Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Agris on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics

This study examines the effects of real exchange rate volatility on agricultural products export in Nigeria using annual time series data from1970 to 2013. The long run, short run and causal effects of real exchange rate volatility on agricultural products export were evaluated. VECM was used to evaluate the effects of real exchange rate volatility on agricultural products export. The Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Philip Perron (PP) unit root tests confirm that all variables were stationary in their first difference. Further investigation based on the Johansen co-integration tests indicates that one co-integration exists between exchange rate volatility and each of the agricultural products export while controlling for other variables. Exchange rate volatility has negative long run effect on all agricultural exports studied with the effect being strongest for coffee followed by rubber. The results based on Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) show evidence of negative but insignificant short run effects of real exchange rate volatility on agricultural products export. From the Granger causality test, there exists bidirectional causality between cocoa and real exchange rate volatility. The implications of these findings are drawn.
Awareness and Practice Patterns of Celiac Disease Among Family Physicians: A Questionnaire-Based Study in Relation to Years in Practice and Awareness of Local Guidelines

Awareness and Practice Patterns of Celiac Disease Among Family Physicians: A Questionnaire-Based Study in Relation to Years in Practice and Awareness of Local Guidelines Objective : To evaluate awareness and practice patterns of family physicians regarding celiac disease (CD), in relation to years in practice and awareness of local guidelines Methods : A total of 147 family physicians (mean age 39.4 years, range, 24 to 64 years and 52.4% were female) working in primary care clinics across Gaziantep province were included on a voluntary basis in this cross-sectional questionnaire-survey. The questionnaire form elicited items on sociodemographic characteristics of physicians (age, gender, years in practice), their awareness of CD (serological tests, screening indications, types of the disease) and practice patterns in CD including frequency of suspected diagnosis, serological tests, intestinal biopsy, risk of malignancy, gluten-free diet strictness and criteria, IgA screening and awareness of local guidelines. The questionnaire form was applied via face-to-face interview method. Results : Presence of chronic diarrhea (33.7%) was reported to be the most indication for serological analysis and typical form of the disease (49.8%) was reported to be more commonly recognized. Only 17.7% of physicians reported that they frequently suspect CD in adult patients, 38.1% reported that they frequently refer patients for serological tests for CD and 36.1% reported that they always recommend intestinal biopsy for serology positive patients. Overall, 63.5% of physicians considered strict the gluten-free diet to always be applied by patients with CD, 51% reported that they recommend a gluten-free diet to serology negative patient with symptoms similar to CD and 19.7% reported that they recommend IgA screening for patients with CD. No significant difference was noted in practice pattern variables with respect to years in practice, while the likelihood of a physician to always recommend intestinal biopsy for serology positive patients (42.7% vs. 27.7%, p=0.028) significantly increased with the awareness of guidelines. Conclusion : In conclusion, our findings indicate low level of awareness about CD in terms of adult-onset and atypical presentations and poor knowledge regarding the diagnosis and practice patterns in CD among family physicians, regardless of the years in practice. Accordingly, our findings indicate a need to increase awareness of CD and improve adherence to guidelines via educational sessions and workshops among family physicians, particularly in terms of the recognition of adult onset of symptoms, the utility of serological tests combined with intestinal biopsy and proper recommendation of gluten-free diet in individuals with CD.
The management pattern of adopting tqm in hong kong companies

Abstract While TQM is a well-established method in Europe and the US, Hong Kong companies are struggling with their TQM programme. The survey responses of 230 Hong Kong managers reveal that the adoption of TQM principles and practices are sporadic. Among the eight dimensions of TQM adoption, managers are persisting with an economic value driven management orientation in the goals-related dimensions and the system design dimension, even though managers are following TQM principles and practices in dimensions such as job coordination and role of information. The inconsistency within the paradigmatic shift may explain the poor TQM adoption in those companies.
AN ANALYSIS OF THE TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP THEORY

In the fast changing world, organizational leadership becomes more important and it is considered as a critical success factor. In this regard, not only top-level managers need to show their capabilities, but all managers at all levels of the organization also feel the need to cooperate with others to achieve the desired results. Regardless of their job, they should know how to influence others, provoke them into working and also they must take responsibility for outcomes. Transformational leadership refers to leaders who seek to create ideas and new perspectives to create a new path of growth and prosperity in front of the organization. By developing commitment, passion and loyalty among managers and staff, they mobilize organization’s members to make fundamental changes in fundaments and basis of the organization in order to be prepared and to gain necessary capabilities for moving in new directions and reaching higher ideal performance peaks. Transformational leader is inspiring and creative and leads people in a way that they try more than their abilities in the organization and also invent and innovate in their work area. Scholars and theorists believe that transformational leadership management is more effective than pragmatic leadership. Transformational leaders make their employees realize the value of what they do. Keywords: Transformational leadership; idealized influence; intellectual stimulation; inspirational motivation; personal considerations
Factors influencing cryopreserved allograft heart valve degeneration

Heart valve replacement is becoming more commonplace in developed nations. Despite this the ideal valve prosthesis has not been found. The allograft valve has been used for over 40 years and remains an important prosthesis with many advantages. However, like other biological valve prosthesis, they have a finite durability. The causes of allograft valve degeneration are still unknown. The study aims to identify factors associated with cryopreserved allograft valve degeneration. Knowledge of such factors will improve our understanding of the potential causes and mechanisms of allograft heart valve degeneration. A historical cohort study was conducted on 115 adult recipients of cryopreserved aortic and pulmonary allograft valves who had valves implanted between 1/06/1998 and 31/03/2003 at 9 hospitals in the state of Victoria, Australia. Recipients were human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typed and tested for anti-HLA antibodies by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and lymphocytotoxicity (CDC) methods. Specificities of recipient anti-HLA class I antibodies were defined by CDC testing against a panel of T-lymphocytes from 80 blood donors. Donor valve HLA typing was performed on stored donor deoxyribonucleic acid samples using molecular methods (sequencing and sequence-specific oligonucleotide typing). Valve function at most recent echocardiographic follow-up was examined for an association with the following variables: HLA A, B and DR donor-recipient mismatch, recipient anti-HLA class I and II antibody status, donor-specific anti-HLA class I antibody status, valve
Efficient Annotation of Complex Documents through Active Learning for Retraining a Machine Learning Classifier

Supervised machine learning algorithms require training on labeled training data which is expensive to obtain when the labels have to by annotated by humans. Active Learning aims to reduce the annotation effort by selecting suitable training samples which yield a higher performance of the machine learning algorithm then random chosen training samples. The task we want to explore Active Learning methods for is the classification of documents. We face a situation where we do not have access to the unlabeled data and do not have access to the machine learning model. The selection of samples happens solely on the prediction vector made by the machine learning model for individual samples. We experiment with scenarios where we have access to data and model to see if our methods perform better in such a case. The Active Learning methods which we employ are built on different assumptions and can be categorized into three families: individual score calculations, distance based subset selections and model improvement prediction methods. To evaluate Active Learning methods we introduce a novel measure and use it to compare different methods. Our experiments show a clear advantage of using Active Learning methods over no Active Learning.
International coordination on climate policies: a (brief) introduction

Given the current trend in global emissions, the latest round of climate change negotiations at the Durban meeting of December 2011 (for the adoption of a comprehensive global treaty on climate change mitigation as soon as possible—and no later than 2015—and to come into force in 2020) has hardly shown the results one would have hoped for. Even for the most optimistic, it remains unclear whether we can expect a successful negotiating outcome by 2015. There are inherent difficulties associated with climate change negotiations, ranging from which countries should bear most responsibility for a given emission reduction target to the assessment of a globally efficient time path for pricing harmful greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs): and these difficulties become even more complex and challenging under the pervasive uncertainty of climate science and the uncertainty about the feedback loop between climate damages and economic growth. During the past decades, the environmental economics literature has provided important insights regarding the design of environmental fiscal policies and treaties but there is a host of issues that remain relatively unexplored. For instance, little do we know about the cooperative solution of carbon and trade policies when climate change affects the productive possibilities of countries. In this context, it is also not obvious whether observed policies could be improved upon in such a way that all countries gain in welfare. It remains also unclear what the carbon extraction path should be in the absence of a comprehensive treaty (such as, for example, if environmental policy is unilaterally chosen subject to an agreed ‘ceiling’ in global temperature). Though carbon pricing instruments like carbon taxes, cap-and-trade and hybrids have been well studied, not much is known about their properties in the presence of ‘offset’ schemes such as the Clean Development Mechanism. More work is also required to understand the strategic implications of the uncertainty surrounding climate change and how this affects, for example, the choice of climate change strategy (‘precautionary’ or ‘wait and see’), how uncertainty impacts on the propensity of countries to sign a climate treaty, and the extent to which the possibility of a climate catastrophe fosters or hinders cooperation. Understanding political economy issues is also vital in tackling
Symmetric CMOS in fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator using P/sup +/-polycrystalline SiGe gate electrodes

In this work, polycrystalline SiGe gate electrodes have been implemented on fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator with light channel doping. Symmetric NMOS and PMOS operation is achieved, with threshold voltages in the range of 0.4-0.6 V. The devices exhibit good short-channel behavior and near-ideal subthreshold slope. CMOS ring oscillators with enhancement-mode NMOS and PMOS have been fabricated, exhibiting propagation delays comparable to previously reported values for fully-depleted SOI. <<ETX>>
A Novel Nested T-Type Four-Level Inverter for Medium Voltage Applications

Multi-Level converter topologies have gained much attention during recent three decades due to their significant benefits in a wide range of applications especially for high power and medium voltage applications. This paper presented a novel Nested T-Type (NT-Type) four-level inverter for high power and medium voltage applications. Main advantages of NT-Type four-level topology are: operating over a wide range of voltage without the requirement to connect to power devices in series, high quality output voltage, and less proportion of components in comparison with other classical four-level topologies. Also, comparison of the conduction losses between the NT-Type and Nested Neural Point Clamped (NNPC) inverter is determined. The three type Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) schemes, which are the most popular modulation schemes in industry applications, are utilized in this study for NT-Type and NNPC topologies. The performance of the NT-Type inverter is verified by MATLAB/Simulink.
SUITABILITY INDEX ASSESSMENT FOR COLLECTION BIN ALLOCATION USING ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) CASCADED TO ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK (ANN)

Municipal solid waste is an inevitable outcome of anthropogenic activities. Proper sustainable solid waste management is the need of the hour. In this study, a Suitabil - ity Index (S.I) has been determined which can measure the relative importance of a district with regard to its necessity or requirement of collection bins in comparison to other districts in a municipality. The S.I was computed using Analytical Hierarchy Process cascaded to Artificial Neural Network. Four criteria viz. Demographic, So - cial, Economic and Technical considerations and seven factors viz. Population Den - sity (P.D), Street Width (S.W), Waste Generation Rate (W.G.R), Income Group Distribution (I
Translating Creative Ideas into Profitable Realities

In the twenty-first century, organizations are left with no choice but to innovate if they are to survive. In order for innovation to happen, it is often required that the creative ideas in the organization are translated into profitable realities. One major source of such creative ideas is the company’s employees, who are also the executors of this translation. Here, the topic of intrapreneurship has recently grown popular, a term that can be defined as entrepreneurship within an existing organization. Whilst the concept of intrapreneurship has become a popular buzzword over the last few years, both in research and among managers, it is still ambiguous how Swedish MNCs today are fostering and working with the enabling factors, or antecedents, of intrapreneurship. This study thus adds to the field through in a qualitative multiple case study compare how three Swedish MNCs are working with the hard and soft antecedents of intrapreneurship, that is both the nonformalized and formalized structures necessary to enable intrapreneurship. The findings from the study suggest that all of the case companies are working with at least some aspects of the antecedents, but to a certain degree lack more fine-tuned tools and formal structures for this task. When comparing the findings from both the soft and hard antecedents, it was found that whilst the soft antecedents are necessary to enable the creation of creative ideas, the hard antecedents are crucial for translating these creative ideas into profitable realities. Therefore, if Swedish MNCs wishes to become more intrapreneurial, this study suggests a more focused approach on the hard antecedents of intrapreneurship is to recommend. Lastly, the study has given source for a number of possible research topics in relation to intrapreneurship in the future. These include looking more in depth into the role of hard antecedents of intrapreneurship, office design and planning as well as the role of motivation and design of reward systems.
Current Trends of Durability Design and Government Support in South Korea: Chloride Attack

Concrete is considered to be a construction material with high durability and excellent fire resistance. However, degradation occurs, leading to structural safety problems and expensive maintenance costs. Currently, durability design and its concepts are provided in the concrete specifications and structural design codes in many countries, but they vary in terms of the design methodologies and users’ demands. Reinforced concrete (RC) structures based on a reasonable durability design with a quantitative procedure can prevent unnecessary maintenance expenses and reduce environmental loads. This paper presents the current trends of durability design in South Korea and government support for infrastructure. In this work, the two representative durability design philosophies (deterministic and probabilistic approaches) are briefly summarized, and the current guidelines and related requirements for durability design in several countries are investigated. Durability design is now changing from simple material requirement control to performance-based design with quantitative parameters considering various exposure classifications and evaluation processes. RC structures based on reasonable durability design can make a great contribution to reducing maintenance costs and environmental effects like CO2 emissions.
Strategies of Modeling, Monitoring, Professional Dialogue and the Effectiveness of Principal Leadership to Teachers During the Pandemic of Covid-19

The purpose of this study was to determine the strategies of modeling, monitoring, professional dialogue, and the effectiveness of the principal’s learning leadership to teachers during the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. A quantitative approach was used in this research. The population of this research is the principals of public elementary schools in Malang City, Malang Regency, and Batu City, East Java Province, Indonesia, amounting to 1,323. The sample selection used was random sampling, with a total of 290 people or 22 percent of the population. Data analysis used path coefficient analysis. The results showed that strategies of modeling, monitoring, and professional dialogue affected the effectiveness of learning leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.
AYURVEDIC HERBAL MEDICINES ON BURN WOUND: A REVIEW

Burn injuries are under-appreciated injuries that are associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. Burn wound healing is a complicated process that includes inflammation, reepithelialization, granulation, neovascularization, and wound contraction. Initial treatment of burn wounds aims at preventing infection and early wound healing. Properties like antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antibacterial are also helps in wound healing. The level of severity of the burn is of the utmost importance. Third degree burns require immediate medical attention while studies suggest that a number of natural remedies may aid in the treatment of firstand second-degree burns. The basic concepts and principles of management of burn injury is described in Ayurveda are very much relevant and useful in this era of modern surgery. There are so many herbs mentioned in Ayurveda classics are found to have properties like Dagdhahara, Vrana prasamana, Pittahara, Varnaprasadana, Twacya etc which contributes to burn wound healing. More recently, scientists increasingly rely on modern scientific methods and evidence based medicine to prove efficacy of herbal medicine and focus on better understanding of mechanisms of their action. The purpose of this article is to review the evidence supporting the use of some of the Ayurvedic herbal drugs and formulations as effective and affordable treatments for burn wounds.
The Na /Ca exchanger-1 mediates left ventricular dysfunction in mice with chronic intermittent hypoxia

exchanger-1 mediates left ventricular dysfunction in mice with chronic intermittent hypoxia. J Appl Physiol 109: 1675–1685, 2010. intermittent hypoxia (CIH) and cardiovascular dysfunction occur in patients with obstructive sleep apnea. We hypothesized that the Na (cid:1) /Ca 2 (cid:1) exchanger-1 (NCX1) mediates, at least partially, left ventricular (LV) dysfunction in CIH. Four groups of mice ( N (cid:2) 15–17 per group), either cardiac-speciﬁc NCX1 knockouts (KO) or wild types (WT), were exposed to either CIH or normoxia [i.e., handled controls (HC)] 10 h/day for 8 wk. As expected, myocardial expression of NCX1 was greater in WT than in KO animals, both in HC and CIH-exposed groups. In both CIH groups (WT or KO), but not the HC groups, blood pressure increased by 10% at week 1 over their baseline and remained elevated for all 8 wk, with no differences between WT and KO. LV dilation (increased diastolic and systolic dimension) and hypertrophy (increased left heart weight), along with LV dysfunction (greater end-diastolic pressure and lower ejection fraction), were observed in the WT animals compared with the KO following CIH exposure. Compared with HC, CIH exposure was associated with apoptosis (terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP-mediated nick-end labeling and caspase-3) in WT, but not KO, mice. We conclude that myocardial NCX1 does not mediate changes in blood pressure, but is one of the mediators for LV global dysfunction and cardiomyocyte injury in CIH. Statistical distribution, Kolmogorov-Smirnov (cid:8) , statistical signiﬁcance tested using two-factor ANOVA: one factor being genotype (WT or KO), and one factor being exposure treatment (HC or CIH). For data collected over time, including body weight, tail BP, and echocardiographic variables, three-factor ANOVA was performed, with the additional factor being time. To reduce variability between animals at baseline, the echocardiographic data were additionally analyzed as the changes at week 8 compared with baseline (i.e., delta) and then tested by two-factor ANOVA. If signiﬁcance was found, the source of signiﬁcance was determined after adjusting for multiple comparisons using post hoc Newman- Keuls analysis. We explored the interaction between the two primary factors, genotype (WT or KO) and exposure (HC or CIH). Interaction represents the degree to which differences between levels of one factor are inﬂuenced by the level of the other. The null hypothesis was rejected at the 5% level.