Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Panel Data Analysis of the Effects of Voluntary and Involuntary Separations on Unit Performance in the Retail Industry

We studied the relationship between collective involuntary and voluntary turnover over unit-level performance. Our unique dataset, consisting of panel data with 24-month observations for 232 stores of a large Spanish fashion retail company, enabled us to compare different time lags between the moment of departures and the performance measures using fixed effects regressions. Such analyses revealed that both types of turnover had different consequences. Voluntary turnover was unrelated to store performance. Otherwise, involuntary turnover was significantly and negatively related both to store productivity and efficiency when variables are measured simultaneously, though this effect disappears in a one-month time lag. These results are discussed in the context of operational disruption arguments, and reveal the importance of using distinct variables that isolate the nature of employees’ separations (voluntary or involuntary) for the purposes of understanding what is meant by the functionality of turnover. Our findings also evidence the need to expand the range of methods used for analyzing the collective turnover-organizational performance link in order to advance knowledge in the field.
On the law of large numbers for the bootstrap mean

Direct and elementary proofs are given for weak and strong laws of large numbers for bootstrap sample means under minimal moment conditions. Concerning the required rate of divergence of the bootstrap sample size, the strong laws obtained improve on those of Athreya (1983). AMS 1980 Subject Classifications: Primary 60F15; Secondary 62605.
Economic Impacts of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)

This paper analyzes the impacts of free trade agreements (FTAs) from both quality and quantity aspects. The qualitative analysis of FTAs in terms of trade in goods, trade in services, direct investment and safeguard measures showed higher level of liberalization for FTAs involving developed countries than developing countries. The analysis of the quantitative effects showed a trade expansion effect for many FTAs. The analysis found various obstacles, which include high cost of obtaining a certificate of origin and low FTA preferential tariff margins, for using FTAs. The obstacles have to be removed, in order to increase the use of FTAs, thereby to promote foreign trade.
The effect of two physiotherapy approaches on physical and cognitive functions and independent coping at home in stroke rehabilitation. A preliminary follow-up study

Purpose. Activating physiotherapy was used to support the principle of post stroke functional recovery as a learning process which requires both cognitive and physical actions. The purpose of the present preliminary study was to examine the influence of activating physiotherapy on stroke patients' cognitive and physical functions and independent living at home compared with traditional treatment over a 12-month follow-up. Methods. The 40 patients who received activating physiotherapy were compared with 40 patients receiving traditional therapy. Patients' physical functional capacity was measured one week and 12 months post stroke with the Barthel Index (BI), 10-m gait speed, the Postural Control and Balance for Stroke (PCBS) test, walking distances and patients' abilities to cope without outside help. Cognitive capacity was measured with specific neuropsychological tests: language, visuospatial functions, visual inattention and memory. Results. Physical functional capacity improved significantly (p = 0.001) in both groups at the 12-month follow-up, but no significant differences were found between groups. However, the patients in the activating therapy group coped better without outside help (p = 0.042) and covered longer distances outdoors (p = 0.012). At follow-up all the measured cognitive functions had improved significantly in the activating therapy group and the change in memory in the same group differed significantly from that in the traditional therapy group (p < 0.001), where no significant improvement was observed. Conclusions. Activating therapy advanced stroke patients' cognitive and physical functional recovery and supported their return to independent life at home more than did traditional physiotherapy. In this respect activating therapy seems to have a beneficial influence on long-term stroke rehabilitation.
In Vivo Demonstration of Cancer Molecular Imaging with Ultrasound Radiation Force and Buried-Ligand Microbubbles

In designing targeted contrast agent materials for imaging, the need to present a targeting ligand for recognition and binding by the target is counterbalanced by the need to minimize interactions with plasma components and to avoid recognition by the immune system. We have previously reported on a microbubble imaging probe for ultrasound molecular imaging that uses a buried-ligand surface architecture to minimize unwanted interactions and immunogenicity. Here we examine for the first time the utility of this approach for in vivo molecular imaging. In accordance with previous results, we showed a threefold increase in circulation persistence through the tumor of a fibrosarcoma model in comparison with controls. The buried-ligand microbubbles were then activated for targeted adhesion through the application of noninvasive ultrasound radiation forces applied specifically to the tumor region. Using a clinical ultrasound scanner, microbubbles were activated, imaged, and silenced. The results showed visually conspicuous images of tumor neovasculature and a twofold increase in ultrasound radiation force enhancement of acoustic contrast intensity for buried-ligand microbubbles, whereas no such increase was found for exposed-ligand microbubbles. We therefore conclude that the use of acoustically active buried-ligand microbubbles for ultrasound molecular imaging bridges the demand for low immunogenicity with the necessity of maintaining targeting efficacy and imaging conspicuity in vivo.
Reduced reproductive performance associated with warmer ambient temperatures during incubation in a winter‐breeding, food‐storing passerine

Abstract Timing of reproduction can influence individual fitness whereby early breeders tend to have higher reproductive success than late breeders. However, the fitness consequences of timing of breeding may also be influenced by environmental conditions after the commencement of breeding. We tested whether ambient temperatures during the incubation and early nestling periods modulated the effect of laying date on brood size and dominant juvenile survival in gray jays (Perisoreus canadensis), a sedentary boreal species whose late winter nesting depends, in part, on caches of perishable food. Previous evidence has suggested that warmer temperatures degrade the quality of these food hoards, and we asked whether warmer ambient temperatures during the incubation and early nestling periods would be associated with smaller brood sizes and lower summer survival of dominant juveniles. We used 38 years of data from a range‐edge population of gray jays in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, where the population has declined over 50% since the study began. Consistent with the “hoard‐rot” hypothesis, we found that cold temperatures during incubation were associated with larger brood sizes in later breeding attempts, but temperatures had little effect on brood size for females breeding early in the season. This is the first evidence that laying date and temperature during incubation interactively influence brood size in any bird species. We did not find evidence that ambient temperatures during the incubation period or early part of the nestling period influenced summer survival of dominant juveniles. Our findings provide evidence that warming temperatures are associated with some aspects of reduced reproductive performance in a species that is reliant on cold temperatures to store perishable food caches, some of which are later consumed during the reproductive period.
Emerging planning approaches in airport areas: the case of Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG)

The expansion of international airports creates conflicts in their surrounding territories, but also provides opportunities for economic development. This article examines the recent evolution of spatial planning practice for the area of Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport in France. It identifies a shift towards airport-centred discourses that prioritize urban development projects. In examining the motivations for and implications of this shift, it demonstrates the benefits of a greater attention to the airport area and the risks of employing normative models.
The Effect of Recovery Locus Attributions and Service Failure Severity on Word-of-Mouth and Repurchase Behaviors in the Hospitality Industry

Based on a survey of 377 American hospitality customers, this study examines the effect of recovery locus attributions and service failure severity on customer word-of-mouth and repurchase behaviors. Findings indicate that for satisfactory recoveries attributed to a hospitality firm, relative to employee or customer attributions, the customer is more likely to discuss the encounter, share information with a wider social network, and both convince others to use the service provider and to have repatronized the firm. The results also suggest that the more severe the initial failure, the greater the likelihood that a critical incident had been discussed with a wider social network and the greater the likelihood of warning and convincing others to not patronize the hospitality organization. For unsuccessful (i.e., dissatisfactory) hospitality-based recovery attempts, the recovery locus attribution was not significantly associated with the word-of-mouth and repurchase behaviors investigated in this study.
Willingness of Hong Kong healthcare workers to accept pre-pandemic influenza vaccination at different WHO alert levels: two questionnaire surveys

Objective To assess the acceptability of pre-pandemic influenza vaccination among healthcare workers in public hospitals in Hong Kong and the effect of escalation in the World Health Organization’s alert level for an influenza pandemic. Design Repeated cross sectional studies using self administered, anonymous questionnaires Setting Surveys at 31 hospital departments of internal medicine, paediatrics, and emergency medicine under the Hong Kong Hospital Authority from January to March 2009 and in May 2009 Participants 2255 healthcare workers completed the questionnaires in the two studies. They were doctors, nurses, or allied health professionals working in the public hospital system. Main outcome measures Stated willingness to accept pre-pandemic influenza vaccination (influenza A subtypes H5N1 or H1N1) and its associating factors. Results The overall willingness to accept pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccine was only 28.4% in the first survey, conducted at WHO influenza pandemic alert phase 3. No significant changes in the level of willingness to accept pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccine were observed despite the escalation to alert phase 5. The willingness to accept pre-pandemic H1N1 vaccine was 47.9% among healthcare workers when the WHO alert level was at phase 5. The most common reasons for an intention to accept were “wish to be protected” and “following health authority’s advice. ” The major barriers identified were fear of side effects and doubts about efficacy. More than half of the respondents thought nurses should be the first priority group to receive the vaccines. The strongest positive associating factors were history of seasonal influenza vaccination and perceived risk of contracting the infection. Conclusions The willingness to accept pre-pandemic influenza vaccination was low, and no significant effect was observed with the change in WHO alert level. Further studies are required to elucidate the root cause of the low intention to accept pre-pandemic vaccination.
Virtual Laboratory: a virtual distributed platform to share and perform experiments

This paper presents a distributed platform that gives researchers a framework to develop and deploy multi modal enabled experiments (haptic, audio, 3d vision), share them on the network with other research institutes and cooperate or remotely teleoperate with partners during the experiments. It gives also the possibility to see and collect significant data to be analyzed so that it's possible to achieve scientific results. All the experiments performed within the platform are real-time and fully interactive distinguishing the proposed Virtual Laboratory from other virtual laboratories that is possible to find in literature. The purpose of such platform is to enhance the speed of development of multi modal haptic enabled applications and improve the whole scientific experiment workflow. In particular the Virtual Laboratory platform is intended to supply a common shared place to perform inter-laboratories experiments and enhance the production of scientific results.
Expansion Model for the Controller Placement Problem in Software Defined Networks

A key concern in the deployment of Software Defined Networks (SDN) is the location of the controller. One issue network operators will have to face is how to expand their network at minimum cost in order to meet the growing number of users and services. To that end, this letter introduces a new expansion model for the controller placement problem in SDN. More precisely, given a current network design and a list of switches to be added to the network, the model will find how the network should be re-organized such that the update cost is minimized. Since the expansion problem is a generalisation of the planning problem, the model proposed in this letter can be used to plan a new network from scratch or update any existing networks.
Gender-Based Employment and Income Differences in Urban China: Considering the Contributions of Marriage and Parenthood

Previous research on China's labor market gender gaps has emphasized the human and political capital disadvantages of women and new discrimination in the reform era. Analyzing the China Urban Labor Survey/China Adult Literacy Survey, this paper shows that while women are significantly disadvantaged by various measures of human and political capital, these disadvantages explain little of the observed gender gaps in employment status and earnings. Instead, gender gaps in employment and earnings are strongly related to family status. It is only married women and mothers who face significant disadvantages. This finding is likely tied to the fact that wives and mothers spend much more time than husbands and fathers doing household chores, even net of controls for potential earnings. These results suggest that research on gender disparities in urban China would be complemented by additional attention to family-work conflict, a topic which looms large in research on gender and labor in most other countries.
Intravenous injection of irradiated Leishmania major into susceptible BALB/c mice: immunization or protective tolerance.

It is well established that BALB/c mice can be protected from fatal infection with Leishmania major by prophylactic intravenous (i.v.) immunization with irradiated parasites. Protection is critically dependent on the route of injection with i.v. injection being protective and subcutaneous injection not protective. We used this BALB/c-L. major model system to investigate this phenomenon. We analyzed quantitatively the parasite-specific, CD4+ T cell mediated immune responses by limiting dilution. Subcutaneous vaccination resulted in priming of CD4+ precursor T cells, whereas i.v. vaccination was ineffectual. Moreover, i.v. injection prevented the increase in the number of specific precursor cells induced by infection of normal mice during the first weeks post-challenge with virulent parasites. We show here that this was not due to the elimination of the virulent challenge parasites as a result of immunity nor to inefficient antigen presentation of the irradiated organisms after i.v. injection. The data presented here suggest that i.v. injection results in tolerization rather than immunization. Tolerization as a mechanism of host protection is consistent with earlier observations that transient immunosuppression results in cure of L. major infection in BALB/c mice. Transfer of antigen presenting cells (APC) isolated from spleens of mice injected previously with irradiated parasites mimicked to some extent the effect of i.v. immunization with irradiated parasites. The possible involvement of these APC in decreasing the parasite-specific T cell response is discussed.
Endogenous credibility and stabilization programmes: evidence from the Dominican Republic

This paper analyses the impact of policy misalignments and structural reform policies on credibility and the long-term success of an exchange rate based (ERB) stabilization programme to reduce inflationary inertia. A controlled signal state-space model is used to test this hypothesis for the Dominican Republic, a country that introduced an ERB programme in the early 1990s. The results indicate that fiscal and monetary malpractice will deteriorate credibility whereas structural reform policies, when perceived as beneficial, will enhance credibility, contributing to economic stability.
The Measurement of Comparability in Accounting Research

Indices of harmony such as the H, C, I and T indices have been developed and used in the accounting literature to quantify the level of comparability of company accounts. This has led to advances in definitions of comparability as well as empirically quantifying the extent of comparability between actual company accounts. These are important because the general concept of comparability is considered desirable, as highlighted by its inclusion as one of four qualitative characteristics in the framework of the International Accounting Standard Board (IASB). This paper rebuts criticisms of harmony indices in the accounting literature by arguing these criticisms either: (a) apply to old indices but not to newer ones, (b) apply to most empirical accounting research, (c) are based on incorrect or irrelevant assertions, or (d) relate to alternative definitions of harmony. This assists the use and interpretation of harmony indices and advances our understanding of what comparability means. New indices within the T index framework are also proposed by directly comparing company accounts and therefore avoiding the previous requirement to define ‘accounting methods’. A new index R is also proposed to capture international harmony between countries when within-country uniformity is absent.
Fact Retrieval Deficits in Low Achieving Children and Children With Mathematical Learning Disability

Using 4 years of mathematics achievement scores, groups of typically achieving children (n = 101) and low achieving children with mild (LA–mild fact retrieval; n = 97) and severe (LA–severe fact retrieval; n = 18) fact retrieval deficits and mathematically learning disabled children (MLD; n = 15) were identified. Multilevel models contrasted developing retrieval competence from second to fourth grade with developing competence in executing arithmetic procedures, in fluency of processing quantities represented by Arabic numerals and sets of objects, and in representing quantity on a number line. The retrieval deficits of LA–severe fact retrieval children were at least as debilitating as those of the children with MLD and showed less across-grade improvement. The deficits were characterized by the retrieval of counting string associates while attempting to remember addition facts, suggesting poor inhibition of irrelevant information during the retrieval process. This suggests a very specific form of working memory deficit, one that is not captured by many typically used working memory tasks. Moreover, these deficits were not related to procedural competence or performance on the other mathematical tasks, nor were they related to verbal or nonverbal intelligence, reading ability, or speed of processing, nor would they be identifiable with standard untimed mathematics achievement tests.
Vibrio cholerae: Measuring Natural Transformation Frequency

Many bacteria can become naturally competent to take up extracellular DNA across their outer and inner membranes by a dedicated competence apparatus. Whereas some studies show that the DNA delivered to the cytoplasm may be used for genome repair or for nutrition, it can also be recombined onto the chromosome by homologous recombination: a process called natural transformation. Along with conjugation and transduction, natural transformation represents a mechanism for horizontal transfer of genetic material, e.g., antibiotic resistance genes, which can confer new beneficial characteristics onto the recipient bacteria. Described here are protocols for quantifying the frequency of transformation for the human pathogen Vibrio cholerae, one of several Vibrio species recently shown to be capable of natural transformation. © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Some methodological issues in the statutory characterisation of central banks

Many authors have supposed that it is appropriate to measure the independence of central banks by some interpretation of their statutes. These measures are typically used both to test (and generally speaking, confirm) the hypothesis that independence reduces inflation, and as the foundation of a proposal for statutory reform in the high inflation countries. More recently, Robert Elgie has sought to take the methodology further. In work closely related to that of Elgie and Thompson, he seeks to identify separately the statutory characteristics which are said to give a central bank 'economic independence' and those which give it 'political independence', and he says that 'This twofold classification provides the necessary and sufficient criteria by which to judge central bank independence'. Whilst it is supposed that 'independence' provides for low inflation, the importance of 'political independence' is that it offers a normatively significant measure of the political acceptability of an arrangement. Consequently, he is led to claim that:
A CASE STUDY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A LEAD ADMINISTRATOR OF A FULL-TIME FAITH-BASED VIRTUAL SCHOOL

3 Acknowledgement . 4 List of Tables . 9 List of Abbreviations . 10 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 11 Background . 12 Situation to Self . 14 Problem Statement . 15 Purpose Statement . 15 Significance of the Study . 16 Research Question(s) . 17 Research Plan . 18 Delimitations . 19 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW . 21 Theoretical Framework . 22 Transformational Leadership . 25 Transactional Leadership . 27 Review of the Literature . 28 Online Education . 29 Characteristics of Effective School Leaders . 36 Leadership’s Affect on Student Achievement . 37 Communication and Collaboration . 38