Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consumption Taxes and Corporate Investment

Consumers nominally pay the consumption tax, but theoretical and empirical evidence is mixed on whether corporations partly shoulder this burden, thereby affecting corporate investment. Using a quasi-natural experiment, we show that consumption taxes decrease investment. Firms facing more elastic demand decrease investment more strongly, because they bear more of the consumption tax. We corroborate the validity of our findings using 86 consumption tax changes in a cross-country panel. We document two mechanisms underlying the investment response: reduced firms’ profitability and lower aggregate consumption. Importantly, the magnitude of the investment response to consumption taxes is similar to that of corporate taxes. Received September 25, 2017; editorial decision August 26, 2018 by Editor Wei Jiang. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.
The Effect of Individual Market Orientation on Sales Performance: An Integrated Framework for Assessing the Role of Formal and Informal Communications

To gain competitive advantages, companies expect their sales forces to execute selling strategies consistent with their market-oriented culture. Drawing on understandings of market orientation, organizational communication, and role theory, the author develops an integrated framework demonstrating the performance impact of individual market orientation (IMO) through formal and informal communications. This article also considers the moderating effects of role ambiguity and role conflict in the IMO–performance relationship. Five propositions are developed to bring new insights to these complex and important relationships and to encourage future research into the nature of frontline communication in the implementation of market orientation.
Product Data Artificial Mastoid — Type 4930 USES : ❍

The Artificial Mastoid Type 4930 has been designed for the calibration of bone conduction hearing aids and bone vibrators used in audiometry. It consists of a mechanical simulation of the human head, incorporating a built-in force transducer to monitor the output of the device to be calibrated. All the components of the Artificial Mastoid have been selected to ensure both excellent long-term stability and accurate correspondence with the mechanical characteristics of the human mastoid. It is designed in accordance with the International Electrotechnical Commission publication IEC R 373 (1971) including revision, and meets the requirements of the British Standard BS 4009 (1975) and American National Standard ANSI S3.26-1981.
The analysis of voltage and current unbalance by application of active and reactive power in the fundamental frequency negative-sequence components

The behaviour of the fundamental frequency negative-sequence power components in unbalanced power networks is evaluated for possible information on the relative contribution by the supply and loading network. Previous studies indicated that the direction of the negative-sequence active power in the fundamental frequency do not consistently commensurate with the location of a single source of unbalance in a power system when multiple sources of unbalance are located all over the network. This paper analyse the usefulness of all negative-sequence power components in the fundamental frequency, as information on the location and the degree of contribution to the voltage unbalance at the Point of Common Coupling (PCC) of a single source of unbalance in practical power systems. The results obtained confirmed that the direction of the fundamental frequency negative-sequence active power is not consistent with the source of unbalance but that the direction of the fundamental frequency negative-sequence reactive power is informative on the dominating source of unbalance.
Introduction to the thematic issue on Human-centric computing and intelligent environments

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and Intelligent environments (IEs) are characterized by information and communication technologies embedded so seamlessly into our physical environments and in various everyday objects that computer-enabled features will become a natural part of our living and working environments [6]. According to Cook and Das [4], the most critical feature that separates intelligent environments from environments that are merely user-controllable is their ability to model inhabitant behaviour. They determine that an intelligent environment is able to acquire and apply knowledge about the environment and its inhabitants in order to improve the inhabitants’ experience in that environment. The environment is thus willing to serve spontaneously and proactively, i.e. the environment senses the person’s needs and circumstances, and responds accordingly. In general, in the visions promoted by AmI and IEs, people are surrounded by intuitive interfaces and user-adaptive technologies; and the environments are capable of recognizing and proactively responding to the presence of different individuals in a seamless, unobtrusive and invisible way. Although these visions clearly place humans in the centre of their technology-mediated environments, the human-centred perspective of computer-based systems is still often neglected. Technologists – including computer scientists and engineers – frequently design and construct systems which perform efficiently, but may not provide their users with straightforward modes
Does Firing a CEO Pay Off?

We examine whether involuntary CEO replacements pay off by improving firm prospects. We find CEO successors’ acquisition investments to be associated with significantly higher shareholder gains relative to their predecessors and the average CEO. This improvement in post-turnover acquisition performance appears to be a function of board independence, hedge fund ownership, and the new CEO’s relative experience. CEO successors also create sizeable shareholder value by reversing prior investments through asset disposals and discontinuing operations and by employing more efficient investment strategies. Our evidence suggests that firing a CEO pays off.
A wideband fully integrated 0.25/spl mu/m BiCMOS 5GHz medium power amplifier

A wideband 4.2GHz-5.6GHz balanced Medium Power Amplifier has been designed in a 0.2Spm SiGe:C bipolar process. The two stage amplifier is housed in a VFQF’F”20 package with integrated inputloutput matcbing networks and onboard printed rat-race balnns. A saturated output power of 16dBm has been measured with a small signal gain of IS.2dB at SGHz with a total current consumption of llOmA from a 2.4V supply voltage at ambient temperature. The measured 3dB bandwidth is IIGHz, the best value ever reported in literature for a fully integrated medium PA housed in a standard padage for mass production witb DO external components required for inputloutput matching. The die size is 1.4~1.750 m d .
Methodological Monism in Economics

The aim of the paper is to give an outline of the relation between general epistemology and the epistemology of economics. The epistemology of economics can be treated starting from the 'general epistemology of science' and from the subject of the investigation, namely the problems of economics itself. Starting from the general or subject-independent epistemology one can make an attempt to adapt to economics various methodological approaches which were practically created to take only the subject of physics or mathematics into consideration. The characteristic feature of this mentality is often methodological monism, a doctrine which implicitly or explicitly states the unity of epistemology in all disciplines. In methodological writings of economics, beside the supporters of some general epistemological viewpoints, there are serious critics of them on behalf of methodologists who start their researches based on economics. Methodological pluralism does not reject the importation of methodological ideas from other branches of knowledge in an aprioristic way. However, the uncritical adoption of the methodology of physical sciences or 'general' methodology leads to the realm of inadequacy and dogmatism. According to methodological pluralism, every research has to choose its methods and methodology conforming to the nature of its own problems. The theoretical consequences of methodological monism are not always obvious. Inappropriate methodology can lead to inappropriate theories and inappropriate practical decisions. The negative consequences of formalism will be illustrated by some spatial economic issues in the field of money and price theory, such as the empirical empty doctrine of purchasing power parity and the theory of optimal currency areas. Since neoclassical mainstream is monist, therefore the critique of monism is at the same time the critique of the method of neoclassical mainstream.
The Mitogen-activated Protein Kinase Phosphatase-3 N-terminal Noncatalytic Region Is Responsible for Tight Substrate Binding and Enzymatic Specificity*

We have reported recently that the dual specificity mitogen-activated protein kinase phosphatase-3 (MKP-3) elicits highly selective inactivation of the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) class of mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases (Muda, M., Theodosiou, A., Rodrigues, N., Boschert, U., Camps, M., Gillieron, C., Davies, K., Ashworth, A., and Arkinstall, S. (1996) J. Biol. Chem. 271, 27205–27208). We now show that MKP-3 enzymatic specificity is paralleled by tight binding to both ERK1 and ERK2 while, in contrast, little or no interaction with either c-Jun N-terminal kinase/stress activated protein kinase (JNK/SAPK) or p38 MAP kinases was detected. Further study revealed that the N-terminal noncatalytic domain of MKP-3 (MKP-3ΔC) binds both ERK1 and ERK2, while the C-terminal MKP-3 catalytic core (MKP-3ΔN) fails to precipitate either of these MAP kinases. A chimera consisting of the N-terminal half of MKP-3 with the C-terminal catalytic core of M3-6 also bound tightly to ERK1 but not to JNK3/SAPKβ. Consistent with a role for N-terminal binding in determining MKP-3 specificity, at least 10-fold higher concentrations of purified MKP-3ΔN than full-length MKP-3 is required to inhibit ERK2 activity. In contrast, both MKP-3ΔN and full-length MKP-3 inactivate JNK/SAPK and p38 MAP kinases at similarly high concentrations. Also, a chimera of the M3-6 N terminus with the MKP-3 catalytic core which fails to bind ERK elicits non selective inactivation of ERK1 and JNK3/SAPKβ. Together, these observations suggest that the physiological specificity of MKP-3 for inactivation of ERK family MAP kinases reflects tight substrate binding by its N-terminal domain.
An Analysis Approach of User Centered Innovation for Call Center Services in Telecommunication

The growing global market of telecommunication services continuously promotes expanding customer needs and customer cares. Despite the efforts to facilitate Web-based services for customer contacts, Call Center Services (CC) with Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVR) currently remain the primary channel for customer services in telecommunication industries. In reality, the development of the system structure for IVR and the subsequent Call Center Information System are mainly based on the perspectives from the internal function processes on the provider side, i.e., a rather technical- or business- function oriented approach. User centered approaches of system innovation are therefore needed for better user experiences for such customer services. This study aims to establish a template analysis framework for the system improvement towards user-centered customer services, through conducting an empirical study in a major telecom company in Taiwan. Sampled system records in IVR logs are extracted and further linked with the corresponding transaction records which are routinely reported by customer service representatives for call handlings. In addition, individual interviews with customer service agents are also the other primary part of this system analysis. The interview results show that the problematic repair service dispatch policy and the personnel proficiency in business inquiries are critical to the quality of customer services. By further cross-referencing the results of system analysis and agent interviews, practical suggestions for system innovation towards a user-centered customer service system as well as the implications for theoretical research are in further discussion.
Iron uptake and transport in plants: the good, the bad, and the ionome.

Fe is essential for plant growth. At the same time, Fe is highly reactive and toxic via the Fenton reaction. Consequently, plants tightly control Fe homeostasis and react to Fe deficiency as well as Fe overload. The ability of plants to respond to Fe availability ultimately affects human nutrition, both in terms of crop yield and the Fe concentration of edible tissues. Thus, elucidating the mechanisms of Fe uptake and transport is essential for the breeding of crops that are more nutrient rich and more tolerant of Fe-limited soils.This review covers Fe transport and homeostasis in plants, focusing on the research published in the past five years. Because Fe transporters often have a broad range of substrates, we also examine the relationship between Fe and the toxic metals that often accompany Fe uptake, namely Cd, Co, and Ni. We begin by discussing Fe uptake into the root, then long-distance transport to the shoot, and finally, the loading of Fe into seeds. And, as Fe is essential to the metabolism of the mitochondria and chloroplast, we also look at the recent discoveries in Fe transport and homeostasis at the intracellular level. We do not cover the regulation of these transporters asmore » this topic has been recently reviewed. « less
Regeneration of Skeletal Muscle Using In Situ Tissue Engineering on an Acellular Collagen Sponge Scaffold in a Rabbit Model

Because of the limited ability of skeletal muscle to regenerate, resection of a large amount of muscle mass often results in incomplete recovery due to nonfunctional scar tissue. The aim of this study was to regenerate skeletal muscle using in situ tissue engineering in a rabbit model. In 18 male rabbits, a muscle defect (1.0 × ∼1.0 × ∼0.5 cm) was created in the vastus lateralis of both legs. A piece of cross-linked atelocollagen sponge was then inserted into the defect in one leg, whereas the defect in the other leg was left untreated. Both defects were finally covered with fascia. Twenty-four weeks after surgery, the defect that had been filled with the cross-linked atelocollagen sponge scaffold showed mild concavity and slight adhesion to the fascia, while the control side showed severe scar formation and shrinkage. Histologically, the regenerating myofibers at the site containing the collagen sponge were greater in number, diameter, and length than those at the control site. These results indicate that cross-linked atelocollagen sponge has the potential to act as a scaffold for muscle tissue regeneration.
Interpreting Convolutional Neural Networks Through Compression

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) achieve state-of-the-art performance in a wide variety of tasks in computer vision. However, interpreting CNNs still remains a challenge. This is mainly due to the large number of parameters in these networks. Here, we investigate the role of compression and particularly pruning filters in the interpretation of CNNs. We exploit our recently-proposed greedy structural compression scheme that prunes filters in a trained CNN. In our compression, the filter importance index is defined as the classification accuracy reduction (CAR) of the network after pruning that filter. The filters are then iteratively pruned based on the CAR index. We demonstrate the interpretability of CAR-compressed CNNs by showing that our algorithm prunes filters with visually redundant pattern selectivity. Specifically, we show the importance of shape-selective filters for object recognition, as opposed to color-selective filters. Out of top 20 CAR-pruned filters in AlexNet, 17 of them in the first layer and 14 of them in the second layer are color-selective filters. Finally, we introduce a variant of our CAR importance index that quantifies the importance of each image class to each CNN filter. We show that the most and the least important class labels present a meaningful interpretation of each filter that is consistent with the visualized pattern selectivity of that filter.
Factors Affecting the Development and Management of Bilingual Web Portals

: In recent years, there has been an interest among organizations and institutions to develop bilingual and multilingual web portals that provide their stakeholders with access to content, services and online resources. This study reports findings regarding the development and management of a bilingual web portal that provides content and services for an academic institution in Saudi Arabia (Arabic and English). This study adopts a qualitative research approach for data collection and analysis. Semi-structure interviews were conducted with five people who were involved directly with the bilingual portal development and management. Then, the data were analysed using coding and categorising to identify common themes among the participants. The findings indicate that developing and managing a bilingual web portal represents a challenge to institutions and it has several implications such as resources allocation, translation issues, quality assurance, content currency and some issues related to web portal usability. Finally, the paper provides some recommendations and suggestions for further research.
Knowledge Management for Service Innovation: A Study of Sri Lankan Business Service Organizations

The world is moving fast from a production-based economy towards a knowledge-based one. As a result, organizations are becoming more knowledge-intensive and are increasingly dependent on innovative knowledge to create value. Therefore, the question of how activities should be organized in order to generate and exploit new forms of knowledge is very important. The main objective of this research is to explore practice-based innovation (or how this is done) in service sector organizations. Building on qualitative data from five business service sectors, the analysis identified three work activities through which knowledge for innovation is generated, showed how they constitute a common ground for knowledge creation and redefined practice as a coherent frame for these activities. The three work activities are routine designing activities, participating in the whole flow of designing, using and reflecting in action. Further, the study explains how conventional organizing destroys this knowledge. In addition to the main findings, this research identified the key factors that influence knowledge management and innovation in Sri Lankan service sector organizations. Of clear importance are strong internal linkages, open and less hierarchical structural elements, an open and positive organizational culture, strong knowledge dissemination, the availability of an expert and skilled work force, carrying out internal R&D, technological exploration, internal systems and processes. The study makes both an empirical contribution to the emerging work on service innovation on the basis of knowledge intensiveness, and by extending a theory grounded in the existence and role of practice-based knowledge.
THE INFLUENCE OF LOYALTY PROGRAM MEMBERSHIP CARD AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ON CUSTOMER LOYALTY AT THE URBAN GYM ASTON HOTEL MANADO

Customer loyalty plays an important role in gaining the company’s profit. In order to maintain the customer loyalty, company need to find out some strategies for increase their sales. The strategy to maintain the customer loyalty that set by The Urban Gym Aston Hotel is Loyalty Program Membership Card and provide the best service to their members so the members will get a great experience in there. The objective of this research is to analyze the influence of loyalty program membership card and customer experience on customer loyalty in The Urban Gym Aston Hotel.This research is a quantitative research associated with multiple regression analysis technique. The respondents of this research are the members of The Urban Gym Aston Hotel. This research found that there is a significant influence of loyalty program membership card and customer loyalty on custmer experience simultaeously and partially. It concluded that the loyalty program that set by The Urban gym give a benefits to the customer and they also build a good services to the customer, so it create a good customer experience. This study suggest to The Urban Gym that the loyalty program membership card and customer experience are very important to maintain the good loyalty program and improve the services to make the customer still do the exercise in there Keywords : loyalty program, customer experience, customer loyalty
COMPARISON OF FATTY ACID COMPOSITION IN DIFFERENT PIG TISSUES

The aim of this study was to characterize the tissue-associated differences in the fatty acid profiles of intramuscular, subcutaneous and hepatic lipids and their quality indices from Lithuanian indigenous wattle pig and wild boar backcross to lean breed. The samples from hybrid pigs (1/4 Lithuanian indigenous wattle, 1/4 wild boar and 1/2 Landrace) were used in the experiment. There was little evidence that the lipids of longissimus muscle from hybrid pigs had a lower content of saturated fatty acids (SFA) and a higher content of monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) compared to subcutaneous fat. Hepatic lipids had the highest content of SFA and even 3.4 times higher content of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and about treble lower content of MUFA compared to intramuscular and subcutaneous lipids. The principal component analysis (PCA) also unravelled clear differences of fatty acid composition among tissues. Having predominant polyunsaturated fatty acids and favourable PUFA/SFA ratio and superior n-6/n-3 PUFA ratio to that in muscle and subcutaneous tissues, liver could be the PUFA, including n-3 PUFA- rich food in human diets. Atherogenic index (AI) and thrombogenenicity index (TI) of liver are lower, and hypocholesterolemic/Hypercholesterolemic ratio (h/H) is desirably higher compared to muscle and subcutaneous fat. The lipid quality indices in the muscle and subcutaneous tissue showed the similar risks and benefits associated with the tissue accordingly to recommended lower fats consumption, as a part of a balanced diet.
DSTARS: A Multi-target Deep Structure for Tracking Asynchronous Regressor Stack

Several applications of supervised learning involve the prediction of multiple continuous target variables from a dataset. In the case of the target variables exhibit statistical dependencies among them, a multi-target modelling permits to improve the predictive accuracy of a regressor. Apart from describing the dependencies among the targets, the multi-target approaches could offer better performance and less overfit than traditional single-target methods. A group of multi-target regression methods have already addressed this demand with success. However, by modifying the Multi-Target Regressor Stacking (MTRS) from a single layer to a deep structure, we improved the prediction capability, and by an asynchronous tracking we could exploit the dependency of each target individually. This paper presents the novel method Deep Structure for Tracking Asynchronous Regressor Stack (DSTARS) and compares its performance to MTRS, Ensemble of Regressor Chain (ERC) and the independent regression by single-target (ST). As base-learners were used Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and Classification and Regression Tree (CART) to investigate the prediction capability of the different family of machine learning algorithms. The results carried out on ten diverse datasets show that proposed method achieved improvements over the others.