Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Linking Perceptual and Behavioral Customer Metrics to Multiperiod Customer Profitability

This study proposes and empirically tests a comprehensive service-profit chain (SPC) framework that links survey-based customer satisfaction (CS), service quality (SQ), and share-of-wallet (SOW) measures to longitudinal data on two outcome variables—customer retention and customer profitability—gathered from a financial services company's internal records. The framework also incorporates other potential determinants of customers' actual behavior and offers several important insights. First, it demonstrates that an “interactive customer segment” (replacing current offerings with newer ones) is more profitable than are other segments. Second, it augments current knowledge about the SOW-profitability link by revealing that (a) different levels of SOW generate different levels of customer profitability (cross-sectional effect) and different profitability trajectories through time (longitudinal effect), with the high-SOW segment outperforming full- and low-SOW segments, and (b) the longitudinal relationship between SOW and profitability is nonlinear, with heterogeneity in profitability across customers significantly higher than the variability of the observed profitability values over time.
A Model of Purchase Behavior under Price Uncertainty: A Real Options Approach

Retailers, such as discount stores and supermarkets, frequently conduct price promotions, and promotions for stockable products are particularly frequent. In that category, consumers tend to purchase at a lower price and postpone purchasing at a higher price. That is, they make a decision to purchase or postpone purchasing according to their memories of past prices and the current price. In the other words, under price uncertainty, they make their purchase decision by considering the option value of postponing purchase. Therefore, we develop a consumer purchase incidence model and brand choice model considering the postpone option by using a real options approach.
Analysis on developmental trend of microfluidic chip technology and the integration mode with the wearable devices

This paper conducts research on the developmental trend of microfluidic chip technology and the integration mode with the wearable devices. Miniaturization and integration is the important direction of the development of biochemical analysis, and microfluidic chip is one of the frontier and the technology, which is based on micro-electromechanical processing, structure of microchannel network characteristics, the goal is to will be involved in the biochemical analysis in areas such as sampling, pretreatment, separation, mixing, reaction, detection, and some or all of the operating unit integrated in a chip the size of a few square centimeters. To make the application scenarios of the microfluidic chip technology broader, we combine the review of the wearable devices to propose the potential integration of the two techniques. The smart hard ware and wearable device are the two major orientations of the intelligent world. In the further research, we will experimentally analyze the mode.
Social exchange behavior in logistics relationships: a shipper perspective

Examines social exchange behavior in logistics alliance and transactional relationships. Based on data collected through a mail survey of shippers that established logistics relationships with various types of third parties, the results suggest that both relationship type and effectiveness influence social exchange behavior. It appears, however, that social exchange behavior is influenced more by the level of relationship effectiveness rather than by the actual type of relationship. Shippers in effective logistics relationships perceive higher levels of trust, equity, and commitment, and lower levels of conflict and opportunism than that perceived by shippers in less effective relationships. Some support was found for differences in trust and commitment between alliance and transactional relationships. It appears shippers in alliances are more committed to maintaining relationships and trust their third party partners more than that perceived by shippers in transactional relationships. These findings sugg.
Impacts of Institutional Characteristics on International Students’ Choice of Private Higher Education Institutions in Malaysia

In recent years, Malaysia has witnessed an influx of foreign students in the local higher education institutions with the aggressive support from the Malaysian government to build Malaysia as the educational hub within the region. This is in line with Malaysia’s aspiration to be a global education hub by year 2020. Besides the country level policy, the aim of this study is to understand the major drivers that influence foreign students to choose Malaysia and the private HEI as their study destination. Five dimensions were employed in measuring student’s choice of private HEI with a focus on institutional characteristics (cost of education, academic reputation, location, programme and facilities). A sample of 265 respondents was drawn within five private HEIs and the Structural Equation Model (SEM) was utilized in testing the five proposed hypotheses. Based on the findings, all hypotheses were significant except for location. This study gave an idea that institutional characteristics are significantly important in measuring foreign students’ choice of Malaysian private HEI.
Impact of increased penetration of large-scale PV generation on short-term stability of power systems

This paper investigates the impact of increased penetration of large-scale photovoltaic (PV) generation on the short-term stability of the IEEE New England 39-bus test system, considering the stochastic nature of power systems. Based on the probabilistic models of input parameters, such as load variation and the occurrence of contingencies, Monte Carlo-type simulations are performed to iteratively evaluate the system time domain response. Also, different strategies for voltage regulation capabilities for PV systems were analyzed. The simulation results identified both, improvement and detrimental effects on short-term stability with different penetration levels of PV generation. The beneficial or detrimental effects depend on the PV systems operating mode, whether or not including voltage regulation. Greater instability conditions are reported if Full Replacing (FR) of Conventional Generating Units (CGUs) is considered. However, fewer instability conditions are obtained if Partial Replacing (PR) is considered in lieu of FR since CGU keep excitation control systems (AVR, exciter) and turbine governor controls activated.
Abscission Point Extraction for Ripe Tomato Harvesting Robots

Abstract Due to the randomicity of the natural growth of tomatoes in greenhouses and different storage days for market needs, it is difficult to fmd appropriate methodologies for certain ripe-tomato-harvesting robot systems. This paper proposes a novel approach for recognizing ripe tomatoes from the natural background in greenhouses and extracting abscission points after color segmentation for autonomous robot systems. The ripe tomatoes are recognized and segmented using L*a*b* color space method from complex tomato plants containing clutter and occlusion in tomato greenhouses. The bi-level partition fiizzy logic entropy, which could discriminate the object and the background in grayscale images, is improved to segment the ripe tomatoes. The improved exhausted search method based on the maximum value of the histogram is proposed to increase the precision of segmentation threshold and the efficiency of searching. The mathematical morphology operations are used to eliminate binary image noises after segment.
Impact of Marketing Strategies on Campus Recreational Sports Departments

The purpose of this study was to examine the need for marketing efforts and a marketing plan within the campus recreation profession. Participants consisted of 218 campus recreation administrators from four-year public and private institutions affiliated with the National Intramural Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA). Results from this research suggest that established marketing strategies and marketing plans provide the campus recreation profession coordination with their marketing efforts. The second component of this research requested that respondent's identify marketing techniques being used in the campus recreation profession. Results from this research suggest that employee skills and responsibilities, external guidelines, budget constraints, and marketing mediums provide challenges to the campus recreation profession.
HRM strength, situation strength and improvisation behavior

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the connections between human resource (HR), situation strength and improvisation behavior. A high degree of “fit” among HR practices and between such practices and organizational strategy, is said to have an impact on organizational outcomes. How these fits are achieved is not fully understood in the literature. It has been proposed that horizontal fit is achieved when messages regarding HR matters are communicated to employees in a distinct, consensual, and consistent way. This will create a strong situation, which in turn will affect outcomes such as improvisation behavior. Situation strength is captured by the concepts of climate strength, and culture strength.Design/methodology/approach – The research was conducted at a call center of a company belonging to a Portuguese Telecommunications Group. In total, 91 questionnaires were collected. Scales in the questionnaire are based on existing indicators, but a new measure of HR strength (HRS) was also used.
Analysis of electromagnetic coupling between microstrip line and ground slot on a printed circuit board

By advance of miniaturization of electronic devices, grounds of a printed circuit board are tend to be small and complicated and may have some defects, such as connectors or clearance halls of vias. In this paper, we analyzed the electromagnetic coupling between a microstrip line and a slot in a ground on a PCB using the multi-conductor transmission lines method to examine the signal integrity of the line. To calculate by using the MTL method, per-unit-length parameters, such as the self and mutual capacitances and inductances, of a microstrip line and a ground slot were calculated using the spectral domain approach. We calculated the coupling voltages in the ground slot excited by the microstrip line using the MTL method and the FDTD method and showed the validity of the proposed method by comparing the results of both methods when the microstrip line and the slot were located closely. Finally, we calculated the coupling voltages in the slot versus the space between a microstrip line and slot and showed that the coupling voltage was reduced as the thickness of the PCB decreased. And also, we showed that the accuracy of the MTL method is improved by applying a radiation loss from the ground slot.
LNCaP progression model of human prostate cancer: Androgen‐independence and osseous metastasis

Clinically, the lethal phenotypes of human prostate cancer are characterized by their progression to androgen‐independence and their propensity to form osseous metastases. We reported previously on the establishment of androgen‐independent (AI) human prostate cancer cell lines derived from androgen‐dependent (AD) LNCaP cells, with androgen independence defined as the capability of prostate cancer cells to grow in castrated hosts. One of the sublines, C4‐2, was found to be AI, highly tumorigenic, and metastatic, having a proclivity for metastasis to the bone.
Political Economy and Irrigation Technology Adoption Implications of Water Pricing under Asymmetric Information

We analyze the design of water pricing rules emerging from farmers' lobbying and their implications for the size of the lobby, water use, profits and social welfare. The lobbying groups are the adopters of modern irrigation technology and the non-adopters. The pricing rules are designed to meet budget balance of water provision; we considered (i) a two-part tariff composed of a mandatory per-acre fee plus a volumetric charge and (ii) a nonlinear pricing schedule. Our results show that under either pricing schemes, farmers can organize and affect the outcome of the water schedule design. When only a volumetric fee is levied, the budget balance constraint prevents lobbies from influencing the design of the pricing scheme. In terms of expected welfare, the two-part tariff is preferable to the nonlinear pricing scheme or an inflated marginal cost fee.
Static and Dynamic Hysteresis Models for Studying Transformer Transients

Shortcomings of the classical approach in describing magnetization processes in grain-oriented transformer steel is analyzed. A noniterative method of accounting for hysteresis and dynamic properties of transformer core is proposed. Fitting the model to catalog data is described. The method is illustrated by calculating inrush current produced by subsequent transformer energizations.
Adoption Of M-Commerce Services: The Case Of Bangladesh

This study set out to investigate the high and low adoption usage of Mcommerce service categories (Entertainment, transactions, communication, and information). The research focused on whether awareness and knowledge, convenience of Mobile devices and WAP/GPRS enabled handset, pricing and cost, security and privacy, rich and fast information and perceived usefulness have any influence on the intention to use M-commerce services among employed Mobile phone users in Dhaka and Chittagong City of Bangladesh. This study finds that communication category in M-commerce services has higher usage frequency compared to others like entertainment, transactions, and information. Three factors were found to have significant positive influence towards the adoption of M-commerce services are pricing and cost, rich and fast information, and security and privacy. Further, it is interesting to note that there is no significant gender difference in terms of M-commerce adoption level. Users less than 30 years of age have a higher tendency to adopt M-commerce services compare to the older age groups was discovered among employed mobile users in Bangladesh.
The Scope Of Due Diligence In Cross-Border Acquisitions In Central And Eastern Europe

Cross-border acquisitions play an important role in the corporate strategic development and international expansion. The paper summarizes the results of the dissertation, which intends to establish vital link between research and practice, deeply exploring the risk assessment methods and the scope of due diligence audit in the pre-acquisition phase. The central hypothesis of the comprehensive model stated that thorough due diligence in the pre-acquisition phase is necessary to make successful cross-border acquisition. The empirical evidence has been drawn on data sample of acquisitions made by automotive firms in cross-border acquisitions in the Central and Eastern Europe. The main results support the proposition that the thorough due diligence audit is necessary pre-requisite for successful acquisition. The findings further support the clear trend: In the past few years, several big automotive leaders strategically gain more control over their supply chains by acquiring technology specialists. From a practical standpoint, the research results provide acquisition management with a simple method of performing the pre-acquisition evaluation of potential acquisition candidates.
Induction of carcinoembryonic antigen (cea)‐specific cytotoxic t‐lymphocyte responses In vitro using autologous dendritic cells loaded with cea peptide or cea rna in patients with metastatic malignancies expressing cea

The application of dendritic cells (DC) to the active immunotherapy of cancer currently relies on the generation of potent DC capable of presenting tumor antigens such as carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). It is unknown whether the T cells of patients with advanced malignancies can be reliably stimulated against tumor antigens by their autologous DC. In this study, starting with the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of patients with metastatic malignancies expressing CEA, autologous DCs were generated in vitro in serum‐free media supplemented with GM‐CSF and IL‐4. The DCs from HLA A2 positive patients were loaded with the CEA peptide CAP‐1 and the DCs from HLA A2 negative patients were depleted of bystander lymphocytes and loaded with mRNA encoding CEA. The DC preparations were tested to determine their phenotype and were used to stimulate autologous PBMC twice, separated by 10–14 days. The stimulated cells were then tested for their ability to lyse CEA‐expressing target cells. We successfully generated an adequate number of DC for a clinical trial from all patients. The harvested DC preparations contained 49% DC and 87% DC if depleted of bystander lymphocytes. Phenotypic analysis showed the typical pattern of CD11c+CD40+CD86+HLA‐DR+ CD80lowCD83lowCD14low. All preparations but one were able to stimulate CEA‐specific cytotoxic T‐lymphocyte (CTL) activity, suggesting that the majority of patients are not anergic to CEA and possess functional DC. The CTL activity was similar for the CEA peptide and CEA RNA‐loaded DC. Int. J. Cancer 82:121–124, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Parallel Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reconstruction Using Similarity-Based Regularization

The parallel magnetic resonance imaging (parallel imaging) technique reduces the MR data acquisition time by using multiple receiver coils. Because of its ill-conditioned system matrix, the reconstruction suffers from noise amplification at high reduction factors, such as in the standard SENSE reconstruction. Total variation (TV) regularization is a popular technique for solving this problem. However, TV regularized images are vulnerable to staircase artifacts and texture loss. In this paper, we proposed a similarity-based regularization technique which enforces the consistence and similarity of pixel values within the image. The phantom simulation and in vivo experimental results demonstrate that this method can effectively suppress noise amplification in SENSE reconstruction while preserving image details. Compared with TV regularized images, images reconstructed by the new method are free of staircase artifacts and suffer less from structure loss.
Multiple View Wide-Baseline Trimap Propagation for Natural Video Matting

This paper presents a method to estimate alpha mattes for video sequences of the same foreground scene from wide-baseline views given sparse key-frame trimaps in a single view. A statistical inference framework is introduced for spatio-temporal propagation of high-confidence trimap labels between video sequences without a requirement for correspondence or camera calibration and motion estimation. Multiple view trimap propagation integrates appearance information between views and over time to achieve robust labelling in the presence of shadows, changes in appearance with view point and overlap between foreground and background appearance. Results demonstrate that trimaps are sufficiently accurate to allow high-quality video matting using existing single view natural image matting algorithms. Quantitative evaluation against ground-truth demonstrates that the approach achieves accurate matte estimation for camera views separated by up to 180°, with the same amount of manual interaction required for conventional single view video matting
Fostering knowledge management through the creative work environment: a portable model from the advertising industry

Within the knowledge-creating organisation, building communities of practice and allowing people to form social networks in order to disperse information is critical in order to foster creativity and innovation. It is argued that in order to exploit explicit knowledge and build an effective community of practice, there needs to be a work environment that encourages information sharing, creativity and innovation. The main approach of this research was to explore senior management’s perceptions of the positive and negative factors that foster or hinder the social work environment. A conceptual model designed by Amabile et al . [5] was used as a framework for a series of qualitative interviews with senior managers within the UK advertising industry. This research found that UK advertising agencies are organised in a manner that allows them to strongly reinforce the work dimensions that foster a social/creative work environment and, therefore, effectively utilise explicit knowledge. The factors that usually hinder the creative working environment of an organisation were largely lacking in these agencies. The findings support the argument that this highly creative industry does replicate best practice and can be seen as a benchmark for other organisations. However, it is argued that the advertising industry may be more applicable as a benchmark for other service-based industries and knowledge-based organisations, particularly in the new economy, rather than large production-orientated industries.
Inflammation and Inflammatory Mediators in Kidney Disease Mesenchymal stem cell transplantation inhibited high salt-induced activation of the NLRP 3 inflammasome in the renal medulla in Dahl S rats

Zhu Q, Li XX, Wang W, Hu J, Li PL, Conley S, Li N. Mesenchymal stem cell transplantation inhibited high salt-induced activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome in the renal medulla in Dahl S rats. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol 310: F621–F627, 2016. First published January 13, 2016; doi:10.1152/ajprenal.00344. 2015. —Inflammasomes activate caspase-1 to produce interleukin (IL)-1 . Activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome is involved in various renal pathological conditions. It remains unknown whether the NLRP3 inflammasome activation participates in the abnormal renal response to high-salt (HS) diet in Dahl salt-sensitive (S) rats. In addition, our lab recently showed that transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) attenuated HS-induced inflammation in the renal medulla in Dahl S rat. However, it is unclear whether the anti-inflammatory action of MSCs is associated with inhibition of the NLRP3 inflammasome. The present study determined the response of the NLRP3 inflammasome to HS intake and the effect of MSC transplantation on the NLRP3 inflammasome in the renal medulla in Dahl S rats. Immunostaining showed that the inflammasome components NLRP3, ASC, and caspase-1 were mainly present in distal tubules and collecting ducts. Interestingly, the renal medullary levels of these inflammasome components were remarkably increased after a HS diet in Dahl S rats, while remaining unchanged in normal rats. This HSinduced activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome was significantly blocked by MSC transplantation into the renal medulla in Dahl S rats. Furthermore, infusion of a caspase-1 inhibitor into the renal medulla significantly attenuated HS-induced hypertension in Dahl S rats. These data suggest that HS-induced activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome may contribute to renal medullary dysfunction in Dahl S rats and that inhibition of inflammasome activation may be one of the mechanisms for the anti-inflammatory and anti-hypertensive effects of stem cells in the renal medulla in Dahl S rats.