Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Supply Chain Security: Agency Theory and Port Drayage Drivers

Supply chain security presents numerous challenges to governments interested in defending against terrorist threats. While most approaches stress technological solutions, scholars and policy-makers tend to overlook economics, labour market issues, and industrial relations. Applying agency theory from behavioural economics, this article analyses threats to the US supply chain and opportunities for efficient solutions. Using data from a sophisticated web-based survey of owner-operator cost-of-operations, it shows that drayage drivers are among the lowest paid truck drivers and workers in the US. We provide evidence that low pay is associated with both safety and security risk. Low-wage labour and subcontracting present challenges to US and foreign supply-chain security because the market attracts workers who have few other employment options. In this environment, principals and agents currently make inefficient and inequitable contracts because markets do not reflect the complete costs associated with low-probability/high-impact events like cargo theft and transport security.
Phylogenetic Hypotheses for the Monocotyledons Constructed from rbc L Sequence Data

DNA sequences for the plastid locus that encodes the large subunit of ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (rbcL) were determined for 18 species of monocotyledons in 15 families. These data were analyzed together with sequences for 60 other monocot species in a total of 52 families by the maximum likelihood method producing one, presumably optimal, topology. An additional 26 species were added (104 total monocot species) and analyzed by the parsimony method with an outgroup of 18 dicot species producing 109 trees of 3,932 steps. The rbcL data show at least moderate support for seven lineages corresponding to the following orders, superorders, or combinations: Arecanae; Asparagales (excluding Hypoxidaceae) plus Iridaceae; Cyclanthanae plus Pandananae; Dioscoreales; Orchidales; Typhales; and Zingiberanae
ChemiCal Composition and in vitro digestibility of riCe straw treated with Pleurotus ostreatus , Pleurotus Pulmonarius and Pleurotus tuber-regium

The nutritive value of rice straw treated with three different edible mushrooms: Pleurotus ostreatus (POR), Pleurotus pulmonarius (PPR) and Pleurotus tuber-regium (PTR) were studied through analysis of their proximate composition, mineral composition, crude fibre fractions and in vitro digestibility. Results of the proximate analysis showed an increase in the crude protein from 4.69 % in control to 7.69 % for PTR. Fungal treatment decreased crude fibre from 32.89 % in control to 19.96 % in PTR. Treatment effect on cellulose, neutral detergent fibre, acid detergent fibre and acid detergent lignin was significant. The mineral contents (g.kg -1 DM) showed that PPR had the highest concentration of Ca (11.04) and Mg (5.00), and a significantly highest gas volume was obtained in PPR and the gas production rate constant (C) was not significant. The estimated metabolisable energy (ME) (mJ.kg -1 Dm), organic matter digestibility (OMD %) and short chain fatty acid (SCFA) (µm) ranged from 6.47 (control) to 7.54 (POR), 51.17 (control) to 57.02 (POR) and 0.657 (control) to 0.848 (POR). Treatment effect on the insoluble but degradable fraction (b) was significant ranging from 22 mL in control to 28.33 mL in PTR. It is therefore concluded from this study that treatment of rice straw with different edible mushrooms improved the potential feeding value of the resultant substrate. Therefore, the product of fungal treatment has a good potential as feed resources for ruminants.
Extender Supplementation with Antioxidants Selected after the Evaluation of Sperm Susceptibility to Oxidative Challenges in Goats

ABSTRACT This study aimed to detect the most deleterious ROS for goat sperm and then supplemented the extender with a proper antioxidant. For this, 12 adult goats (aged 1–7) were used. Fresh samples were submitted to challenge with different ROS (superoxide anion, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl radical) and malondialdehyde (MDA—toxic product of lipid peroxidation). After experiment 1, sperms were cryopreserved in extenders supplemented to glutathione peroxidase (Control: 0 UI/mL; GPx1: 1 UI/mL; GPx5: 5 UI/mL, and GPx10: 10 UI/mL) and catalase (Control: 0 UI/mL; CAT60: 60 UI/mL; CAT120: 120 UI/mL, and CAT240: 240 UI/mL). Each sample was evaluated by motility, plasma membrane integrity (eosin/nigrosin), acrosome integrity (fast green/rose bengal), sperm morphology, assay of the sperm chromatin structure, mitochondrial activity (3,3-diaminobenzidine), and measurement of lipid peroxidation (thiobarbituric acid reactive substances [TBARS]). It was possible to observe a mitochondrial dysfunction (DAB—Class IV) and low membrane integrity after hydrogen peroxide action. However, the high rates of TBARS were observed on hydroxyl radical. CAT240 presents the lower percentage of plasma membrane integrity. It was possible to attest that hydrogen peroxide and hydroxyl radical are the more harmful for goat sperm. Antioxidant therapy must be improving perhaps using combination between antioxidants.
Framework for choosing supply chain strategies

The root cause of the problems plaguing many supply chains is a mismatch between the supply chain strategy and the business strategy. The purpose of this article is firstly to examine supply chain management challenges with specific reference to the South African automotive industry and secondly to suggest a framework to help supply chain managers choose their supply chain strategies. The article is based on a theoretical analytical review of related literature on supply chain strategies. Based on the review of literature, the article articulates that supply chain challenges in the South African automotive industry stem from the external environment, the customers, competition and the automotive industry. The article also contends that the challenges in the supply chain are caused by a mismatch in the application of supply chain strategies. The article concludes by suggesting a framework for chosen supply chain strategies and endeavours to contribute to the debate on differentiating supply chain strategies. Key words: Supply chain management, supply chain strategy, automotive industry.
Expression of integrin alpha5beta1 and MMPs associated with epithelioid morphology and malignancy of uveal melanoma.

PURPOSE Altered expression of the alpha5beta1 integrin and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) is recognized as a hallmark of invasive tumor cells. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the expression of integrin subunit alpha5, its corresponding ligand fibronectin (FN), and the expression pattern for MMPs in four highly proliferative human choroidal melanomas (TP17, TP31, SP8.0, and SP6.5) to evaluate whether any correlation can be established between these markers and cell tumorigenicity. METHODS Cell tumorigenicity was evaluated by subcutaneous injection of uveal melanoma cell lines in immunodeficient nude mice. Anchorage dependency was evaluated by growth assays in soft agar. The invasive ability of each cell type was also determined using a modified Boyden chamber. Expression of both the alpha5 integrin subunit and FN was determined at the mRNA level by RT-PCR. The protein level (for alpha5) was determined by flow cytometry and inhibition of adhesion assays by using an antibody directed against the alpha5 subunit. Expression of MMPs was determined by standard gelatin zymography. RESULTS Assays in nude mice provided evidence that the cell lines possess a range of tumorigenic ability of TP17>TP31>SP8.0>SP6.5. Antibody inhibition of cell adhesion and flow cytometry demonstrated that TP17 cells have no detectable membrane-bound alpha5beta1, whereas low levels are found in primary cultured melanocytes, as well as in SP6.5, SP8.0, and TP31 cells. RT-PCR analyses provided evidence that both FN and alpha5 expression may be regulated at the transcriptional level. Gelatin zymography revealed that all cell lines, as well as normal melanocytes, express MMP-2 at varying levels but that only the highly invasive TP17 cell line secretes a distinctive MMP with a high molecular weight of 117 kDa. CONCLUSIONS Among the four melanoma cell lines selected for the completion of this study, TP17 exhibited the most aggressive phenotype, which also correlated with the mostly epithelioid morphology of these cells. The cell morphology of the TP17 cell line could be related to the loss of alpha5beta1, whereas its invasive properties are more likely related to the expression of the 117-kDa MMP.
Dividend Taxes and Share Prices: Evidence from Real Estate Investment Trusts

Financial economists have debated the impact of dividend taxes on firm valuation for decades, but existing empirical evidence is mixed. In this study, we avoid certain complications inherent in previous empirical work by exploiting institutional characteristics of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). For REITs, dividend policy is largely non-discretionary, share repurchases are not tax advantaged relative to dividends, and the market value of a firm's assets is relatively transparent to investors. In addition, REITs are exempt from corporate taxes, so their tax deductions flow directly to shareholders as reductions in dividend taxes. Within this environment, we regress the market value of a REIT's equity on the market value of its assets and its tax basis in assets, which creates tax deductions that lower future dividend taxes. We find that tax basis has a positive effect on firm value, which suggests that investors capitalize future dividend taxes into share prices.
Short-Term Loans and Long-Term Relationships: Relationship Lending in Early America

Recent banking theory holds that durable firm–bank relationships are valuable to both parties. This paper uses the contract-specific loan records of a 19th-century U.S. bank and shows that firms with extended relationships received three principal benefits. First, firmswith extended relationships had lower credit costs. Second, long-term customers provided fewer personal guarantees, which were an alternative to collateral. Third, long-term customers were more likely to have loan terms renegotiated during a credit crunch. These findings support theories that banks realize cost advantages through the use of proprietary information.
ARIMA models to forecast demand in fresh supply chains

This paper presents the application of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models to forecast the demand of fresh produce (fruits and vegetables) on a daily basis. Models were built using 25 months sales data of onion from Ahmedabad market in India. Results show that the model can be used to forecast the demand with mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 43.14%. This error is within the acceptable limit for fruits and vegetable markets with highly fluctuating demand pattern. The model was validated taking sales data for the same commodity from a different vegetable market. The proposed forecasting model can be used to assist the farmers in determining the volume of daily harvesting for fruits and vegetables.
Statistics on query expressions in relational database management systems

The query optimizer is the component in a relational database system that identifies efficient execution plans for input queries. Modern optimizers generally explore many alternative query plans in a cost-based manner. Specifically, the resource consumption and associated cost of each candidate plan is estimated, and the plan with the least expected cost is chosen for execution. The cost estimation for a plan depends on several factors, including resource availability during execution, the specific operators that compose the plan, and the size of intermediate results that would be generated during the plan execution. Among these factors, the intermediate-result size (or cardinality) estimation is the main source of inaccuracies during optimization: cardinality estimation typically relies on several simplifying assumptions that often do not hold in practice. Optimizers then sometimes base their decisions on inaccurate information and produce low-quality execution plans. To address this limitation, in this thesis we introduce the concept of SITS, which are statistics built on query expressions. SITS directly and accurately model intermediate results in a query execution plan, and therefore avoid error-prone simplifying assumptions during cardinality estimation. If optimizers have appropriate SITS available during optimization, the resulting query plans can be dramatically better than otherwise. Although SITs are a fairly simple concept, challenging problems need to be addressed before SITs can be seamlessly integrated into modern relational database systems. In this thesis we study three important challenges associated with SITS. First, we show how to modify query optimizers to exploit the additional statistical information provided by SITs without significantly increasing optimization time. Second, we study a spectrum of alternatives to create SITs, which balance efficiency of construction and accuracy of the resulting estimators. Third, we present techniques to recommend a small but highly beneficial set of SITs to materialize in a database system for a given query workload. In summary, we address the main obstacles for enabling SITs for optimization, namely which SITs to build, how to build them, and how to exploit them during optimization. Overall, SITs constitute a well-founded approach for dealing with complex data correlations, and positively impact the efficiency of relational database systems.
Statistical and geometrical features for LiDAR-based vehicle detection

Most of the previous works had used SVM or AdaBoost to select the best features and thresholds for object classification. This paper uses statistical and geometrical features for LiDAR-based vehicle detection. We train our system using labeled point sets, which we obtain by manually labeled on KITTI dataset. We also define 11 features of LIDAR point set as input features. According to the test, the correct detection rate is above 98.3%. Experimental results show that our approach can perform accurately and fast, work well in most of cases under our experimental environments. The more data we use, the more accurate experimental result we can obtain.
Size and geometric effects on conduction band structure of GaAs nanowires

The conduction band structure of GaAs nanowires with various cross-sectional shapes and orientations was calculated by a tight-binding model and an effective mass equation taking the bulk full-band structure into account. The effective mass of nanowires increases as the cross-sectional size decreases. However, the amount of the increase in mass is strongly dependent on the wire orientations and substrate faces of nanowires, which originates from the anisotropy of Γ valley of bulk GaAs.
Economic Growth Human Capital Nexus in Post-Soviet Ukraine, 1989-2009

This book presents theoretical and empirical investigation of economic growth and the possible impact of human capital on economic growth in Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Poland, and Hungary during the period of 1989-2009. This research defines place and role of human capital in the process of transition from the exogenous to the endogenous forms of growth and socio-economic development. It research presents an extended statistical analysis of transition economies. Substantial part of the book is devoted to the integrative scholarly synthesis with the special emphasis on theoretical aspects of economic growth.
Does the Long Arm of US Macroeconomic Policy Reach South Asia?

What is the effect of US macroeconomic policy on the business cycle of South Asian economies? The evidence reported in this article suggests that there is little systematic contemporaneous effect of US monetary policy on South Asian GDP. The lagged effect of US monetary policy tends to be statistically significant, but it appears that a monetary expansion in the US in year t lowers real GDP in year t + 1 in a majority of South Asian economies. Conversely, US fiscal policy has both contemporaneous and lagged Keynesian effects in a majority of countries. Interestingly, the lagged effect is quantitatively larger than the contemporaneous effect. The paper also looks at the impact of domestic macroeconomic policy in South Asian countries. Two key results emerge in this respect. First, the contemporaneous effects of domestic monetary and fiscal policy are in line with ‘Keynesian’ predictions: an increase (decrease) in government consumption or money growth increases (decreases) real GDP. Second, there is also evidence of significant lagged effects of domestic macroeconomic policies. However, while the sign of the lagged effect of fiscal policy is generally the same as the sign of the contemporaneous effect, for monetary policy the sign of the lagged effect is inverted in some countries. JEL Classification: E32 E52, E63, E62, C23
Operators and visionaries: differences in the entrepreneurial and managerial systems of two types of entrepreneurs

Following an empirical study of the managerial systems of 116 entrepreneurs, the subjects were divided into two types. A total of 42 were classified as operators and the remaining 74 as visionaries. The managerial systems of all the sample entrepreneurs were analysed using Filion's empirical systems modelling methodology with consideration for Fayol's management key basic elements: planning, organising, commanding and controlling. Each of the two types had its own activity system. For the operators, the activities were selecting, performing, assigning, allocating, monitoring and adjusting. For the visionaries, they were visioning, designing, animating, monitoring and learning.
A New Error Measure for Forecasts of Household-level, High Resolution Electrical Energy Consumption

As low carbon technologies become more pervasive, distribution network operators are looking to support the expected changes in the demands on the low voltage networks through the smarter control of storage devices. Accurate forecasts of demand at the individual household-level, or of small aggregations of households, can improve the peak demand reduction brought about through such devices by helping to plan the most appropriate charging and discharging cycles. However, before such methods can be developed, validation measures which can assess the accuracy and usefulness of forecasts ofthevolatileandnoisyhousehold-leveldemandarerequired.Inthispaperweintroducea new forecast verification error measure that reduces the so-called ‘‘double penalty’’ effect, incurredbyforecastswhosefeaturesaredisplacedinspaceortime,comparedtotraditional point-wise metrics, such as the Mean Absolute Error, and p -norms in general. The measure that we propose is based on finding a restricted permutation of the original forecast that minimises the point-wise error, according to a given metric. We illustrate the advantages of our error measure using half-hourly domestic household electrical energy usage data recorded by smart meters, and discuss the effect of the permutation restriction. © 2013 International Institute of Forecasters. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Satellite-based primary forest degradation assessment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2000–2010

Primary forest extent, loss and degradation within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were quantified from 2000 to 2010 by combining directly mapped forest cover extent and loss data (CARPE) with indirectly mapped forest degradation data (intact forest landscapes, IFL). Landsat data were used to derive both map inputs, and data from the GLAS (Geoscience Laser Altimetry System) sensor were employed to validate the discrimination of primary intact and primary degraded forests. In the year 2000, primary humid tropical forests occupied 104 455 kha of the country, with 61% of these forests classified as intact. From 2000 to 2010, 1.02% of primary forest cover was lost due to clearing, and almost 2% of intact primary forests were degraded due to alteration and fragmentation. While primary forest clearing increased by a factor of two between 2000–2005 and 2005–2010, the degradation of intact forests slightly decreased. Fragmentation and selective logging were the leading causes of intact forest degradation, accounting for 91% of IFL area change. The 10 year forest degradation rate within designated logging permit areas was 3.8 times higher compared to other primary forest areas. Within protected areas the forest degradation rate was 3.7 times lower than in other primary forest areas. Forest degradation rates were high in the vicinity of major urban areas. Given the observed forest degradation rates, we infer that the degradation of intact forests could increase up to two-fold over the next decade.
Constrained Projective Non-negative Matrix Factorization for Semi-supervised Multi-label Learning

This paper formulates multi-label learning as a constrained projective non-negative matrix factorization (CPNMF) problem which concentrates on a variant of the original projective NMF (PNMF) and explicitly introduces an auxiliary basis to learn the semantic subspace and boosts its discriminating ability by exploiting labeled and unlabeled examples together. Particularly, it propagates labels of the labeled examples to the unlabeled ones by enforcing coefficients of examples sharing identical semantic contents to be identical based on a hard constraint, i.e., embedding the class indicator of labeled examples into their coefficients. CPNMF preserves the geometrical structure of dataset via manifold regularization meanwhile captures the inherent structure of labels by using label correlations. We developed a multiplicative update rule (MUR) based algorithm to optimize CPNMF and proved its convergence. Experiments of image annotation on Corel dataset, text categorization on Rcv1v2 dataset, and text clustering on two popular text corpuses suggest the effectiveness of CPNMF.