an optimal power-delay trade-off in the system. Here, the delay experienced by a mobile computing task includes the time spent waiting for transmission to the edge cloud, and the execution time at the edge cloud servers. We perform a theoretical analysis after modeling the system as a continuous-time queueing system. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: Firstly, the algorithm to determine the optimal policy is obtained by proposing an equivalent discrete-time Markov decision process. Secondly, an easily implementable index policy is proposed by analyzing the dual of the original problem. Extensive simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed policies.
Violence, partisanship and transitional justice in Zimbabwe*

ABSTRACT What determines people's willingness to consider punishment for human rights abusers? This article investigates this question in the context of Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the country's violent presidential election campaign of June 2008. Based on a national probability sample survey, the paper shows that exposure to violence was reportedly widespread and that attitudes to transitional justice are mixed. In considering how to handle abuses, Zimbabweans weigh the pros and cons carefully and, recognising that peace and justice are difficult to obtain simultaneously, generally prefer the former. The article analyses the various factors that together predict a citizen's proclivity to claim transitional justice in its most demanding retributive form. Reflecting power relations, the results indicate that political partisanship is almost as important as individuals’ personal experience of actual and threatened acts of violence.
Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island

A solution to get the problem off, have you found it? Really? What kind of solution do you resolve the problem? From what sources? Well, there are so many questions that we utter every day. No matter how you will get the solution, it will mean better. You can take the reference from some books. And the meltdown iceland lessons on the world financial crisis from a small bankrupt island is one book that we really recommend you to read, to get more solutions in solving this problem.
Corporate Governance in a Third World Country with Particular Reference to Nigeria

The paper discusses the issue of power relations and sharing as the basis for instituting a corporate governance procedure. It argues that the peculiar and unstructured nature of the developing economies makes the running of many existing limited liability companies remarkably different from the governance processes of modern Plc and multinational corporations which are controlled (at least in principle) by the owners through shareholder democracy enshrined in the Annual General Meetings. The need for an understanding of the concepts, processes and problems of corporate governance both from the perspective of those who direct, those concerned with returns and accountability, and those concerned with corporate regulation encouraged the author to provide a menu of hypotheses of corporate governance and its relevance to Nigerian corporate bodies. The paper then zeroes in to discuss corporate governance in the banking industry as well as the problems and consequences of the quality of such a governance. In section four of the paper, a crystal eye-ball and prognostic view was taken of corporate governance in the Nigerian banks in the twenty first century. The paper concludes by providing the recipes that would ensure good corporate governance in the private sector, particularly in Nigerian banks, in the short and long-run.
Partisan Competition and the Efficiency of Lawmaking in American State Legislatures, 1991-2009

Does partisan competition explain why some legislatures are more efficient at processing legislation than others? This article argues that legislative parties’ strategic incentives and capabilities are a function of their size, their ideological homogeneity, and the governor’s party. It shows that the distribution of legislative seats between the parties influences legislative efficiency, depending on the level of polarization between the parties and the party of the governor. A small partisan seat margin reduces legislative efficiency when the parties are polarized and when the government is divided. It provides further evidence that polarization and divided government can either positively or negatively affect legislative efficiency, depending on the distribution of seats held between the two parties. This research contributes to the literature by demonstrating the conditional influence of political parties. Based in multilevel modeling techniques, this research also contributes to the literature with robust evidence including 48 state legislatures, through 19 years.
Dimensions and antecedents of long-term orientation in firm-supplier relationships

This paper studies dimensionality and antecedents of long-term orientation in firm-supplier relationships. Drawing from a sample of 106 firm-supplier relationships in the field of logistics, longterm orientation is found to be a bi-dimensional construct. This study identifies one dimension linked to the desire to maintain a relationship that is expected profitable and another associated with concessions/sacrifices. The results obtained also show how two of the main antecedents of long-term orientation – trust and dependence – influence in different ways the two identified dimensions.
Most Important Work Values in Bulgarian University Students

This article aims to identify the most important work values of university students. For this purpose, data from an empirical study among students (N = 208), from different study programmes, are presented. Results obtained with the Bulgarian version of the questionnaire WIS/SVP (OS Bulgaria, 2007) revealed that in 2013 there were some gender significant differences in the respondents’ values. The students’ important values were Economic Security, Personal Development, Ability Utilization, Achievement and Advancement. The data could be used for vocational guidance.
OIS Discounting, Interest Rate Derivatives, and the Modeling of Stochastic Interest Rate Spreads

Prior to 2007, derivatives practitioners used a zero curve that was bootstrapped from LIBOR swap rates to provide “risk-free” rates when pricing derivatives. In the last few years, when pricing fully collateralized transactions, practitioners have switched to using a zero curve bootstrapped from overnight indexed swap (OIS) rates for discounting. This paper explains the calculations underlying the use of OIS rates and investigates the impact of the switch on the pricing of plain vanilla caps and swap options. It also explores how more complex derivatives providing payoffs dependent on LIBOR, or any other reference rate, can be valued. It presents new results showing that they can be handled by constructing a single tree for the evolution of the OIS rate.
Bulgarian Housing Reform and Forms of Housing Provision

The objective of this paper is to explore the extent to which state intervention and market forces affect the housing provision system. Existing Bulgarian housing policy reform will be analysed with particular emphasis on the dynamics of change, the formation of a new market-oriented system and its considerable impact on innovation in the structures of housing provision. Relevant issues will be brought together to present the wide range of factors which contribute to the formation of nationally specific private and public forms of housing provision. Relevant issues will be brought together to present the wide range of factors which contribute to the formation of nationally specific private and public forms of housing provision, identifying their potential and constraints, and outlining major characteristics. Of primary concern is the extent to which a radical change of relationship between the state and the market, as occurred in Bulgaria, can modify the evolution of different forms of housing provision and the performance of key actors.
Social Capital and Effective Innovation in Industrial Districts: Dual Effect of Absorptive Capacity

This paper deals with the factors that affect the heterogeneity in the access to knowledge and its exploitation through innovation in firms located in industrial districts. The aim of the study is to analyze the moderating role of the components of the absorptive capacity – identification and combination – in the process that leads firms in industrial districts with social capital to obtain effective innovations through the knowledge acquisition. We have developed the empirical analysis on a sample of 166 firms located in the industrial districts of the footwear industry in Spain. Findings suggest that the firms in industrial districts improve the acquisition of novel and valuable knowledge from external networks of information when they have identification capabilities to explore their potential. The results also indicate combinative capability strengthens the acquired new knowledge to develop and exploit successful innovations.
Experimenting with Dogme in a Mainstream ESL Context.

This article explores the use of Dogme with postsecondary ESL students in a mainstream educational institution. By means of a small-scale action research study it was found that in spite of its reputation for being somewhat unconventional, Dogme can also be incorporated in an exam preparation course and allow students to benefit not only from the interaction that acts as a motor for the entire lesson but also from the emphasis put on emergent language. This article discusses how this materials-light and learner-centred teaching approach has the potential to empower the teacher to capitalise on students’ contributions and help them engage with language in a meaningful manner.
Is Nepotism Good or Bad? Types of Nepotism and Implications for Knowledge Management

In contrast to the literature that portrays nepotism as generally problematic, we develop a conceptual model to explain why some family firms benefit from nepotism while others do not. We distinguish two types of nepotism based on how nepots are chosen. We elaborate the differences between entitlement nepotism and reciprocal nepotism. We propose that reciprocal (vs. entitlement) nepotism is associated with three family conditions that indicate generalized (vs. restricted) social exchange relationships between family members. We also suggest that generalized social exchanges are valuable to firms because they facilitate tacit knowledge management that can lead to competitive advantage.
Prognostic significance of tumor response at the end of therapy in group III rhabdomyosarcoma: a report from the children's oncology group.

PURPOSE Some patients with rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) achieve less than a complete response (CR) despite receiving all planned therapy. We assessed the impact of best response at the completion of all therapy on patient outcome. PATIENTS AND METHODS We studied 419 clinical group III participants who completed all protocol therapy without developing progressive disease for Intergroup Rhabdomyosarcoma Study (IRS) IV. Response (complete resolution [CR], partial response [PR; > or = 50% decrease], or no response [NR; < 50% decrease and < 25% increase]) was determined by radiographic measurement and categorized by the best response. RESULTS At the end of therapy, 341 participants (81%) achieved a best response of CR and 78 (19%) had a best response of PR/NR. Five-year failure-free survival was similar for participants achieving CR (80%) and PR/NR (78%). After adjustment for age, nodal status, primary site, and histology, there was no significant indication of lower risk of failure (hazard ratio [HR], 0.77; 95% CI, 0.46 to 1.27; P = .3) nor death (HR, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.36 to 1.09; P = .1) for CR versus PR/NR participants. Seventeen participants with a best response of PR/NR had surgical procedures; eight (50%) of 16 with available pathology reports had residual viable tumor and only three achieved a complete resection. Resection of residual masses was not associated with improved outcome. CONCLUSION CR status at the end of protocol therapy in clinical group III participants was not associated with a reduction of disease recurrence and death. Aggressive alternative therapy may not be warranted for RMS patients with a residual mass at the end of planned therapy.
Human Capital: Level versus Growth Effects

The endogenous growth literature includes two competing views concerning the influence of human capital on output growth: human capital may be a conventional input and determine just the level of output or it may be essential to raise productivity via R&D. Distinguishing empirically between these two alternatives is important. This paper shows that the suggestion by Aghion and Howitt (1998) for how to distinguish the two approaches will not work. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.
Moral Capitalism and the Essential Economy

Egidi, M. and Marengo, L. (2004) ‘‘Near-decomposability, Organization, and Evolution: Some Notes on Herbert Simon’s Contribution,’’ in M. Augier and J. G. March (eds) Models of a Man, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 335–350. Miller, J.H. and Page, S. E. (2007) Complex Adaptive Systems, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Simon, H. A. (1962) ‘‘The Architecture of Complexity,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106: 467–482.
The Choice of ADRs

We study the determinants of a firm's decision to issue one of the four available ADR programs (Level I, Level II, Level III, and Rule 144A). We find that the firm's attributes (size, income, asset growth, leverage, privatization, ownership structure, and country-of-origin) and the firm's home-country institutional variables (accounting rating and legal protection of minority shareholders) condition this choice. We also examine the issuing activity and the determinants of the ADR choice before and after the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act. Following this structural change, we provide evidence of a reallocation between ADR programs. Compared to the pre-SOX period, firms from emerging markets, and those from countries with weak legal protection of minority shareholders, are more likely after SOX to choose Rule 144A and Level III, respectively.
Risk Aversion and the Intertemporal Behavior of Asset Prices

In this article, we characterize economies in which both cash flows and forward prices follow random walks. We show in the case of geometric random walks that the preferences of the representative investor are of the constant proportional risk- aversion type. We also show that conditions under which spot prices follow random walks and under which the equivalent martingale measure is non-state-dependent. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.