Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE QUALITY OF APPLES - PREFERENCES AMONG CONSUMERS FROM SKIERNIEWICE, POLAND

A B S T R A C T The presented studies are part of European HiDRAS Project, having as the goal an increase of consumer acceptance and diffusion of disease resistant apples. Consumer survey focused on habits of fruit eating and expectations towards apple quality. The respondents were from Skierniewice, Poland, and the surrounding countryside. The number of respondents was 219 in 2004 and 246 in 2005. They were inquired about frequency, amount and motivation of eating fruit and apples in particular. They were also asked to identify, order and rank different apple quality traits according to their own preferences. Numbers and forms of questions were fitted to the age of the target group. Over 90% of both adult and younger consumers like apples, and over 30% eat more than seven apples a week. Most of the adult consumers buy apples directly from growers or at the farmers market. Most also considered these outlets to be the best sources of high-quality apples. Most of the adult consumers do not buy apples from environmentally friendly orchards because they are difficult to find on the local market. Adult respondents considered flavour and juiciness to be very important. Many respondents also stated that sweetness and firmness were very important. By far most of the younger consumers preferred sweet, red apples. The teenagers strongly preferred firm apples, whereas the children strongly preferred soft ones. As concerns external quality traits such as size or colour, younger respondents are rather changeable in their decision. However, when it comes to the internal attributes such as texture and flavour they gave really consistent responses.
Cutaneous expression of systemic candidiasis

Skin lesions associated with Candida septicaemia occur only in a minority of patients, who are usually immunocompromised, but they can help to establish a diagnosis rapidly. The lesions form a characteristic maculopapular or nodular rash at the onset of the infection. We report three cases of systemic candidiasis (SC) with cutaneous manifestations in immunocompromised patients. In these patients, the lesions started as asymptomatic or slightly pruriginous macules, papules or nodules localized on the trunk and extremities. The patients' general condition was very poor and they presented a high fever at the onset of the illness. Candida spp. were isolated from blood in all cases, and histology showed yeasts in two of them. Most of the lesions resolved with antifungal treatment. The diagnosis of SC is often delayed or missed because of the absence of useful diagnostic tools, the varying clinical manifestations and the frequent negativity (50–75%) of blood cultures for Candida. Fluconazole is the treatment of choice for Candida albicans, but treatment response is unknown for other Candida spp. , which may require treatment with amphotericin B.
PERCEIVED COMPETENCE , TEACHER AUTONOMY – SUPPORT AND PARENT ATTACHMENT AS PREDICTORS OF STUDENTS ’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

his paper examined perceived competence, teacher autonomysupport and parent attachment as predictors of students’ academic achievement with the view to establishing which of the three variables would best determine students’ achievement. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested in the study. The sample consisted of two hundred and fifty students randomly selected in senior secondary schools one in Ijebu-North Local Government Area of Ogun State, Nigeria. Four instruments: Perceived Academic Competence scale (r = 0.77), Teacher – Autonomy support scale(r= 0.90), parent Attachment scale (r = 0.93) and Academic tests (r = 0.78) were used for eliciting data. Result showed that perceived competence, teachers’ autonomy support and parents’ attachment significant combine in predicting students’ achievement (R = .333; R2 = 111; R2 (adj) = . 100; F(2,242) = 10.073; p ˂ 0.01). However, perceived competence (β = .175; t= 2.676; p˃05) was found to be more potent out of the three predictors variables, while teacher-autonomy support (β = .169; t = 2.443; p˃05) was the next potent for the prediction of students’ achievement.
Ten‐year follow‐up of adolescent‐onset anorexia nervosa: physical health and neurodevelopment

To study the development of physical health and some neuromotor functions in anorexia nervosa (AN) 51 individuals (48 females, three males) with a mean AN onset of 14 years, recruited after community screening, were followed prospectively together with 51 age‐, sex‐, and school‐matched individuals without AN (controls). About 10 years after AN onset, all individuals were examined in respect of physical health and neurodevelopment. There were no deaths. Weight and height had normalised, except in three participants with persistent AN. Significantly more participants with AN had a physical complaint/disorder, including hirsutism. This might be a long‐term complication in weight restored AN. Dysdiadochokinesis occurred almost exclusively among individuals with former AN in accordance with our previous studies.
Striking a Balance in Boundary-Spanning Positions: An Investigation of Some Unconventional Influences of Role Stressors and Job Characteristics on Job Outcomes of Salespeople

Most previous studies have focused on the linear effects of role stressors and job characteristics on salespersons’ behavioral (e.g., performance) and psychological (e.g., satisfaction) job outcomes. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Yerkes-Dodson law, activation theory, and overstimulation hypothesis, the author examines some unconventional hypotheses of curvilinear and interactional influences of role stressors (i.e., role conflict, ambiguity, and overload) and job characteristics (i.e., autonomy, feedback, task variety, and participation) on five key job outcomes of salespeople. Using data from salespeople across a range of small and large firms, the author finds that curvilinear and/or interactional influences are supported for job tension, turnover intentions, and performance but not for job satisfaction or organizational commitment. The findings specifically indicate support for the overstimulation hypothesis because the dysfunctional effects of role ambiguity tend to be amplified when autonomy, feedback, and task variety are increased. In addition, the results yield evidence of buffering effects because the adverse consequences of role conflict and overload appear to be buffered by task variety and feedback. Overall, the study highlights the inherent trade-offs for sales managers attempting to design jobs with positive job characteristics for salespersons facing high levels of role stressors. The author discusses the implications for theory and practice.
Investigating Product Involvement Issues for Mobile Phone Services: A Study of Filipino Mobile Phone Users

The mobile phone market in the Philippines is an interesting proposition. While the very extensive usage of mobile phone communications has earned the country a reputation of being the “texting capital” of the world, the emergence of next generation mobile communication devices and communication technology platforms has yet to be fully understood. This study aims to determine the particular levels of involvement Filipino mobile phone users place on such next generation mobile phone products and services. This study compares the levels of involvement on five mobile phone services across two different demographic factors – regular mobile phone vs. smart phone users and postpaid vs. prepaid subscribers. The study shows that being technologically more complex, smart phone users place higher levels of involvement on the services available through their devices. The same is true with higher-priced items. This implies that marketers and advertisers should seriously reconsider their allocation of resources to enable consumers to know and learn about mobile phone products and services with respect to the levels of involvement that users place on each one.
Ultrastructure of the Spermatozoa of the Yangtze Finless Porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides asiaeorientalis)

Semen sample was collected from two captive adult Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides asiaeorientalis) during physical examination. One individual was aged about 9 years with body length 143 cm (total length) and body weight 46.1 kg in 2003. The age of the other was unknown and its body length was 147 cm and body weight was 43 kg in 2004. Ultrastructure of their spermatozoa was examined using scanning and transmission electron microscope. The sperm concentration was 4.17 × 109 spermatozoa per ml by the cytometer. The approximate dimensions of the spermatozoa were as follows: head length, 3.366 ± 0.140 μm (mean ± SE, n = 15); head width, 1.896 ± 0.099 μm (n = 15); and neck length, 1.004 ± 0.074 μm (n = 10). The tail included midpiece, principal piece and terminal piece. The length of the midpiece was 1.882 ± 0.077 μm (n = 9). There is no apparent boundary between the principal piece and the terminal piece, so the length of the principal piece and the terminal piece was 44.612 ± 3.485 μm (n = 5). Total length of the spermatozoa was 53.314 ± 4.580 μm (n = 10). The acrosome covered approximately 45.8% of the anterior portion of the head.
Why Do Small Stock Acquirers Underperform in the Long-Term?

We study the long-term performance of acquirers with respect to their size and method of payment. Our results shed new light on why stock acquirers appear to underperform cash acquirers in some studies. We present two main results. First, there is no economically or statistically significant difference between the performance of large stock acquirers and large cash acquirers. Conversely, small stock acquirers underperform small cash acquirers by about 12 in the first 12 months following mergers and up to 18 in the first 36 months. Hence, the previously documented underperformance of stock acquirers is due to the underperformance of small stock acquirers exclusively. Second, we find evidence that this underperformance is likely caused by mispricing related to limits to arbitrage: measures of short-selling constraints, illiquidity, and information uncertainty proxies subsume the size effect in our tests. We find no evidence that underperformance is related to acquirer-target integration problems or to earnings management prior to mergers.
Assessing the Web-Based Destination Marketing Activities: A Relationship Marketing Perspective

This study aims to assess the Web-based destination marketing activities employed by American Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs). Empirical data was collected via a survey from 260 CVBs in the USA. The research results reveal that organizational size, financial resources and management team's technological expertise are the dominating factors affecting the effective implementation of each of the four functions of Web-based marketing activities (i.e., information, communication, transaction, and assurance) as well as the overall effectiveness of these activities. The findings suggest that CVBs should use Web-based marketing activities under the guidance of relationship marketing principles. However, the research findings further imply that this is a challenging process which requires investment of considerable resources and organizational support. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence on this relatively under researched area. The research findings will be of interest to destination marketing organizations.
The Everyday Impacts of Providing Informal Care to Dependent Elders and their Consequences for the Care Recipients

Longitudinal data were used to identify the relationship between different areas of negative impact and elder and caregiver characteristics. The extent and predictors of persistence and development of negative impact in different areas and the relationship between caregiving impact and subsequent caregiving patterns, including termination of care and institutionalization of the elder, were also examined. Caregiving exerted the greatest toll on a caregiver's personal life reported by 61%, in comparison to family life (18%), or employment (15%-20%). Those at particular risk of negative impact included offspring and other-relative caregivers who resided with the elder. All areas of negative impact persisted over time but did not result in any major disruption in care for the elder. However, those elders whose caregivers experienced personal impact were twice as likely to be institutionalized.
Changing organizational form to avoid regulatory constraints: The effect of mandatory gender balance in the boardroom

Norway is the first and so far the only country to mandate a minimum fraction of male and female directors. We find that after the new gender balance law required at least 40% of each gender on corporate boards in 2003, half the firms exit to an organizational form that is not exposed to the law. This suggests the regulation is costly, and we find the cost to be firm-specific. Firms exit more often when they are profitable, non-listed, and have powerful owners. This reflects that independently of the gender balance law, successful firms with low agency costs lose less value than other firms when leaving their optimal organizational form. Exit is also more likely when the firm has few female directors and is not controlled by a family. This supports the notion that forced gender quotas are more costly the more the board’s gender mix must be changed, and that family control makes such changes easier. The exit propensity is higher for small and young firms, suggesting that the cost of complying with the gender balance law is mostly fixed, and that organizational change becomes more costly as firms mature. The decision to enter the exposed form is driven by similar concerns as the exit decision. Overall, it seems the gender balance law makes listed firms end up with the right organizational form, but with the wrong board. Non-listed firms get the right board, but the wrong organizational form.
An international investigation of cultural and demographic effects on domestic retail loyalty

Noting the lack of research on cultural effects on retailing, the present study uses the cultural framework developed by Hofstede as the foundation for an investigation of loyalty to domestic retailers. A multi‐country survey of consumer attitudes about domestic versus international retailers explored the effects of two cultural variables (individualism and uncertainty avoidance), two individual‐level demographic variables (age and sex), and one country‐level demographic variable (the ratio of imports to GDP). Results indicated that cultural individualism is negatively correlated with loyalty to domestic retailers, uncertainty avoidance is positively related to loyalty to domestic retailers, the ratio of foreign imports to GDP is negatively correlated to loyalty to domestic retailers, and men exhibit greater loyalty to domestic retailers than women do. Age was not a significant predictor. A procedure is presented for extending these findings to more than 45 additional countries. Implications of these findings for international strategic planning by retailers and directions for future academic exploration are discussed.
New manufacturing investment and unions

Despite recent media stories about both labor unions and the potential revitalization of U.S. manufacturing, most current policy discussions about improving business climate to foster manufacturing neglect the role of unions. This, plus the continued decline in U.S. union membership, might lead one to believe that unions matter little for new investment decisions. This essay argues that, in fact, unions remain an extremely significant factor in decisions by U.S. manufacturers about where they will or will not make new investments. Both unions and manufacturing are discussed in an analysis that distinguishes between new investment at new plants and at existing plants.
Analysis on Trial

This paper describes work carried out in order to assess whether the approach taken to the analysis of qualitative data impacts upon the findings and their consequent interpretation. Three different approaches were used to analyse the same dataset - a Holistic and Interpretive approach, a Cut and Paste approach and Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS). We discuss the differences between the approaches themselves, their output, the relative costs of adopting the three different approaches and the implications of the work.
Disturbed egocentric space representation in cervical dystonia

In addition to visual spatial input, vestibular and proprioceptive signals are used in judging the egocentric space. We asked whether the abnormal head posture of patients with cervical dystonia (CD) is associated with distortions of their internal spatial reference frame. The perception of subjective straight‐ahead (SSA) was tested under various conditions in 28 CD patients and in matched controls. They were asked to direct a laser pointer to the position that they believed to be “straight ahead” relative to their bodies' orientation (body‐centered spatial perception). Body‐independent visual spatial perception was assessed with different neuropsychological tests. CD patients had a greater deviation of the subjective straight ahead, indicating body‐centered visual spatial perception, than controls. No effects were seen in body‐independent visual spatial perception. Patients with CD are impaired in body‐centered, egocentric spatial perception, but not in body‐independent, allocentric spatial perception. © 2004 Movement Disorder Society
The impact of photon dose calculation algorithms on expected dose distributions in lungs under different respiratory phases

A planning study was carried out on a cohort of CT datasets from breast patients scanned during different respiratory phases. The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of different air filling in lungs on the calculation accuracy of photon dose algorithms and to identify potential patterns of failure with clinical implications. Selected respiratory phases were free breathing (FB), representative of typical end expiration, and deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH), a typical condition for clinical treatment with respiratory gating. Algorithms investigated were the pencil beam (PBC), the anisotropic analytical algorithm (AAA) and the collapsed cone (CC) from the Varian Eclipse or Philips Pinnacle planning system. Reference benchmark calculations were performed with the Voxel Monte Carlo (VMC++). An analysis was performed in terms of physical quantities inspecting either dose–volume or dose–mass histograms and in terms of an extension to three dimensions of the γ index of Low. Results were stratified according to a breathing phase and algorithm. Collectives acquired in FB or DIBH showed well-separated average lung density distributions with mean densities of 0.27 ± 0.04 and 0.16 ± 0.02 g cm−3, respectively, and average peak densities of 0.17 ± 0.03 and 0.09 ± 0.02 g cm−3. Analysis of volume–dose or mass–dose histograms proved the expected deviations on PBC results due to the missing lateral transport of electrons with underestimations in the low dose region and overestimations in the high dose region. From the γ analysis, it resulted that PBC is systematically defective compared to VMC++ over the entire range of lung densities and dose levels with severe violations in both respiratory phases. The fraction of lung voxels with γ > 1 for PBC reached 25% in DIBH and about 15% in FB. CC and AAA performed, in contrast, similarly and with fractions of lung voxels with γ > 1 in average inferior to 2% in FB and 4–5% (AAA) or 6–8% (CC) in DIBH. In summary, PBC proved to be severely defective in calculations involving lungs and particularly for cases where specific respiratory phases (e.g. DIBH) are assumed for treatment. In contrast, CC and AAA manifested a high degree of consistency against the Monte Carlo method and provided stable results over the entire range of clinically relevant densities.
Failure to Delegate

This paper documents a sharp reversal of individual investors' tendency to delegate their equity investments between 2007 and 2011, primarily based on a representative sample of 40,000 self-directed clients at one of Germany's largest retail banks. At the beginning of 2007, the typical sample investor holds 44% of his equity investments in stock funds; at the end of 2011, this fraction has dropped by about half. Much of the drop occurs at the height of the 2008 and 2011 financial crises, implying that investors take on idiosyncratic risk precisely when equity market volatility peaks. The failure to delegate is not special to the sample; it can also be detected in the broader German investor population and among U.S. households. The failure to delegate is costly: sample investors who tilt their equity portfolio towards individual stocks experience returns that are 25% more volatile and 2% per year lower, on average, than had they simply held on to their more delegated portfolios. The explanation for the decline in delegation that appears to be most consistent with the data is that investors perceive opportunities in individual stocks during the recent financial crises, but do not trust active fund managers to exploit these opportunities on their behalf.
Do Customer and Technology Orientations Influence Product Innovativeness in SMEs? Some New Evidence from Greece

Due to the recently articulated need for a better understanding of product innovativeness determinants, this study focuses on firm-specific factors that influence the innovativeness level of new products. A path analysis model pertaining to a dataset of 150 manufacturing SMEs in Greece is applied to examine customer and technology orientations' direct effects on product newness to customers on the one hand and their indirect effects through learning orientation on new product uniqueness on the other. Empirical results indicate that technology orientation is more important than customer orientation in explaining product newness to customers and thus increases the chances of the firm producing a new product beyond their experiences and consumption patterns. They also suggest that learning orientation being enhanced by stronger customer and technology orientations constitutes a key organisational capability in creating more unique new products for the market. These findings are discussed in the context of Greek SMEs in the food & beverages and textile industries, taking into account the specific conditions prevailing. Apart from providing some new evidence in the important area of SMEs, this study also reveals interesting implications for managers and policy-makers while providing potential avenues for further investigation.