Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HOW PRODUCT SERVICE SYSTEMS FACILITATE ECO-INNOVATION BEHAVIOR doi.org/10.17863/CAM.13931

Increasingly firms develop technology-based sharing approaches where users rent, lease and share products, instead of purchasing them. Particularly, the product service system (PSS) concept has recently caught attention by scholars from different disciplines, although surprisingly little from the innovation research community. The writings from our colleagues however lead us to suspect that PSS developing firms might pursue an innovation behavior that is much more in line with recent societal demands for reducing environmental externalities. Recent examples show that adopting the PSS approach could be a way even for profit-driven firms towards a more sustainable economy, actually without too much governmental intervention. However, to our knowledge this argument has yet been hardly discussed in detail. Drawing on concepts from the innovation management literature as well as from environmental management research, we contribute a model that explains why the PSS approach can shift firm innovation behavior towards generating fewer environmental externalities. This model links firm innovation behavior to three antecedents, including two product related characteristics (ownership, product purpose) and the specifics of the PSS related profit function. We argue that these antecedents differ whether firms develop products or PSSs. In the latter case the antecedent specifications impact firms’ R&D objectives in a way that creates incentives to follow innovation trajectories that lead to a reduction of environmental externalities (i.e., ecoinnovation behavior).
FINANCIAL POLICY DETERMINANTS: EVIDENCE FROM A NESTED LOGIT MODEL

How do managers set financial policy? The aim of this paper is to document the driving factors of the financial policy choice and to evaluate the relevance of two alternative theories, the trade-off theory and the pecking order theory. We use a database of 3,659 firms, over the period 1991-2002; our study relies upon the estimation of two qualitative variable models, a multinomial logit model and a nested logit model. We show that trade-off models are more pertinent than pecking-order models so as to explain the financial policy choice of a firm, but none of these models are sufficient to explain all our results.
Relationships between Social Support, Motivation, and Science Achievement: Structural Equation Modeling *

This study investigated the relationships between the perceived social support, motivation and science achievement in a sample of 1375 (701 females, 674 males) middle school students. The study was conducted within a causal research design. Social support data were collected via the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASSS) and the data concerning motivation were collected via the Motivation Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Students' science achievement levels were determined through calculating the scores they obtained in science courses. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM). According to the structural models obtained, the effects of social support on science achievement and motivation, as well as the effects of social support and motivation on science achievement, were found to be positive and significant. The mediating effect of motivation between social support and science achievement was not significant p>. 05. The findings revealed that the cooperation of the sources of support (parents, teachers, classmates, and close friends) was essential in increasing students' science achievement and motivation levels.
IRON-GROUP ABUNDANCES IN THE METAL-POOR MAIN-SEQUENCE TURNOFF STAR HD 84937

We have derived new, very accurate abundances of the Fe-group elements Sc through Zn (Z = 21−30) in the bright main-sequence turnoff star HD 84937 based on high-resolution spectra covering the visible and ultraviolet spectral regions. New or recent laboratory transition data for 14 species of seven elements have been used. Abundances from more than 600 lines of non-Fe species have been combined with about 550 Fe lines in HD 84937 to yield abundance ratios of high precision. The abundances have been determined from both neutral and ionized transitions, which generally are in agreement with each other. We find no substantial departures from the standard LTE Saha ionization balance in this [Fe/H] = −2.32 star. Noteworthy among the abundances are [Co/Fe] = +0.14 and [Cu/Fe] = −0.83, in agreement with past studies of abundance trends in this and other low-metallicity stars, and ⟨ [ Sc,Ti,V/Fe ] ⟩ = + 0.31 , ? > which has not been noted previously. A detailed examination of scandium, titanium, and vanadium abundances in large-sample spectroscopic surveys reveals that they are positively correlated in stars with [Fe/H] < −2; HD 84937 lies at the high end of this correlation. These trends constrain the synthesis mechanisms of Fe-group elements. We also examine the Galactic chemical evolution abundance trends of the Fe-group elements, including a new nucleosynthesis model with jet-like explosion effects.
Institutional Rigidities and Employment Rigidity on the Italian Labour Market

A well-established result in the theoretical literature on labour market flexibility is that the employment should be more volatile in “flexible” labour markets. Over the last 35 years, Italy gives a good example of a transition from an over-regulated labour market into a quite more flexible one. According to the theory, the deregulation is expected to increase the employment variance. Despite the anecdotal evidence reported in the press, the literature hardly finds any evidence for such an effect. This paper exploits time-series of several employment indicators since 1980, allowing us to compare decades with different labour market regulation. All the considered series show evidence of a structural break with an increase in their variance after the deregulation, confirming the expected pattern. This gives some support to the concerns for increased job insecurity.
EVALUATING THE RESPONSE TO SELECTION IN MEAT RABBIT PROGRAMMES

Results of two experiments of selection for litter size or uterine capacity, involving three lines of rabbits, are used to compare different methods of evaluation of the response to selection. Direct methods, based in the study of the differences between one selected and a control population, are compared to indirect methods, based on solutions of mixed models or on bayesian inference. I t is checked that in some cases the indirect methods lead to different conclusions that the direct, being the general applicability of the former questioned. On the other hand all the experiments have had response in li t ter size, but the prenatal component responsible seems dependent on the selected line. One line has got the response by improving the ovulation rate, other through the improvement of the foetal survival and the third modifying slightly the ovulation rate and more importantly the embryo survival.
Pavement surfaces and in-cabin noise levels

This paper deals with a Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW funded study of the resultant in-cabin noise levels generated by a passenger vehicle travelling under controlled conditions. The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between externally and internally measured noise levels and to compare the internally measured noise levels with those recorded in overseas studies. The study investigated 20 pavement surfaces that represented a wide range of construction materials and techniques and surface textures adopted in NSW. A range of purportedly low noise asphalt and a dense graded asphalt were found to return the lowest overall noise levels followed by a concrete pavement that had minimal surface texture. A stone mastic asphalt along with an exposed aggregate concrete were found to perform better than randomly transverse tyned concrete pavements. Uniformly tyned concrete pavements and chip seal pavements were found to be amongst the loudest pavements. The present study found that generally, trends in internal noise levels followed those measured externally; however there were some exceptions such as chip seal pavements that recorded higher internal noise levels than did concrete pavements with comparable external noise levels.
Powerful Practices in Digital Learning Processes.

The present paper is based on two empirical research studies. The Netbook 1:1 project (2009-2012), funded by the municipality of Gentofte and Microsoft Denmark, is complete, while Students' digital production and students as learning designers (2013-2015), funded by the Danish Ministry of Education, is ongoing. Both projects concern primary and lower secondary school and focus on learning design frameworks that involve students' agency and participation regarding digital production in different subjects and cross-disciplinary projects. Within these teacher-designed frameworks, the students perform as learning designers of learning objects aimed at other students. Netbook 1:1 has shown that digital and multimodal production especially facilitates student-learning processes and qualifies student-learning results when executed within a teacher -designed framework, which provides space for and empowers students' agency as learning designers. Moreover, the positive impact increases when students as learning designers participate in formative evaluation practices. Traditionally, the Danish school has worked hard to teach students to verbalise their own academic competencies. However, as our everyday environment becomes increasingly complex with digital and multimodal technologies, formative evaluation as a learning practice becomes central, requiring the students to develop a digital and multimodal literacy beyond the traditional, language-centred type. In order to clarify these practices, we address the various understandings of evaluation and assessment that may blur our arguments. Students' digital production and students as learning designers is a large-scale project that follows up on the findings of Netbook 1:1. It experiments further with various evaluation practices in a digitalised learning environment that focuses on different phases of the learning processes and includes feed-forward and feedback processes. Evaluation as a learning practice in a digitalised learning context focuses on students as actors, addressing their self-reflections, responses to feedback from peers and feed- forward processes, and responses to feedback from teachers and feed-forward processes. We find that apart from teacher initiated and planned evaluations, the teachers find it useful to initiate ad-hoc evaluations in order to grab interesting aspects on the fly. At the same time we see students initiate ad-hoc peer-evaluations and make appointments for swopping their work for peer-evaluation.
How change aggravates HIV and AIDS among youth in Vietnam

Since the early 1990’s when the first cases of HIV were found in Vietnam, the number of people infected with HIV has been increasing. Over half of the Vietnamese population is under the age of 25 and 78.9% of the reported cases of HIV are people between the ages of 20 and 39. This thesis work has been undertaken to evaluate whether there is a need to focus more on the youth in terms of prevention within HIV and AIDS related to the move from a peasant society to a more industrialised society. To investigate this, a literature desk study was carried out supported by key informant interviews and a small questionnaire. It was found that specifically the HIV and AIDS law, stigma, discrimination, gender roles, and risk-behaviour of migrants and the Vietnamese youth were important factors linked with vulnerability and livelihood change after doi moi. Although more research on a national level on the subject is needed, the findings indicate that changes have happened since doi moi which influences the linkages between livelihood change and HIV and AIDS vulnerability among the youth in Vietnam.
Fossil and contemporary fine particulate carbon fractions at 12 rural and urban sites in the United States

[1] Fine particulate matter collected at two urban, four near-urban, and six remote sites throughout the United States were analyzed for total carbon (TC) and radiocarbon (14C). Samples were collected at most sites for both a summer and winter season. The radiocarbon was used to partition the TC into fossil and contemporary fractions. On average, contemporary carbon composed about half of the carbon at the urban, ∼70–97% at near-urban, and 82–100% at remote sites. At Phoenix, Arizona, and Seattle, Washington, one monitor was located within the urban center and one outside to assess the urban excess over background concentrations. During the summer the urban and rural sites had similar contemporary carbon concentrations. However, during the winter the urban sites had more than twice the contemporary carbon measured at the neighboring sites, indicating anthropogenic contributions to the contemporary carbon. The urban fossil carbon was 4–20 times larger than the neighboring rural sites for both seasons. Organic (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) from TOR analysis were available. These and the radiocarbon data were used to estimate characteristic fossil and contemporary EC/TC ratios for the winter and summer seasons. These ratios were applied to carbon data from the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments network to estimate the fraction of contemporary carbon at mostly rural sites throughout the United States. In addition, the ratios were used to develop a semiquantitative, lower bound estimate of secondary organic carbon (SOC) contribution to fossil and contemporary carbon. SOC accounted for more than one-third of the fossil and contemporary carbon.
Estimating Difference-in-Differences in the Presence of Spillovers

I propose a method for difference-in-differences (DD) estimation in situations where the stable unit treatment value assumption is violated locally. This is relevant for a wide variety of cases where spillovers may occur between quasi-treatment and quasi-control areas in a (natural) experiment. A flexible methodology is described to test for such spillovers, and to consistently estimate treatment effects in their presence. This spillover-robust DD method results in two classes of estimands: treatment effects, and “close” to treatment effects. The methodology outlined describes a versatile and non-arbitrary procedure to determine the distance over which treatments propagate, where distance can be defined in many ways, including as a multi-dimensional measure. This methodology is illustrated by simulation, and by its application to estimates of the impact of state-level text-messaging bans on fatal vehicle accidents. Extending existing DD estimates, I document that reforms travel over roads, and have spillover effects in neighbouring non-affected counties. Text messaging laws appear to continue to alter driving behaviour as much as 30 km outside of affected jurisdictions.
The Relation between earnings quality and hedging with derivatives and the determinants of hedge accounting

This paper investigates the relation between derivatives for hedging purposes and earnings volatility. In addition, it examines if hedge accounting is beneficial to mitigate earnings volatility and what are the determinants of hedge accounting. This thesis also investigates the relation between discretionary accruals and derivatives for hedging purposes including the effects of hedge accounting method on the discretionary accruals. The findings show that derivative instruments increase the earnings volatility. On the other hand, hedge accounting has no significant mitigating effect on earnings volatility. The results provide evidence that firms with higher leverage and growth rate are reluctant to prefer hedge accounting. However, as the absolute value of derivatives and asset size increases, the likelihood of employing hedge accounting goes up. Results also indicate that GDP per capita of the countries in where headquarter of companies are located is also an important determinant of hedge accounting. Finally, the results illustrate that there is no relation between discretionary accruals and derivatives.
Extraction of Grayscale Brain Tumor in Magnetic Resonance Image

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has great contribution in diagnosis and treatment of brain tumor. Segmentation of grayscale tumor or low intensity tumor is the most important and challenging task. In this paper, we propose a method to extract grayscale tumor from MRI image. Due to low intensity profile of input image, global contrast enhancement method is applied as a pre-processing step. This enhanced grayscale image is converted into binary image. Further, algorithm segments largest connected region using mathematical morphological and segmentation methods. At last, tumor region is extracted using resultant image and input MRI image. Experimental results show the proposed method effectively extracts a grayscale brain tumor from MRI images.
A Critical Discourse Analysis of Discursive (De-) Legitimation Construction of Egyptian Revolution in Persian Media

This article seeks to explore discursive strategies applied in Fars News to represent the event of Egyptian revolution as a positive/legitimized action and Hosni Mubarak’s regime as the negative/delegitimized other. Van Leeuwen's (2008) model of legitimation is used to show how Fars News applies the legitimation discursive construction, including four main categories of ''authorization'', ''evaluation'', ''rationalization'', and ''mythopoesis'' to legitimize Egyptian revolution. This article also tries to see how this news agency tries to delegitimize Mubarak’s regime by using such discursive strategies. The researchers aim to reveal how Fars News network is using language in order to legitimize or delegitimize a single event. Also, the research will argue how using certain discursive strategies of language can affect people’s mind in a way that might be in line with the policies and guidelines of a specific news agency. The study shows that Fars News put more focus on legitimizing Egyptian revolution than delegitimizing Hosni Mubarak's regime, and for the purpose of persuading its audiences to take the revolution as a good event and Mubarak as the evil since it has mostly utilized ''authorization" as the most influential legitimating category. And among the subcategories of legitimation, Fars News has made use of "personal authority" more frequently.
The CIO Role Expectations Instrument: Validation and Model Testing

The validation of IS instruments has not been given the attention that it deserves. This study uses component-based structural equation modelling (PLS/SEM) to investigate the psychometric properties and possible modelling of the CIO role expectations instrument based on data obtained from 174 Australian CIOs. Results show that the CIO role expectation instrument has exhibited solid validity and reliability indices despite some minor weaknesses. The results also demonstrate the possibility to model the constructs of this instrument in different null and hierarchical models, and the validity of this instrument to measure the CIO role in different types of industries not just the healthcare sector in which it was developed. The results provide support for CIO role theory on two central issues: (1) CIOs are fulfilling a configuration of roles not just one specific role (2) the CIO roles can be grouped into two major categories: supply side roles and demand side roles.
Influence of some biochemical components on the incidence of Maruca vitrata (Geyer) on short duration pigeonpea Cajanus cajan (L.) Mill sp.

Twenty genotypes of short duration pigeonpea of were grown at Pulses Section, Department of plant breeding and genetics during kharif 2014-15 in randomized block design with three replication to study the impact of biochemical constitution on incidence of Maruca in pigeonpea. The data were recorded on different biochemical attributes. The results indicated that the lower total sugar content, protein content higher total phenol contents in pods appeared good indicator of resistance to Maruca vitrata.
Effects of dietary excess of vitamin e and selenium on some production traits, lipid peroxide state and amount/activity of the glutathione redox system in African catfish Clarias gariepinus (siluriformes, clariidae) fingerlings

Purpose of present study was to investigate the effect of excess dietary amount of vitamin E and selenium also short-term starvation on some production traits and parameters of the lipid peroxide state and glutathione redox system in African catfish fingerlings. Three purified diets were formulated: diet 1 (control) contained 114 mg.kg -1 tocopherol and 0.43 mg.kg -1 selenium, diet 2 contained high level of tocopherol (245mg kg -1 ) and control level of selenium (0.5 mg kg -1 ), while diet 3 contained high level of selenium (2.5 mg kg -1 ) and control level of tocopherol (170 mg kg -1 ). Fingerlings of C. gariepinus (3.16-3.93 g) were investigated in four groups, three consumed the above mentioned diets and the fourth served as unfed control. The experiment lasted 30 days except in the case of the unfed group which was terminated on the 15 th day because of high mortality. The vitamin E / selenium treated groups showed significantly (P£0.001) lower final body weight and specific growth rate as compared to the control. Vitamin E and selenium content of the fish body in diet 2 group increased significantly (P£0.001) as compared to the control. Vitamin E content did not changed in the unfed group, but selenium content decreased significantly (P£0.001) during the 15-days starvation period. Reduced glutathione (GSH) content increased significantly (P£0.05) only in the high selenium group. Glutathione-disulphide (GSSG) content, and glutathione peroxidase activity did not changed neither during the period of investigation and nor as effect of treatments, but the value of GSH/GSSG ratio was significantly higher (P£0.05) in the high selenium as compared to the high vitamin E group. Lipid peroxide state of the body, as was measured by the malondialdehyde content, changed as effect of age and/or maturation but not as effect of the treatments.
Four-Dimensional Variational Data Assimilation for WRF : Formulation and Preliminary Results

Abstract The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model–based variational data assimilation system (WRF-Var) has been extended from three- to four-dimensional variational data assimilation (WRF 4D-Var) to meet the increasing demand for improving initial model states in multiscale numerical simulations and forecasts. The initial goals of this development include operational applications and support to the research community. The formulation of WRF 4D-Var is described in this paper. WRF 4D-Var uses the WRF model as a constraint to impose a dynamic balance on the assimilation. It is shown to implicitly evolve the background error covariance and to produce the flow-dependent nature of the analysis increments. Preliminary results from real-data 4D-Var experiments in a quasi-operational setting are presented and the potential of WRF 4D-Var in research and operational applications are demonstrated. A wider distribution of the system to the research community will further develop its capabilities and to encoura.