Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Technopreneurship in Small Travel Entreprises (STEs): A Conceptual Framework of Performance Measurement

There is some research investigating toward e-commerce adoption around the world. However, the research of e-commerce adoption in developing countries and small business are not as much as large companies. For this reason, this study investigates e-commerce adoption in small business and developing country such in Indonesian case and small travel Enterprises (STEs). The research study focuses on electronic travel (e-travel) adoption as a subdivision of electronic commerce (e-commerce) in Padang, West Sumatra Province. The research framework presents measurement indicators including operational and final performance of STEs in adopting e-travel. The research would be undertaken descriptively using purposive sampling technique is used for 5- STEs as the non-adoption e-travel. Thus they would be assisted generating the company’s website and be indentified the performance measurement for each STE after six month’s operations. The performance measurements of e-travel adoption involve operational and final performance. Operational performance is measured by operation activities, daily processing and resources used. Final performance is measured by market share, sales, net profit, growth, Return on Investment (ROI), and extend to global market. The measurement result would give an initial illustration during e-travel adoption by STEs in Indonesia. Further study would be investigated empirically the final performance of e-travel adoption among STEs.
The field of action research.

The scientist who is engaged in action research necessarily adopts the conditional approach to his problems. He cannot be content just to describe the course of events since he wishes to influence their course. There are special difficulties in action research because the scientist's problems are determined by society, their solutions are sought in society, and the solutions must be successfully applied in society. Action research may take 4 different forms: (1) diagnostic--the research agency studies the situation and makes recommendations as to remedial action; (2) participant--individuals of the community who will later implement the remedial measures participate in the original diagnosis; (3) empirical--discovering what happens in a given situation when certain measures are adopted to the end of developing generally valid principles; (4) experimental--various action techniques are compared under controlled conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Outcome Studies Among Men with Micropenis

Adult stretched penile length (SPL) was determined among 22 males who were diagnosed with micropenis. These adult SPL values were compared with SPL at the time of diagnosis, age of diagnosis and etiologic category in 20 men who were diagnosed before puberty. A portion of this group completed a structured questionnaire interview, the Social Adjustment Self Report Questionnaire and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist to assess social and psychosexual milestones and the presence of psychiatric morbidity. Results show that the majority of men who had been diagnosed with micropenis had an adult SPL within 2 standard deviations of the normal adult mean, with only a minority showing values below this. It appeared that men with micropenis might have greater than average interval SPL growth between diagnosis and adulthood; it remains unclear whether this supranormal growth represents a catch-up phenomenon or results from augmentation by intermittent androgen therapy. There was no clear relationship between SPL at diagnosis and SPL in adulthood. The responses to the questionnaires indicated that men who had been diagnosed with micropenis were comparable to control men in regard to gender issues, body image, social fitness, sexuality, work, family adjustment and the presence of psychopathology.
Determining the Effect of Export Market Orientation on Export Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises in Malaysia: An Exploratory Study

The objective of this research is to determine if there is significant relationship between export market orientation (EMO) and export performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. Quantitative survey method was employed and data were collected from 201 exporting SMEs registered with the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers. Regression analysis was used to test the relationship between export performance as a dependent variable and export market orientation as an independent variable. The result shows that significant positive relationship exists between EMO and export performance of SMEs. The finding emphasizes the importance of developing EMO among the owner/managers of SMEs for their success. Those owner/managers that adopt EMO activities in their firms would gain in terms of competitive advantage over their rivals and reap higher export performance. SME owner/managers could also anticipate future threats and seek out opportunities for further expansions in the international markets. The study limitations and implications are discussed as well as a number of directions for further research.
A genetic algorithm with look-ahead mechanism to estimate formant synthesizer input parameters

There are several commercial text-to-speech (TTS) systems that generate speech signals that sound very natural. A distinct problem is utterance copy, which consists in taking speech as input (instead of text, as in TTS) and find the input parameters that would drive a speech synthesizer to generate speech that mimics the target speech with respect to contents and speaker identity. Utterance copy is a difficult task due to the need of adjusting several parameters and their nonlinear relation to the output. Genetic algorithms (GA) have been used in this task embedded in an analysis-by-synthesis loop, which requires solving several optimization processes, one for each short segment of speech. The contribution of this work is to present two new strategies, namely the voicing gene and the lookahead mechanism, which consistently improve the performance of the previous GA-based architecture. The results show that the proposed improvements reduced the mean squared error by more than 40%.
Entrepreneurial orientation and performance of microenterprises in an emerging economy

Guided by the literature on institutional theory and entrepreneurial orientation (EO), this study examines the impact of the institutional environment on EO and performance of microenterprises at the subnational, city level in an emerging economy in contrast to most studies conducted at the national level in developed markets. The results of the study show that four types of formal institutions and two types of informal institutions are significantly associated with EO and that the latter is positively associated with higher levels of microenterprise performance. Implications of the results and future research directions are discussed.
Benefits of physical exercise intervention on fitness of individuals with Down syndrome: a systematic review of randomized-controlled trials

This study systematically reviewed the impact of physical exercise interventions on physical fitness for individuals with Down syndrome. Articles published in English were searched from five major electronic databases, namely, CINAHL, Medline, PsychINFO, SPORTDiscus, and PEDro from inception until April 2013. These studies were screened through predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data were then extracted and synthesized from the studies included. Meta-analyses were carried out where appropriate. Ten studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Of the 10 studies, five studies were found to have high quality research methodology according to the PEDro scale. Varying exercise programs were used and four different fitness outcomes were evaluated: (i) balance, (ii) muscle strength and endurance, (iii) cardiovascular fitness, and (iv) body composition. Exercise interventions led to moderate to high effects on improving muscular strength and balance ( =0.74–1.10) whereas other outcomes showed less conclusive or limited positive evidence. Trends in the results suggest that exercise interventions improve muscular strength and balance. Suggestions for future research include follow-ups to the intervention to examine the longitudinal effects of exercise as well as controlling for confounding factors such as participants’ compliance rate and severity levels of Down syndrome to enhance the effectiveness of the interventions.
ELECTRONIC TAX FILING SYSTEM: TAXPAYERS' PERSPECTIVES

Globally, tax agencies are leveraging on the electronic tax filing (e-filing) system to achieve greater tax administrative and compliance efficiency. However, taxpayers’ resistance and under-utilization of e-filing technology remain the greatest concern and still plagued the various tax agencies that had embraced e-filing system. This paper examines the motivation to use e-filing and the impediments from taxpayers’ perspective. A questionnaire was used to collect data on 682 individual taxpayers in Malaysia. The survey found e-filing has yet to gain momentum in Malaysia, with just one-third of the respondents had attempted e-filing in 2007. Of these, only 79% successfully e-filed their tax returns. Majority of the e-filers used e-filing for the sake of convenience; speed of filing and in faith to get faster tax refund. For those 21% who had attempted to use e-filing, but failed to e-file successfully, they indicated that the key impediments was the Inland Revenue Board Malaysia (IRBM)’s server was not responding properly or hanged half way through. Some gave up either due to the slowness of the network service or they were unable to sign the tax return form electronically. Overall, just 26.7% of the survey respondents had confidence in the IRBM in managing e-filing successfully; whilst 73.3% of the survey respondents had no confidence in the electronic administrative capability of the IRBM. These findings somewhat support the assertion of Tan, Pan and Lim. (2005) that it is important for the government to embrace e-filing as one of e-government endeavors to restore taxpayers’ trust in the e-filing system. This study has implication for the tax administrators to develop a better ‘user friendly e-filing system’.
Financial services regulation in the wake of the crisis: The Capital Requirements Directive IV and the Capital Requirements Regulation

This paper analyzes the Capital Requirements Directive IV and the Capital Requirements Regulation, a new legislative package proposed by the European Commission in July 2011 which aims to strengthen the regulation of the banking sector and amend the European Union's rules on capital requirements for banks and investment firms. It is argued that the CRD IV package makes a great contribution towards creating a sounder and safer financial system, however, several aspects are insufficiently addressed and/or not comprehensive enough to produce the anticipated results. It is found that the main fallacies of the CRD IV proposal lay in increased risk-taking, procyclicality, deficient implementation, overreliance on credit rating agencies, and risk weightings. Moreover, the proposal does not touch upon the issues of the shadow banking system, diversification, the problem of 'too-big-to-fail' or the 'Volcker Rule'. It is, hence, concluded that the CRD IV proposal is not ambitious enough to address essential issues of systemic risk, regulatory arbitrage, or the fragility of the financial system.
A Dynamic Process Model of Service Quality: From Expectations to Behavioral Intentions

Relying on a Bayesian-like framework, the authors develop a behavioral process model of perceived service quality. Perceptions of the dimensions of service quality are viewed to be a function of a customer's prior expectations of what will and what should transpire during a service encounter, as well as the customer's most recent contact with the service delivery system. These perceptions of quality dimensions form the basis for a person's overall quality perception, which in turn predicts the person's intended behaviors. The authors first test this model with data from a longitudinal laboratory experiment. Then they develop a method for estimating the model with one-time survey data, and reestimate the model using such data collected in a field study. Empirical findings from the two tests of the model indicate, among other things, that the two different types of expectations have opposing effects on perceptions of service quality and that service quality perceptions positively affect intended behaviors.
Epidemiology of cerebrovascular disease among Chinese-Canadians: A ten years retrospective case-mix study

Background: Asians are commonly known to have more intracranial vascular stenosis and a lower incidence of carotid stenosis than Caucasians. A pilot retrospective study between 1990-1992 had demonstrated that Chinese-Canadians have a higher frequency of subcortical infarctions and lower frequency of carotid stenosis when compared to Caucasians. Methods: This report is a retrospective, case-mix study over 10 years (1990-1999) on the epidemiological characteristics of cerebrovascular disease among a cohort of Chinese-Canadians seen in an out-patient consultative neurological practice in Toronto. Results: There were 110 Chinese-Canadians with diagnosis of strokes and these were compared to 92 Caucasians with similar diagnosis. Their mean age of onset was 64 years and their average duration of symptom was 1.8 years. Their stroke severity based on the Modified Rankin Scale was severe in 14, moderate in 71 and mild in 25 with 4 deaths. Stroke types based on CT scan showed a statistically significant difference with Caucasians having more cortical infarcts than ChineseCanadians (50% vs. 25.5%, p < 0.05). Only 6.4% of the Chinese-Canadians compared to 32.6% of the Caucasians had carotid stenosis (p < 0.05). The other significant difference is in stroke risk factors with higher frequency of smoking (p < 0.025) and hyperlipidemia (p < 0.05) among the Chinese-Canadian patients. In conclusions: This retrospective epidemiological study has identified some significant difference in the stroke characteristics and risk factors among Chinese-Canadian patients.
Approaches to teaching online: Exploring factors influencing teachers in a fully online university

In recent years there has been widespread interest in the implementation of online courses in universities. While most studies about online learning environments primarily focus on technology-related issues or instructional methods, little attention has been given to online teachers and their teaching approaches. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of how teachers approach online teaching and the factors affecting individual teachers' approaches to teaching online, particularly in a fully online university. Nine hundred and sixty-five (965) online teachers belonging to the Open University of Catalonia were surveyed. The dependent variables include three approaches to teaching online: the Content Acquisition approach, the Collaborative Learning approach, and the Knowledge Building approach. The explanatory variables are socio-demographics, academic background, online teaching experience, studies taught, online teaching dedication, and teachers' roles in teaching online. Multiple regression analyses are used to make inferential judgements and test the effects of the independent variables. Findings suggest that age, academic background, online teaching dedication, and especially teachers' roles in teaching online are important predictors of the adoption of a particular approach to teaching online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Digital Reporting Practices Among Malaysian Local Authorities

Using 109 Malaysian local authorities as the sample, this paper examines the type and extent of financial information disclosed digitally. This study further examines whether council size, performance and social obligation affect digital reporting. The results show that 64.2% maintain websites and out of this, 15.7% local authorities provide some disclosure on financial statements digitally. The results also show that performance and social obligation do influence the digital reporting practices among the local authorities. Further investigations reveal that lack of information technology facilities, inadequate specialised staff and lack of enforcement are among the factors deterring local authorities to disclose their financial information digitally. The results increase the body of knowledge by providing a continuous insight on the type and extent of information disclosed digitally by the Malaysian local authorities.
Revisiting Castlio and Ferris-Swift's Experiments on Direct Splenic Stimulation in Patients With Acute Infectious Disease

Abstract Background: In 1934, Yale Castlio, DO, and Louise Ferris-Swift, DO, published the results of a within-subjects experiment on direct splenic stimulation in patients with acute infectious disease (N=100). Their results, which used rudimentary statistical analyses, are still cited as evidence that osteopathic manipulative treatment augments immunity. Objective: To retest the validity of Castlio and Ferris-Swift's conclusions by applying contemporary statistical methods to their raw data. Methods: Castlio and Ferris-Swift's original 1934 data were not normally distributed and sample sizes were small. Therefore, the authors of the present study reanalyzed the data using several nonparametric statistical methods: Wilcoxon signed rank, Friedman, and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Results: Contemporary statistical analysis confirms a modest posttreatment increase in leukocytes, a decrease in erythrocytes, a decrease in the Arneth index, and an increase in reticulocytes after the application of direct splenic stimulation for patients diagnosed with acute infectious disease. Contemporary reanalysis also confirms statistically significant posttreatment changes in the immune function tests. Findings were less conclusive for the leukocyte differential cell counts and for the effect of varying the number of splenic compressions. Conclusions: Analysis of Castlio and Ferris-Swift's 1934 data using contemporary statistical methods supports many of their original conclusions. However, faults in study design common to that era limit the article's applicability for modern researchers. Additional research on splenic pump techniques using contemporary study designs and statistical methods is recommended.
An Application of Clustering for Strategic Group Analysis

Taxonomies, factor analysis and clustering are discussed as tools to investigate the structure of competitors within an industry (‘strategic groups’). An example using cluster analysis is presented as one means of operationalizing this concept. Careful definition and selection of the dimensions used to identify the boundaries between strategic groups (their mobility barriers) are particularly crucial in the effective application of analytical tools.
Stability for Nematic Liquid Crystals with stretching Terms

We study a nematic crystal model that appeared in [Liu et al., 2007], modeling stretching effects depending on the different shapes of the microscopic molecules of the material, under periodic boundary conditions. The aim of the present article is two-fold: to extend the results given in [Sun & Liu, 2009], to a model with more complete stretching terms and to obtain some stability and asymptotic stability properties for this model.
Radioguided sentinel node detection in breast cancer patients: comparison of 99mTc phytate and 99mTc rhenium colloid efficacy

BackgroundRadioguided sentinel node biopsy (SNB) of breast cancer patients has become a standard method for detecting early stage breast cancer. However, no standard radiopharmaceutical exists. Methods99mTc rhenium colloid or 99mTc phytate SNB was used to aid detection in breast cancer patients. For each radiopharmaceutical, 100 patients were examined. The following points were compared: (1) scintigraphic detection rate of axillary sentinel nodes (detectability and number when detectable) and internal mammary sentinel nodes; (2) the number of nodes detected scintigraphically and the number detected during surgery; (3) sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, negative predictive value, and positive predictive value for axillary sentinel nodes. ResultsAxillary sentinel nodes of patients were biopsied using either 99mTc rhenium or 99mTc phytate. The number of axillary nodes surgically removed from patients given 99mTc rhenium was 2.28±1.08 (mean±SD), and the number of axillary nodes surgically removed from patients given 99mTc phytate was 1.68±0.82. Some patients given 99mTc rhenium showed a spill-over of radioactivity from sentinel nodes. Concordance of scintigraphically detected nodes and surgical removed nodes was superior for 99mTc phytate compared to that with 99mTc rhenium, with a statistically significant difference. The sensitivity and negative predictive value was superior with 99mTc phytate compared to that with 99mTc rhenium, even though no statistical difference was detectable. However, visualization of internal mammary nodes was superior with 99mTc rhenium. ConclusionIn breast cancer patients, 99mTc phytate is a better choice for the detection of axillary SNB than 99mTc rhenium colloid. However, 99mTc rhenium colloid is a better choice for the detection of internal mammary nodes.
E-government: a new route to public sector quality

In the past government organisations have paid little attention to service quality or responsiveness to clients. This changed with the movement termed “new public management”, which occurred in most developed nations around 1990. This paper briefly examines the concept of quality and its application to the public sector and discusses e‐government, the latest manifestation of attempts to improve quality in government. The paper also reports on a survey of senior personnel across the three levels of government in Australia. The results of the survey and other published research materials suggest, that the impact of e‐government on service delivery is modest and not well distributed. While there has been widespread adoption of e‐government measures, these have generally been lacking in sophistication and have been disproportionately beneficial to city dwellers without addressing problems of equity and access.