Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Organisational and psychological empowerment in the HRM‐performance linkage

Purpose – This paper aims to clarify the meaning of empowerment concept and determine its role in the HRM‐performance linkage.Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 211 customer‐contact employees at 30 upscale hotels in Lithuania was conducted to study organisational empowerment, as a bundle of HRM activities, and its association with employee attitudes and behaviour.Findings – A distinction was made between organisational empowerment, as a bundle of HRM activities, and psychological empowerment, as an employee work‐related attitude, and their role in the HRM‐performance linkage was defined. Organisational empowerment was positively related to psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, and affective commitment. Psychological empowerment and affective commitment were found to mediate the impact of organisational empowerment on customer‐oriented behaviour.Research limitations/implications – Data were collected in a single industry in Lithuania; therefore, further research in other services needs to be .
Effects of Air Quality Regulation

This paper investigates the effects of local regulatory effort on ground level ozone air quality and on industrial location. Local regulatory effort varies by annual air quality attainment status and by state attitudes towards the environment. A switch from attainment to non-attainment status induces greater regulatory effort in a county, leading to an improvement in air quality. Air quality readings for ground level ozone improve by 3-8% depending on the exact air quality measure, following a switch to non-attainment status. Pro-environment states, which ceteris paribus, spend relatively more on pollution abatement also have cleaner air. A 1% increase in typical annual state pollution abatement expenditures leads to about a . 04% improvement in local ozone readings. Heavily polluting industries show a tendency to move to counties with a record of clean air, where they are less likely to be hassled. A county switching to having a three-year record of attainment experiences a 7-9% growth in the number of heavily polluting establishments. This implies polluting industries are spreading out geographically moving from non- attainment (polluted) areas to attainment (initially less polluted) areas. Finally, for ozone, localities may improve the annual hourly extreme value reading used to measure officially local air quality, without improving measures (mean, medians, medians of daily maximum) of more typical ozone conditions. This occurs by spreading out economic activity over the day to dampen peaks of ozone inducing activity and subsequent daily ozone peaks.
Reflections on the Research Process: The Researcher as Actor and Audience in the World of Regional Tourist Organisations

In an investigation of Regional Tourist Organisations (RTOs) in New Zealand the role and nature of research has been considered with reference to underlying epistemologies and paradigms. RTOs are not simple functional organisations with their sole aim being the promotion of tourism; they are subject to political processes, uncertainty and the influences of key personalities or the lack thereof. Consequently the researcher begins to exercise power as a conduit of information and as a source of knowledge, which factors in themselves require reflection about the multi-paradigmatic nature of such social science research. This paper examines approaches to tourism research within the context of a study of RTOs to illustrate the complexities of tourism research. It will be argued that no one research methodology or paradigm will accommodate the research phenomena and thus a multi-paradigmatic and bricoleur approach is preferable.
The Emerging Australian Manufacturing Export Response to Microeconomic Reform

Is removal of tariff protection the key to the growth of manufacturing exports? Existing analyses of microeconomic reform have shown large improvements to mining. We use a less constrained version of the economic model ORANI to show that manufacturing exporters are the major beneficiaries of free trade and adoption of international best practice. A multi-attributable model is used to identify industries with export potential. Benefiting areas include transport, electronic and electrical equipment, construction machinery, chemicals, and iron and steel.
A new membrane-type microfluidic device for rapid bacteria isolation

this study presents a simple microfluidic device which can perform sample pretreatment automatically for rapid bacteria detection. Herein, a new approach to rapidly isolate bacteria incorporated with vancomycin-conjugated magnetic beads by using a new membrane-type microfluidic component with a floating block was proposed and its performance was tested and verified. The experimental results showed the proposed device can automatically isolate methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus from 4 µL of samples within 90 seconds including bacteria isolation and washing processes. Not only does the new membrane-type microfluidic device perform rigid mixing, but it is also capable of uniform sample transportation. Furthermore, it has been successfully demonstrated that it could isolate bacteria in an automated format. With its great mixing efficiency and robust performance, the proposed device might be a promising approach for bacteria diagnosis.
From administrative expert to strategic partner

Purpose – Replicating Ulrich's model, this study aims to investigate empirically the HR role performance of a case organisation. Despite the popularity of the model, both theoretical discussions and empirical research that build on the model are scarce.Design/methodology/approach – The present study investigates HR professionals' and line managers' perceptions of HR roles in a regional full‐service bank based on a combination of interviews and a questionnaire survey distributed to the HR executive and line managers.Findings – The case study evidence reported suggests that not only are all four roles strongly represented, they are also equally shared between the HR executive and line managers.Research limitations/implications – This study is limited by the usual problem of a wider application of findings provided by a small‐scale single‐case study. The generalisability of the findings would be improved by conducting more comparable cases within the field.Originality/value – HR professionals are struggling .
De-warping of camera captured document images

De-warping is the elementary step in the analysis of document images which are camera based. Processing of warped image is a challenging task. Therefore, to make the document images OCR understandable de-warping has become a major task. In this paper, we have presented camera based document image De-warping technique based on curved text-line information. The process starts with calculating axis x-line using coupled-snake model. Curved text-lines of warped image is used to calculate initial point of neighboring straight text-line in the de-warped image. Curved x-line, base-line pair of every character is mapped to its respective straight x-line. Base-line pair is to remove geometric distortion. Finally, perspective distortion is removed by using four-point homo-graphy algorithm. Proposed De-warping technique is less sensitive in different line spacing, different angle and in different direction of the curve. Experimental results are carried out on IUPR dataset of camera captured documents CBDAR2007, CBDAR2011 & also on our own dataset that consists of Kannada Handwritten documents. The results are encouraging.
Perspectives of children and adolescents on the perceived determinants of physical activity during recess

Abstract Promotion of healthy lifestyles in youth focuses on school-based interventions with the aim to increase physical activity (PA) during school days. Drawing on seventeen focus group discussions from three purposively selected Estonian schools, we explored factors that perceivably affect students’ recess physical activity (RPA). Both inductive and deductive principles of data analysis were used to extract major and subthemes related to factors that inhibit or enhance RPA. Participants identified barriers and facilitators to recess PA as originating mainly from physical and organizational school environment. Also, unsuitable weather was described as a barrier to being active. Additionally, feelings, behavioral and normative beliefs were described as constraining or facilitating RPA. Results highlighted two culture-specific unique perceived determinants of RPA that need to be addressed during the development of school-based interventions to increase PA.
Salivary IgA response to prolonged exercise in a cold environment in trained cyclists.

PURPOSE The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of a prolonged bout of exercise in freezing cold conditions on saliva immunoglobulin A (s-IgA) responses in endurance-trained males. METHODS Using a randomized cross-over design, 15 trained male cyclists cycled for 2 h on a stationary ergometer at 70% VO(2max) in an environmental chamber on one occasion at a temperature of -6.4 +/- 0.1 degrees C (cold) and on another occasion at a temperature of 19.8 +/- 0.2 degrees C (control). Trials began at 12:30 h to avoid the fall in s-IgA concentration that occurs during the morning hours. Unstimulated whole-saliva samples were collected over a 2-min period at preexercise, postexercise, and 2-h postexercise. The s-IgA concentration was determined using a sandwich-type ELISA method. RESULTS Saliva flow rate decreased postexercise by 31%, returning to preexercise levels by the 2-h postexercise collection (main effect of time: < 0.01). The decrease in saliva flow rate postexercise in the control trial (39% compared with 22% on cold trial) approached significance (interaction: = 0.08) and may have accounted for the corresponding increase in s-IgA concentration postexercise in the control trial (s-IgA concentration: control preexercise; 91 +/- 12; postexercise; 110 +/- 13 mg x L(-1); < 0.05). Saliva IgA secretion rate decreased postexercise by 19.5% returning to preexercise levels by 2-h postexercise measure (main effect of time: < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS These data show that performing a bout of prolonged exercise results in a reduction in s-IgA secretion rate. Additionally, these data demonstrate that performing prolonged exercise in freezing cold conditions does not influence saliva flow rate or s-IgA secretion rate responses to prolonged exercise.
Combining industrial buyer and seller strategies for international supply and marketing management

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review international industrial purchasing and marketing literature with a focus on portfolio models, to develop portfolio models for buyers' and sellers' international strategies, and to combine the models so that both the buyer and seller perspectives are dealt with simultaneously. Design/methodology/approach: Literature on international industrial purchasing and marketing is discussed. Dimensions that are important for the buyers' and sellers' strategies are identified. Portfolio models for buyers and sellers are developed and the two perspectives are matched together. Findings: The paper contributes a specification of features that are important for industrial buyers' and sellers' international purchasing and marketing strategies. These dimensions are used to develop a model of supplier relationship management and a marketing management model for supplier strategies. The consequences for the firm's international activities are discussed. A model combining industrial buyers' and sellers' international supply and marketing management strategies is developed. Research limitations/implications: This paper provides a deeper understanding of international exchange processes by combining literature on international industrial purchasing and international marketing. Situations are identified where different areas of theory are applicable. The paper also contributes to the discussion on what should be the conceptual domain of international business. Here, it is argued that international exchange is the product of joint decisions made by two or more actors based in different countries. Earlier academic literature reveals a striking imbalance: while one side of the coin - the exporter side - has been extensively studied, the importer side has largely been neglected. In this paper, it is tried to present a balanced view of both sides. Practical implications: This paper introduces portfolio management models that can be used for both industrial purchasing and marketing management. The paper stresses the importance of finding a fit between the marketing and purchasing strategies within a relationship. If both parties have positioned the relationship in a similar way, there are much greater possibilities for the relationship to create value for both parties. Originality/value: The paper combines international industrial purchasing and international marketing perspectives as few studies have done before. Â© Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
The Implementation of Computerized Cognitive Behavioural Therapies in a Service User-Led, Third Sector Self Help Clinic

Background and aims: The efficacy and effectiveness of a computerized cognitive behavioural therapy (CCBT) package, Beating the Blues, has been demonstrated in a large randomized controlled trial and several pragmatic studies in the National Health Service (NHS). The current study tests the generalizability of this finding to the implementation of CCBT in a service user-led, third sector Self Help Clinic. Method: 510 referrals for the Beating the Blues program were received over a 16 month period in routine care. The Patient Health Questionnaire Depression (PHQ-9) and Anxiety (GAD-7) Scales were administered pre-treatment and during each treatment session. The 10-item Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (CORE-OM), Work and Social Adjustment Scale and Patient Experience Questionnaire were also administered pre-treatment and immediately on completing treatment. Results: More than two-thirds of referrals were suitable for treatment and completed a baseline assessment; 84% of these started the Beating the Blues program. Two-hundred and twenty-six people meeting caseness criteria at baseline completed at least two sessions of CCBT. Of these, 50% met recovery criteria at their final point of measurement. Completer and intention-to-treat analysis also demonstrated statistically and clinically significant improvements on key outcome measures. Conclusion: CCBT can be effectively implemented in a service user-led, third sector Self Help Clinic, increasing access to psychological therapies to meet local needs for tier two interventions for depression and anxiety.
How Linked are Energy and GDP: Reconsidering Energy-GDP Cointegration and Causality for Disaggregated OECD Country Data.*

This study is different from previous energy-GDP cointegration/causality ones by examining whether total energy consumption by industry causes total industry GDP (or vice versa), and whether per capita GDP causes per capita road and residential sector energy use (or vice versa) for a number of OECD countries. The primary findings are that nearly all of the data series analyzed are not cointegrated, and that by far the most robust result is that of Granger-noncausality; thus, developed economies may be far more flexible in their relation with energy than is often understood, and the price mechanism may be a none-too-costly policy instrument to lower energy consumption.
Towards model driven design of service-based context-aware applications

Context-aware adaptation is an important feature for pervasive computing applications. In our approach, we intend to support the viewpoint of context-aware adaptation as a crosscutting concern with respect to the core "business logic" of an application. In this way, the design of the application core can be decoupled from the design of the adaptation logic. This facilitate the plugging of different adaptation strategies within the same basic application, tailoring it for different contexts. To this end, we leverage ideas from the domains of model-driven development and aspect-oriented design. We assume that the applications to be adapted are designed according to the service-oriented paradigm. Hence, our adaptation mechanisms only assume the knowledge of information accessible in this kind of applications.
Expression Characterization and Localization of the foraging Gene in the Chinese Bee, Apis cerana cerana (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Abstract In social insects, the foraging gene (for) regulates insect age- and task-based foraging behaviors. We studied the expression and localization of the for gene (Acfor) in Apis cerana cerana workers to explore whether the differential regulation of this gene is associated with the behaviors of nurses and foragers. The expression profiles of Acfor in different tissues and at different ages were examined using real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. Cellular localization in the brain was detected using in situ hybridization. Acfor transcripts in different ages workers showed that Acfor expression was detected in all the heads of 1- to 30-d-old worker bees. Acfor expression reached a peak at 25 d of age, and then declined with increasing age. The results showed that Acfor gene expression in five tissues was respectively significantly higher in foragers than in nurses. In nurses, the relative expression of Acfor was the highest in the antennae. There was a highly significant difference in expression between antennae, legs, and the other three tissues. In foragers, Acfor expression was the highest in the thorax, which was significantly different from all other tissues. In situ hybridization showed that Acfor was highly expressed in the lamina of the optic lobes, in a central column of Kenyon cells in the mushroom bodies of the brain of workers, and in the antennal lobes. This suggested that Acfor expression affects age-related foraging behavior in Apis cerana cerana, and that it may be related to flight activity.
Robust consensus algorithm for second-order multi-agent systems with external disturbances

This article investigates the problem of robust consensus for second-order multi-agent systems with external disturbances. Based on a non-smooth backstepping control technique, a class of novel continuous non-smooth consensus algorithms are proposed for the multi-agent network with/without communication delays. The controller design is divided into two steps. First, for the kinematic subsystem, the velocity is regarded as a virtual input and designed such that the states consensus can be achieved asymptotically. Then for the dynamic subsystem, a finite-time control law is designed such that the virtual velocity can be tracked by the real velocity in a finite time. Under the proposed control law, it is shown that if the communication topology graph contains a directed spanning tree, the states consensus can be achieved asymptotically in the absence of disturbances. In the presence of disturbances, the steady-state errors of any two agents can reach a small region around the origin. By building a relationship between control parameters and the bound of steady tracking errors, it is demonstrated that the disturbance rejection performance of the resulting closed-loop system can be enhanced by adjusting the fractional power in the non-smooth controller. Finally, an example is given to verify the efficiency of the proposed method.
Automatic Model Selection in Subspace Clustering via Triplet Relationships

This paper addresses both the model selection (i.e., estimating the number of clusters K) and subspace clustering problems in a unified model. The real data always distribute on a union of low-dimensional sub-manifolds which are embedded in a high-dimensional ambient space. In this regard, the state-of-the-art subspace clustering approaches firstly learn the affinity among samples, followed by a spectral clustering to generate the segmentation. However, arguably, the intrinsic geometrical structures among samples are rarely considered in the optimization process. In this paper, we propose to simultaneously estimate K and segment the samples according to the local similarity relationships derived from the affinity matrix. Given the correlations among samples, we define a novel data structure termed the Triplet, each of which reflects a high relevance and locality among three samples which are aimed to be segmented into the same subspace. While the traditional pairwise distance can be close between inter-cluster samples lying on the intersection of two subspaces, the wrong assignments can be avoided by the hyper-correlation derived from the proposed triplets due to the complementarity of multiple constraints. Sequentially, we propose to greedily optimize a new model selection reward to estimate K according to the correlations between inter-cluster triplets. We simultaneously optimize a fusion reward based on the similarities between triplets and clusters to generate the final segmentation. Extensive experiments on the benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach.
Generalized M-Vector Models for Hedging Interest Rate Risk

This paper generalizes the M-square and M-vector models (Fong and Fabozzi [1985] and Nawalkha and Chambers [1997]) by using a Taylor series expansion of the bond return function with respect to simple polynomial functions of the cash flow maturities. The classic M-vector computes the weighted averages of the distance between the maturity of each cash flow and the portfolio horizon, raised to integer powers (e.g., (t - H)^1, (t - H)^2, (t - H)^3, etc.). Implementation of the new approach involves computing the weighted averages of the distance between some polynomial function of the maturity of each cash flow and that of the portfolio horizon, raised to integer powers (e.g., (t^0.5 - H^0.5)^1, (t^0.5 - H^0.5)^2, (t^0.5 - H^0.5)^3, etc.). We test six different generalized M-vector models corresponding to six different polynomial functions. It is shown that polynomial functions of lower power (i.e., 0.25 or 0.5) provide significantly enhanced protection from interest rate risk, when higher-order generalized M-vector models are used.
A study of Class C operation of GaAs power HBTs

GaAs power HBTs are traditionally biased in Class A or Class AB mode for power amplifiers. This paper describes the tradeoffs of operating these devices in Class C bias. We find that power-added efficiency (PAE) improves and power gain decreases in Class C when compared to Class AB bias. At 6 GHz, the PAE increased by greater than 10 percentage points (from 68.9% in Class AB to 80.6% in Class C) with concurrent loss of 4.3 dB in power gain. The efficiency improves monotonically with lower operating frequency. In a single-tone environment, the second harmonic increases by /spl sim/7 dB in Class C over Class AB. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the experimental study of Class C operation of GaAs HBTs. <<ETX>>
Improving Employee Acceptance Toward Performance Appraisal and Merit Pay Systems

This paper reports the attitudinal findings of an ongoing study of county government professionals regarding a newly implemented performance appraisal and merit pay system More specifically, the study explores whether these attitudes change from before to after implementation ofthese systems Finally, the study examines whether leadership credibility and other variables in any way enhance the chances for success in implementing these human resource technologies The findings indicate, for example, that leader credibility and motivation to change on the part of the leader signifi cantly increases employee acceptance toward performance appraisal and merit pay