Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining Customized Offerings - extended products and the role of business partners

This thesis deals with the increasing attention of manufacturing firms to supply extended offerings, implying a shift from selling products towards provision of solutions. The overall aim is to describe and analyze how suppliers broaden their offerings by supplementing the core product with service elements. The fulfillment of this aim requires first and foremost a study coping with the identification of the elements together forming the extended offering and the principles for their combining. Secondly, the need for adjustments to the demands of individual customers calls for an analysis of the role of the buyer in this process. Thirdly, the broadening of the offering makes the provider of the solution dependent on specialized service suppliers. These conditions necessitate an exploration of how the supplier network of the provider is activated. The frame of reference takes its point of departure in previous studies of the combining of products and services into total solutions. In this study a particular interest is directed to the roles of customers and suppliers in these processes, thus putting an emphasis on the impact of the relationships with business partners. The nature of the research issues makes a case study approach the most relevant methodological choice. The empirical enquiry deals with a provider of extended offerings in the truck industry. The findings relates to four main areas. The first concerns the challenge to become a provider of customized solutions. The second illustrates how a customized offering is successively developed through the interaction between buyer and provider. The third relates to the role of the provider as a coordinator of the network of suppliers involved in the combining of the customized offering. Finally, the fourth area deals with some basic principles for collaboration with business partners.
Generational Conflict and its Impact of Work Behavior and Attitudes

Building commitment and preventing costly turnover are key challenges facing organizations today. This paper examines whether the fulfilled elements of the employment relationship that predict commitment and willingness to change companies vary significantly with age. Using a sample of 270 employees working in retail stores, it was found that in comparison to those under 30, fulfilling the need for a pleasant environment is more strongly related to the commitment of more senior workers. Providing for career advancement opportunities enhances the desire of younger employees to remain with their companies. In contrast, employees aged 45 and over are more willing to remain with the organization when employers provide for adequate resources and support. Providing employability development opportunities enhances commitment and reduces the willingness to quit and neglectful behavior for employees as a whole.
Practitioner perspectives on the family risk evaluation tool : Ab aide to decision making or 'just another form to fill in'?

The findings of research that explored how child protection practitioners in Queensland used the Structured Decision Making (SDM) tools are presented, focusing on how the Family Risk Evaluation tool (FRET) was used in decision making. The main finding was that the FRET was not used to assist the decision making of practitioners and consequently was ineffective in targeting the children most in need of a service. For practitioners, it was 'just another form to fill in'. As suggested by the participants in this research, a better strategy than the implementation of the SDM tools to improve decision making is the development of practitioner expertise through higher education.
Managerial ownership, corporate monitoring and audit pricing

We study whether managerial ownership and corporate monitoring (board quality and analyst coverage) relate to audit pricing. Managerial ownership has been identified as a fraud risk factor under SAS 99. However, the role of ownership is not clear. Under an alignment view, high levels of stock ownership align management with shareholders. Under an entrenchment view, high levels of ownership may motivate management to be self interested. Corporate monitoring, as measured by analyst coverage and overall board quality (Gomper’s index), are associated with information quality. Audit pricing will be affected to the extent that auditors perceive monitoring as being relevant to managers’ reporting incentives. Our tests use a large sample over the period of 2000-2004 and control for regulatory changes over that period. Our results indicate that lower fees are associated with higher levels of management ownership. We also find a negative relationship between fees and measures of corporate monitoring.
Co‐ordination of pathogenicity island expression by the BipA GTPase in enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC)

BipA is a novel member of the ribosome binding GTPase superfamily and is widely distributed in bacteria and plants. We report here that it regulates multiple cell surface‐ and virulence‐associated components in the enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) strain E2348/69. The regulated components include bacterial flagella, the espC pathogenicity island and a type III secretion system specified by the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE). BipA positively regulated the espC and LEE gene clusters through transcriptional control of the LEE‐encoded regulator, Ler. Additionally, it affected the pattern of proteolysis of intimin, a key LEE‐encoded adhesin specified by the LEE. BipA control of the LEE operated independently of the previously characterized regulators Per, integration host factor and H‐NS. In contrast, it negatively regulated the flagella‐mediated motility of EPEC and in a Ler‐independent manner. Our results indicate that the BipA GTPase functions high up in diverse regulatory cascades to co‐ordinate the expression of key pathogenicity islands and other virulence‐associated factors in E. coli.
Japan's Corporate returns on value and cost: a comprehensive look

The paper documents that for 1974-95 the Japanese non-fmancials' return on cost, a measure ofreturn on (direct) investment, is consistently higher than their return on value (an estimate of the expected return or cost of capital). Against conventional wisdom, when translated into USD terms, the Japanese cost of capital is actually higher than the U.S. counterpart. The paper further shows that as of the 90s the main-bank centered keirestu firms, with their internally disciplined corporate governance system, lost their traditional advantage of lower cost of capital, compared to the non-keiretsu firms. Examining corporate earnings, investment, and forms of financing reveals that, in recent years, keiretsu firms have become more liquidity constrained than non-keiretsu firms. Their investment drops dramatically, and while (also much reduced) retained cash earnings provide most of the financing, debt fmancing is replaced by more expensive new equity as the major source of outside financing. Non-keiretsu finns are suffering as well, but to a lesser degree, and are still able to finance their investment even with substantial short-term debts. The main-bank system seems starting to crumble following an over-investment episode in late-80s.
Challenge of knowledge sharing: integrating customer in product development

Development of products and services requires information on customer needs. In many cases there are several people interfacing with customers throughout the organization. Information can be highly shattered, unorganized and not codified. One of the key issues is that the people who are interacting with customers may be other than those who are involved with development of products and services. Here the challenge is to integrate information and knowledge from customer needs to the R&D process. There are mechanisms for sharing information so that it can be effectively used in R&D process. Knowledge sharing mechanisms become especially important in a large organization which operates in multiple locations. These call for infrastructures, rules and procedures. In this paper we study mechanisms that empower the sharing of knowledge and information between individuals, especially customer feedback is the focus of this research.
Incentives and Risk Taking: Evidence from Insurance Companies

This study examines the relation between incentives and risk taking for 466 insurer-year observations over 2006-2010. Our results show that independent director compensation is positively related to risk taking as is CEO compensation and institutional ownership. Besides dollar value and proportion of stock based compensation, we document similar results for total compensation. In terms of institutions, dedicated institutional ownership rather than total institutional ownership is found to be positively related to risk taking. These findings suggest that the stock based compensation of independent directors and the CEO help to align their interests with those of the shareholders when dedicated institutional owners serve as external monitors. Our results are robust to several methods, different risk taking measures and a wide range of control variables.
Bank Capital, Bank Lending, and Monetary Policy in the Euro Area

This paper provides arguments and evidence in favour of the hypothesis that bank capital matters for euro area banks' loan response to a change in monetary policy. Bank-level panel data estimates for 1991-1999 show that the lending behaviour of the least-capitalised banks in France and Italy is more responsive to a change in monetary policy than that of better capitalised banks. The degree of capitalisation also matters for the monetary policy impact on lending of the key players in the German and euro area banking system. These findings suggest that the new Basle capital requirements can affect the monetary transmission channel through bank capital.
Post-Adoption Attitudes To Advertising On The Internet

ABSTRACT In the last few years, the use and relative effectiveness of internet advertising has been the focus of research attention in the advertising and marketing literatures. However, few studies to date have examined these issues from the practitioners' viewpoint. This study reports the results of an online survey of top executives in advertising, marketing, new media, and public relations agencies concerning the issue of internet advertising. Contrary to past studies, which have examined whether agencies have adopted the internet, the focus here is on the ‘post-adoption attitudes’ of agency executives after the adoption process has taken place. The primary purpose of this study is to present and test two factors - relative advantage and complexity - that we believe are useful for predicting and, by extension, helping to explain why post-adoption attitudes toward the internet are generally low, particularly for executives of traditional advertising agencies. Our findings shed light on this issue by demonstrating that traditional advertising agencies lag behind other agency types when it comes to internet advertising expertise, profitability, staffing, ability to attract interactive clients, and overall understanding of the internet's value. The findings presented here should be considered preliminary until a larger, more representative sample can be surveyed.
Scalable model for predicting the effect of negative bias temperature instability for reliable design

The authors present a predictive model for the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) of PMOS under both short term and long term operation. On the basis of the reaction–diffusion mechanism, this model accurately captures the dependence of NBTI on the oxide thickness (tox), the diffusing species (H or H2) and other key transistor and design parameters. In addition, a closed form expression for the threshold voltage change (ΔVth) under multiple cycle dynamic operation is derived. Model accuracy and efficiency were verified with 180, 130 and 90 nm silicon data. The impact of NBTI on the delay degradation of a ring oscillator and the various metrics of the SRAM such as its data retention voltage, read and hold margins, as well as read and write delay, is also investigated.
The Space Between: Towards a Typology of Interfirm Relations

ABSTRACT Understanding and managing the relationships between firms is the central issue in business to business marketing. Some of the results of a program of research undertaken in Australia to study interfirm relations are used to develop an empirically based typology of interfirm relations focusing on the mix of cooperative and competitive elements coexisting in a relationship. Measures are developed of relationship cooperativeness and competitiveness and relations are classified into one of four types based on whether they score high or low on each dimension. A dynamic process model of interfirm relationships is developed as a basis for identifying the main factors driving relationship development. Measures of these factors form the basis for regression analysis to identify the characteristics of each of the four types of relations and examples of particular relationships are used to illustrate the characteristics identified.
Proportional — Multiresonant current controller for harmonic elimination in stand-alone DFIG wind power systems

This paper proposes an improved harmonic elimination strategy for the stator output voltage of a stand-alone doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) feeding a nonlinear load. The proposed elimination method is investigated based on a proportional plus multi-resonant current controller using the stationary reference frame, which is implemented in the rotor-side converter. The aim of the current controller is to achieve the satisfactory performance of rotor currents regulated at harmonic frequencies in order to eliminate fifth and seventh harmonic components in the stator output voltage. As a result, the control scheme allows the DFIG to deliver a pure sinusoidal stator voltage. The proposed control scheme was tested by experiments with 2.2kW DFIG feeding a nonlinear load to verify the feasibility and effectiveness in terms of harmonic compensation performance.
Amperometric Biosensor: Increased Sensitivity Using Enzyme Nanoparticles

Here we present a comparative study of amperometric biosensor developed by using nanoparticles of Glucose oxidase enzyme itself (GOx np) with that of enzyme immobilized on to gold nanoparticles (Au np-GOx). The biosensor developed by immobilizing the GOx np (45-70 nm in size) directly onto the Pt. electrode could detect glucose concentrations as low as 1 mM while the one with Au np-GOx (Au np 10-16 nm in size) showed a detection limit up to 5 mM only. Current response showed linearity up to 35 mM in both the cases. To the best of our knowledge the glucose biosensors prepared using various metal nanoparticles, Au, Ni, Ag (as reported in literature) showed a linear range from 2.7-30 mM glucose concentration. We are in the process of optimizing the immobilization methods and functionalization of the enzyme nanoparticles so as to have a wider temperature and pH stability of the biosensor. We feel the direct immobilization of enzyme nanoparticles, with proper choice of functionalization seems to be a promising strategy for biosensor development with higher sensitivities. I. I NTRODUCTION Presently available industrial biosensors are based on membrane or hydrogel technology with response time ranging in minutes(1-2). Researchers have shown that the response time could be decreased to few seconds (4 -10 sec) by using enzyme immobilized onto nanoparticles rather than membrane or hydrogel(3-4). The small response time, high senstivity, and stability are attributed to the unique properties of nanostructures-like the small size (normally in the range of 1-100nm), high surface-to-bulk ratio leading to interesting optical, electric, chemical, mechanical, physical and catalytic properties which are not present in their respective bulk material(9). Furthermore, method of immobilization of enzyme onto these nanomaterials, i.e. adsorption, cross linking or covalent binding etc., has profound effect on activity of the enzyme as well as shelf life of the biosensor. In the present work we intend to increase the sensitivity of the sensor by using the nanoparticles of enzyme itself rather than immobilizing enzyme onto nanoparticles and then onto electrode. We further intend to optimize the biosensor efficiency in terms of the cross linking or covalent binding agents.
Crystal structure of BaMn2(AsO4)2 containing discrete [Mn4O18]28− units

BaMn2(AsO4)2 was isolated from a high-temperature halide flux. Its crystal structure is characterized by infinite sheets made up of AsO4 units and distorted MnO6 octahedra while barium cations interleave successive sheets. The layered framework comprises weakly interacting [Mn4O18]28− tetrameric units. These units in the neighboring layer are separated from each other by 6.614 (2) Å (Mn⋯Mn distance).
Improving pharmacy store performance: the merits of over-the-counter drugs

Purpose – This study aims to increase understanding of the factors that affect retail pharmacy performance. This paper investigates how various product-, store-, customer- and competitor characteristics affect over-the-counter (OTC) drug sales and thus store performance. Design/methodology/approach – This paper specifies and estimates a hierarchical model comprising scanner-based information, as well as individual-level data from a customer survey. Findings – Results indicate that the drivers of retail pharmacy performance in OTC categories are different from those identified in traditional retailing research. Originality/value – This is the first study that determines which factors impact the sales of OTC drugs in pharmacies.
Adaboost-like method for inverse reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning allows agents to use trial and error method to learn intelligent behaviors which like human beings. However, when the learning tasks become difficult, how to define the reward function is an imperative issue. So, inverse reinforcement learning is proposed to form the reward function that imitates the process of interaction between the expert and the environment. In this paper, an Adaboost-like inverse reinforcement learning methods is proposed. This method uses Adaboost classifier and upper confidence bounds to generate the reward function for a complex task. In the imitating process, the agent continuously compares the difference between itself and the expert, and then the difference decides a specific weight for each state through Adaboost classifier. The weight combines with state confidence by upper confidence bounds to form an approximate reward function. Finally, a simulation, maze environment is used to demonstrate that the proposed method can decrease the computation time.
Computer-specific metrics for the regulation and load following ancillary services

In competitive electricity markets, the costs for each ancillary service should be charged to those who cause the costs to be incurred with charges based on the factors that contribute to these costs. For example, the amount of generating capacity assigned to the regulation service is a function of the short-term volatility of system load. Therefore, the charges for regulation should be related to the volatility of each load, not to its average demand. This report discusses the economic efficiency and equity benefits of assessing charges on the basis of customer-specific costs (rather than the traditional billing determinants, MWh or MW), focusing on two key real-power ancillary services, regulation and load following. The authors determine the extent to which individual customers and groups of customers contribute to the system's generation requirements for these two services. In particular, they analyze load data to determine whether some customers account for shares of these two services that differ substantially from their shares of total electricity consumption.
Hard-fuzzy clustering: A cooperative approach

Data clustering plays an important role in many disciplines, where there is a need to learn the inherent grouping structure of the data in an unsupervised manner. It is well known that no clustering method can adequately handle all sorts of cluster structures and properties (e.g. shape, size, overlapping, and density). Combining multiple clustering methods is an approach to overcome the deficiency of single algorithms and further enhance their performances. Current approaches to multiple clusterings use ensemble clustering to generate aggregated solution from multiple clusterings or using a hybrid cascaded refinement to enhance the end-result clusters produced by a former clustering algorithm(s). A disadvantage of the cluster ensemble is the highly computational load of combing the clustering results especially for large and high dimensional datasets. A drawback of the hybrid approaches is that, one (or more) of the clustering algorithms stays idle until the previous algorithm(s) finishes its clustering. In this paper we propose a Cooperative Hard-Fuzzy Clustering (CHFC) model based on intermediate cooperation between the hard c-means (KM) and fuzzy c-means (FCM) to produce better clustering solutions. Our experimental results over artificial, real, and text documents datasets show that the quality of the clustering solutions obtained from the CHFC model is better than those obtained from both the KM and the FCM and also better than those obtained from hybrid cascaded models.
Anthropological User Research: A Data-Driven Approach to Personas Development

In user experience design process, personas development is an expensive endeavor, which often involves allocating resources in an organization for a prolonged period. Design teams working under practical constraints demand increasingly a practical personas development approach. This study presents a novel data-driven personas development method with its root in anthropological research methods of frame elicitation and multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis. In this paper, we discuss the merits and potential improvements to this new approach with a case study to illustrate its application in a multinational software company.
Spatial and temporal variability of nearshore wave energy resources along Spain: Methodology and results

A global framework, than can be applied worldwide, has been developed to determine waver energy resources at shallow water with high spatial and long temporal resolution in order to analyze the seasonality, interannual variability (correlation of wave power with climate-related indices, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation) and spatial long-term trends along the Spanish coast. The proposed methodology combines instrumental and numerical databases, wave numerical models (dynamical downscaling) and sophisticated mathematical tools (statistical downscaling), which includes a selection algorithm and an interpolation technique to reconstructed time series. The validation of the results in deep water and coastal buoys locations confirm the ability of the methodology developed.
Media Scheduling and Carry-over Effects:

ABSTRACT The current U.S. recency-based scheduling model focuses entirely on the short-term effects of advertising, arguing that in competitive markets the data show that response to advertising dissipates rapidly. This approach leads to consistent moderate weight and near continuous scheduling. Others disagree. Adstock, a well-established concept in the United Kingdom, has been seeping into U.S. planning through globalization and marketing-mix modeling. It has introduced carry-over effects into U.S. TV schedling, which encourage GRP concentration, flighting, and less continuous advertising. We believe that the way Adstock is currently being used by U.S. agencies to modify GRP lay-down is seriously flawed, because it is based on a misunderstanding of what Adstock is. This paper wil explain what we consider to be the fallacy and pinpoint just what place, if any, Adstock can have in media scheduling.