Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTION OF z ≳ 1 TYPE Ia SUPERNOVA HOSTS IN GOODS: CONSTRAINTS ON EVOLUTIONARY DELAY AND THE INITIAL MASS FUNCTION

We identify a sample of 22 host galaxies of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) at redshifts 0.95 < z < 1.8 discovered in the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) fields. We measure the photometry of the hosts in Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based imaging of the GOODS fields to provide flux densities from the U band to 24 μm. We fit the broadband photometry of each host with simple stellar population models to estimate the age of the stellar population giving rise to the SN Ia explosions. We break the well-known age–extinction degeneracy in such analyses using the Spitzer 24 μm data to place upper limits on the thermally reprocessed, far-infrared emission from dust. The ages of these stellar populations give us an estimate of the delay times between the first epoch of star formation in the galaxies and the explosion of the SNe Ia. We find a bi-modal distribution of delay times ranging from 0.06 to 4.75 Gyr although at the 95% confidence interval, the delay time distribution is consistent with a single power law as well. We also constrain the first epoch of low-mass star formation using these results, showing that stars of mass ≲8 M☉ were formed within 3 Gyr after the big bang and possibly by z ∼ 6. This argues against a truncated stellar initial mass function in high-redshift galaxies.
The Role of Organizational Capability on Technological Innovation

Based upon the generalization of two theories in organizational capability and technological innovation, this essay discusses the role of organizational capability on technological innovation, and presents its relevant hypotheses. On analyzing the effective sample data from 509 enterprises of different industries across 10 provinces and cities in China, the empirical result reflects that dynamic capability has significantly positive correlation with product innovation and process innovation; while operational capability has only evidently positive correlation with product innovation. This shows that enhancing dynamic capability is beneficial to product innovation and process innovation; while enhancing operational capability is only beneficial to product innovation. Finally, under the common action of two capabilities, the amounts of product innovation will be more than the amounts of process innovation obviously. These conclusions provide some reference and guidance for the practice of organizational technological innovation in developing countries.
ACHIEVING SUSTAINABILITY WITH A STAKEHOLDER-BASED CSR ASSESSMENT MODEL FOR FIEs IN CHINA

Foreign Invested Enterprises (FIEs) have been playing an important role in the fast developing Chinese economy, but there is a growing need to improve awareness and effective communication between responsible FIEs and stakeholders in China. On the one hand, FIEs' stakeholders in China need ready access to relevant information on which to judge the social performance of individual FIEs in China; on the other, FIEs need additional insight into Chinese stakeholder concerns and expectations in order to better localize their CSR strategies and improve the impact and visibility of their CSR programs. This article, based on the results of international and domestic research on CSR, probes into the CSR criteria and guidelines for FIEs in China, and seeks to finally establish a feasible assessment system for later research and FIE sustainability auditing program in China.
Export information sources: the role of organizational and internationalization influences

In drawing attention to certain important gaps in the exporting literature, this study empirically investigates the information source behaviour of exporting firms in the context of a small country - Cyprus. The research undertaken revealed a different picture from that found in the pertinent literature as to the usage incidence, frequency of use and level of importance of export information sources. It also confirmed the crucial role of personal and informal information sources in foreign business. Furthermore, a high incidence of usage is found not to lead necessarily to high levels of frequency and importance. However, the greater the importance attached to a specific source, the more often it is used. An analysis of the information source preferences according to a number of organizational and internationalization parameters revealed weak discriminating effects overall. The managerial and public policy implications of the study findings are discussed and future research directions identified.
The Relationship between Corporate Performance and Ownership Structure: Evidence from Turkey

This study investigates the effects of ownership structure on the performance of the listed companies in Borsa Istanbul Stock Exchange 30 Firms (BIST 30). The main hypothesis of our study is that there is a significant relationship between companies' performances and their ownership structures. The statistical population includes 19 non-financial companies in the period of years between 2008 and 2013. The results show that the concentration of the large shares of companies one or a few share holders has a negative effect on related firm’s performance.
Territory’s Absorptive Capacity

Abstract In the paper, the concept of absorptive capacity, already successfully applied to firms, is extended to territories. Territory’s Absorptive Capacity is here defined as the ability of a Region to identify, assimilate, and exploit external knowledge. From a theoretical point of view, the concept of Territory’s Absorptive Capacity integrates two fields of studies, those of innovation systems and regional science. Three propositions are developed starting from the consideration that territory’s absorptive capacity is dependent on increasing investments in human resource learning in a Region, promoting R&D activities and, above all, integrating knowledge flows through the action of territorial knowledge gatekeepers.
Aminoguanidine, an inducible nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, plus N-acetylcysteine treatment reduce the lipopolysaccharideaugmented hepatotoxicity in rats with cirrhosis

Hepatic cirrhosis is produced in rats by administration of thioacetamide (TAA) (0.3 g/L tap water for a period of three months). This treatment caused an increase in oxidative stress in the liver. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) administration (5 mg/kg) to rats with cirrhosis was observed to increase hepatotoxicity as well as oxidative stress according to biochemical and histopathological findings. However, aminoguanidine (AG), an inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) inhibitor, plus N-acetylcysteine (NAC) treatment reduced the LPS-augmented hepatotoxicity in rats with cirrhosis without making any changes in oxidative stress in the liver.
Information transparency in SME network relationships: evidence from a Japanese hosiery firm

This paper uses a longitudinal case study of a network of organisations in the fashion hosiery sector to examine the role of information visibility as the key facilitator in the transition from a flexible supply chain to an agile supply chain. The findings of this study emphasise that information transparency in a supply network enables members to become proactive to market demand. The results also indicate the importance of time postponement in the knitting-based industry. The experiences of Tabio indicate that time postponement is a key component of agile supply chain management, which was enabled by utilising external resources in a mutually dependent SME network. The agile supply chain requires a network that can change and be reconfigured according to changes in market demand.
The emergent demand chain management: key features and illustration from the beef business

Purpose – The paper seeks to delineate the emergence of demand chain management (DCM) from a theoretical perspective and to illustrate its occurrence in practice.Design/methodology/approach – The DCM concept is examined empirically through a case study with retailers involved in the beef chain in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). Findings – The paper reveals that the DCM concept derives from the supply chain management (SCM) concept, but with a strong emphasis on demand management due to the incorporation of the market orientation perspective. In the beef business in the Rio Grande do Sul, two distinct practices were observed: SCM and DCM practice. The SCM practice is tightly related to the traditional beef market, whereas the DCM practice emphasizes understanding customers and the sequential capabilities for responding to their requirements.Originality/value – By establishing the evolutionary development from SCM to DCM, businesses will certainly gain insights about how to become more responsive, a.
Airline Alliances, Antitrust Immunity and Market Foreclosure

This paper examines the issue of market foreclosure by airline partnerships with antitrust immunity. Overlapping the data on frequency of service and passenger volumes on nonstop routes on the transatlantic airline market with the information on dynamics of airline partnerships, we find evidence consistent with the airlines operating under antitrust immunity refusing to accept connecting passengers from the carriers outside of the partnership at respective hub airports. When an airline partnership is granted antitrust immunity, airlines outside this partnership end up reducing their traffic to the partner airlines’ hub airports by 2.6-8.5 percent (depending on the specification and estimation technique involved). Our results suggest ambiguous welfare effects of antitrust immunity on some markets, where previous studies indicated airline consolidation should benefit consumers.
Structural Properties of Twisted Reed-Solomon Codes with Applications to Cryptography

We present a generalisation of Twisted Reed-Solomon codes containing a new large class of MDS codes. We prove that the code class contains a large subfamily that is closed under duality. Furthermore, we study the Schur squares of the new codes and show that their dimension is often large. Using these structural properties, we single out a subfamily of the new codes which could be considered for code-based cryptography: These codes resist some existing structural attacks for Reed-Solomon-like codes, i.e. methods for retrieving the code parameters from an obfuscated generator matrix.
High-Performance Quasi-Z-Source Series Resonant DC–DC Converter for Photovoltaic Module-Level Power Electronics Applications

This paper presents the high-performance quasi-Z-source series resonant dc–dc converter as a candidate topology for the photovoltaic module-level power electronics applications. The converter features a wide input voltage and load regulation range thanks to the multimode operation, i.e., when the shoot-through pulse width modulation and phase-shift modulation are combined in a single switching stage to realize the boost and buck operating modes, respectively. Our experiments confirmed that the proposed converter is capable of ensuring ripple-free 400 V output voltage within the sixfold variation of the input voltage (from 10 to 60 V). The converter prototype assembled achieved a maximum efficiency of 97.4%, which includes the auxiliary power and control system losses.
Does Size Matter? Balancing Power in Dyadic Cooperation Relationships

The authors examine the extent to which differences in dependency and power burden cooperative relationships between small and large companies. They also identify the consequences of the behaviour of the cooperation partners. For both small and large cooperation partners, the authors discuss various withdrawal and investment strategies as options for balancing dependency and power among the partners and they sketch possible development paths for such asymmetrical cooperation arrangements.
The Integration of Marketing Problem-Solving Modes and Marketing Management Support Systems

To be effective, decision aids for marketing managers should match with the thinking and reasoning processes of the marketing decision makers who use them. The authors take a cognitive approach to problem solving in marketing. They develop a classification of “marketing problem-solving modes” and distinguish four modes: optimizing, reasoning, analogizing, and creating. They also present a typology of what they call “marketing management support systems. ” In an integrating framework, they then link the four marketing problem-solving modes with the most appropriate marketing management support systems. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of this “demand-side” approach to marketing management support systems.
Recognition of Chinese business cards

Business cards include many kinds of information, such as names, addresses and telephone numbers. In order to use the information effectively, it is necessary to extract the information from the cards automatically in order to build a database. The goal of this paper is to extract and recognize characters from color business cards. To separate the foreground from the background in a card, we assign all pixels to eight color types. Then we calculate a dynamic threshold using the color information to extract the foreground. Next, we extract the characters by four steps: (i) connected component extraction, (ii) local thresholding, (iii) mark, line and noise deletion, and (iv) character grouping. Finally, we recognize the characters by a statistical Chinese and English character recognition system. We test 30 business cards which have Chinese characters, English characters, numerals and punctuation marks. The extraction rate and accuracy for our system are 96.97% and 95.43% respectively. The recognition rate is 88.78% for Chinese characters and 97.58% for English characters, numerals and punctuation marks.
Privacy Preserving Auditing Protocol for shared data on Cloud with efficient User Revocation

In today's Processing world, Cloud computing is one of the biggest developments which uses progressed, computational force. Clients can remotely store their information on cloud and profit by the on-interest superb applications and administrations from a mutual pool of configurable processing assets, with no weight of nearby information stockpiling and upkeep. Real intricacy in cloud computing are issues of information trustworthiness, information protection and information access by illicit clients. In view of capacity and sharing administrations in the cloud, clients can without much of a stretch adjust and share information as a gathering. In shared information diverse squares are marked by various clients as information adjustments performed by various clients. For security reasons, once a client is renounced from the gathering, the squares which were already marked by this repudiated client must be re-marked by a current client. The uprightness of information in the cloud might in any case be traded off, because of the presence of equipment/programming disappointments and human mistakes. This paper is spurred by the need of a novel system for imparted information to productive client renouncement in cloud to accomplish information uprightness in the cloud.
Security Design in the Real World: Why are Securitization Issues Tranched?

Securitisations usually involve creating multiple tranches of a single issue with different characteristics, placed on the market as separate securities. Various theoretical explanations have been advanced to explain such tranching. This paper provides the first systematic testing of such theories using a proprietary database of over 5000 separate tranches in European securitisations raising a total of $1 trillion. We find support for asymmetric information and market segmentation explanations for tranching and present evidence on how such different rationales influence the structuring process in practice. We also investigate the impact of tranching on the price of securities issued. For those issues where our model predicts a higher optimal number of tranches, we find that additional uniquely-rated tranches are associated with higher prices for the issue as a whole.
Towards a free-floating wireless implantable optogenetic stimulating system

This paper presents a wirelessly-powered and free-floating implantable optogenetic stimulating (FF-WIOS) implant with negligible footprint and high power transfer efficiency (PTE). FF-WIOS ASIC with embedded μLED and reflective lens is expected to stimulate the target cortical neuronal ensembles at high temporal and spatial resolution with minimal damage and no tethering effects. To improve the PTE, and stay below the SAR limit, a flexible planar transmitter (Tx) resonator, L2, will be implanted under the scalp, but over the skull. The Tx coil, L1, embedded in a headstage, L2 resonator, and a wire-bond receiver (Rx) coil, L3, wound around the FF-WIOS device, form a 3-coil inductive link operating at 135 MHz, which directly charges a surface-mount storage capacitor. At the onset of stimulation, the storage capacitor discharges into the μLED, while the stimulation parameters are sent to FF-WIOS by amplitude modulating of the power carrier. Post-layout simulation results show functionality of the storage capacitor charging, forward data transmission, and optogenetic stimulation with adjustable parameters.
Synaptic plasticity in vitro: cell culture of identified Aplysia neurons mediating short-term habituation and sensitization

The gill withdrawal reflex of the marine mollusk, Aplysia californica, shows habituation and sensitization, two simple forms of learning. In order to extend the cellular studies on synaptic plasticity underlying the changes in the reflex behavior, and to explore further the development of synaptic plasticity during synapse formation, we have sought to establish the neural circuit of the gill withdrawal reflex in vitro. We report here the reconstruction of the elementary gill withdrawal circuit in cell culture and find that the cells show short- term homosynaptic depression and heterosynaptic facilitation, the cellular mechanisms of habituation and sensitization, respectively.
What Determines Short Interest Level?

In the past two decades the short selling activity is rapidly increasing in the NYSE and NASDAQ. For example, in the NYSE and the NASDAQ from 1988 to 2002, the annual growth rate of short interest in both equity markets was more than 20 percent per year. In recent years, there have been a number of studies on short selling. But very few papers test the various trading hypotheses of the short-sellers as well as provide a comprehensive study to determine the factors which affect the short interest level. In this paper I attempt to answer four questions. Firstly, which set of factors systematically affects short interest level? Secondly, which factor contributes the most to explaining the short interest level? Thirdly, is there any difference in the determinants of the short interest level between the NYSE and the NASDAQ? Fourthly, is there any difference in the determinants in bubble and non-bubble periods? The main findings of the paper are as follows. First, empirical results support the Follow the Trend Hypothesis, Overpricing Hypothesis, and the Hedging and Arbitrage Hypothesis. Evidence on taxation based short-sale around the end of the year is mixed. Second, ANOVA analysis shows the borrowing costs contribute the most to explain the short interest level in the NASDAQ, but in the NYSE the arbitrage and hedging demand and the difference of investors' opinion have the largest explanation power. Third, short-sellers' behaviours are consistent in the bubble and non-bubble periods which shows they are calm traders and less affected by market sentiment.
A Methodology for Linking Customer Acquisition to Customer Retention

Customer acquisition and retention are not independent processes. However, because of data limitations, customer management decisions are frequently based only on an analysis of acquired customers. This analysis shows that these decisions can be biased and misleading. The author presents a modeling approach that estimates the length of a customer's lifetime and adjusts for this bias. Using the model, the author shows the financial impact of not accounting for the effect of acquisition on customer retention.
The use of snow radar in West Antarctic ice sheet annual snow accumulation study

Snow accumulation to the ice sheet offsets ice losses near the margin, and characterizing ice sheet accumulation rate is necessary for understanding ice sheet mass balance and predicting future sea level rise. Ice penetrating radar systems enable the measurement of ice sheet properties beneath the surface, including internal layering. This study concentrates on mapping the depth of internal layers, and linking the layers to a chronology that allows snow accumulation rates over particular time periods to be determined. This study focuses on one particular ice penetrating radar system: Snow Radar from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheet (CReSIS). The measurement error from the radar data process has been evaluated and quantified. A difference about 0.017 m caused by manual process in annual accumulation was identified between the radar derived data and true values. The chronology of Snow Radar detected layers is validated to be annual using nearby ice core data and the results of a regional climate model.
Online motion correction for diffusion‐weighted imaging using navigator echoes: Application to RARE imaging without sensitivity loss

This article describes the first application of true online motion correction to diffusion‐weighted RARE imaging. Two orthogonal navigator echoes were acquired and zeroth and first‐order phase corrections applied in less than 8 ms between a diffusion‐weighted magnetization preparation and data acquisition using the RARE sequence. The zeroth‐order phase correction was realized by pulsing the system's B0‐coil: the first‐order error corrected with appropriate magnetic field gradient pulses. Online correction ensured that no irreversible signal loss could occur in the imaging experiment. Diffusion‐weighted images of the brain were obtained from healthy volunteers. EGG‐triggered acquisition was applied at 400 ms after the R‐wave. Data were acquired on a matrix of 256 × 256 with a RARE factor of 16 and a b‐value of 804 smm−2. The images obtained with online motion correction showed a remarkably high image quality, while those acquired without motion correction were severely degraded by artifacts. Magn Reson Med 45:729–733, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.