Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Flexible Employment Strategies in British Industry: Evidence from the UK ‘Sunbelt’

PINCH S. , MASON C. and WITT S. (1991) Flexible employment strategies in British industry: evidence from the UK ‘sunbelt’, Reg. Studies 25, 207–218. A study of industrial restructuring in forty manufacturing firms and forty-seven private sector service firms in the Southampton city-region between 1981 and 1987 shows that, while changes in numerical flexibility and subcontracting in both services and manufacturing are similar in form and magnitude to those discovered elsewhere in Britain, there have been fewer major shifts within manufacturing towards increased functional flexibility. This is explained by the fact that the Southampton city-region lacks three factors that have facilitated the introduction of increased functional flexibility into manufacturing plants in peripheral regions: greenfield sites; plants under threat of closure; and changes in ownership. PINCH S. , MASON C. et WITT S. (1991) Strategies d'emploi souples dans l'industrie en Grand-Bretagne: des preuves provenant de la zone ‘ensoleillee’.
Essential role of the ERK/MAPK pathway in blood-placental barrier formation

The mammalian genome contains two ERK/MAP kinase kinase genes, Map2k1 and Map2k2, which encode dual-specificity kinases responsible for ERK activation. Loss of Map2k1 function in mouse causes embryonic lethality due to placental defects, whereas Map2k2 mutants have a normal lifespan. The majority of Map2k1+/− Map2k2+/− embryos die during gestation from the underdevelopment of the placenta labyrinth, demonstrating that both kinases are involved in placenta formation. Map2k1+/− Map2k2+/− mutants show reduced vascularization of the labyrinth and defective formation of syncytiotrophoblast layer II (SynT-II) leading to the accumulation of multinucleated trophoblast giant cells (MTGs). To define the cell type-specific contribution of the ERK/MAPK pathway to placenta development, we performed deletions of Map2k1 function in different Map2k1 Map2k2 allelic backgrounds. Loss of MAP kinase kinase activity in pericytes or in allantois-derived tissues worsens the MTG phenotype. These results define the contribution of the ERK/MAPK pathway in specific embryonic and extraembryonic cell populations for normal placentation. Our data also indicate that MTGs could result from the aberrant fusion of SynT-I and -II. Using mouse genetics, we demonstrate that the normal development of SynT-I into a thin layer of multinucleated cells depends on the presence of SynT-II. Lastly, the combined mutations of Map2k1 and Map2k2 alter the expression of several genes involved in cell fate specification, cell fusion and cell polarity. Thus, appropriate ERK/MAPK signaling in defined cell types is required for the proper growth, differentiation and morphogenesis of the placenta.
Effects of Shop Size and Labor Flexibility in Labor and Machine Limited Production Systems

This paper describes a simulation study that examines the influence of system size and labor flexibility on the performance effects of dispatching and labor control decision rules in labor and machine limited production systems. Four production systems are used--a small job shop, a medium job shop, a large job shop in which workers may be transferred between major organizational divisions, and a large job shop in which workers cannot be transferred between divisions. For each system the decision rules for dispatching and labor control are varied. Comparisons are made of the relative effects of the decision rules, for the different systems, on mean flow-time, flow-time variance and number of worker transfers. Results indicate that the effects of dispatching and labor control decision rules on flow-time measures are consistent for different size and labor flexibility combinations. With one exception, the effects on labor transfer measures are also consistent. Consistency here means that the directions of change in performance measures are the same for the different systems. The magnitudes of both actual and percentage changes do vary for the different systems.
Price/Wage Staggering and Persistence: A Unifying Framework

In this paper, we provide a general unified framework to clarify the issue of persistence of real effects of money shocks in staggered wage/price models. We mainly aim to: (i) highlight which features of the underlying economy, and particularly of the labour market, are crucial for generating output persistence; (ii) analyse the differences between price and wage staggering. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003.
EFFECT OF CARDIAC REHABILITATION ON STRENGTH AND BALANCE IN PATIENTS AFTER CORONARY ARTERY BYPASS GRAFT

Article history: Received: …………. Accepted: ………… Available online: 7 Feb 2013 ZJRMS 2013; 15(X): XX-XX Background: The most common method for improving the quality of life especially in chronic heart disease is rehabilitation. For increasing the level of knowledge about effect of rehabilitation and its' impression on improving the quality of life in patients. This study evaluates effect of one month cardiac rehabilitation on lower limb strength and the static and dynamic balance of CABG patients. Materials and Methods: This study is based on clinical trial before and after rehabilitation. the exercise protocol lasted for one month, three times per week, each session lasting 1 hour, on 30 male patients in two groups in control (N=15) and experimental group (N=15) after CABG in the centre of rehabilitation in Javad-Alaeme Heart Hospital, Mashhad. The strength of lower limb by chair standing test, the static balance by standing on one leg and dynamic balance by time up and go (TUG) test, was evaluated before and after 1 month rehabilitation in training group and detraining in control group. Data were analyzed with SPSS-16 and used t-test analysis (p≤0.05). Results: The strength of lower limb (p=0.001), static balance (p=0.023) and dynamic balance (p=0.037) increased significantly after one month of cardiac rehabilitation. Conclusion: The result of this study indicates that cardiac rehabilitation after coronary artery bypass surgery causes significant increase in strength of lower limb and balance in patients, the more muscle strength is associated with an increase in ability of performing daily activities and so it causes improved quality of life.
Development and Application of a Novel Microfabricated Device for the In Situ  Tensile Testing of 1-D Nanomaterials

We report on the development and application of a silicon microdevice for the in situ quantitative mechanical characterization of single 1-D nanomaterials within a scanning electron microscope equipped with a quantitative nanoindenter. The design makes it possible to convert a compressive nanoindentation force applied to a shuttle to uniaxial tension on a specimen attached to a sample stage. Finite-element analysis and experimental calibration have been employed to extract the specimen stress versus strain curve from the indentation load versus displacement curve. The stress versus strain curves for three 200-300-nm-diameter Ni nanowire specimens are presented and analyzed.
Proteomic Analysis of the Sarcosine-Insoluble Outer Membrane Fraction of Helicobacter pylori Strain 26695

ABSTRACT Helicobacter pylori causes gastroduodenal disease, which is mediated in part by its outer membrane proteins (OMPs). To identify OMPs of H. pylori strain 26695, we performed a proteomic analysis. A sarcosine-insoluble outer membrane fraction was resolved by two-dimensional electrophoresis with immobilized pH gradient strips. Most of the protein spots, with molecular masses of 10 to 100 kDa, were visible on the gel in the alkaline pI regions (6.0 to 10.0). The proteome of the OMPs was analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Of the 80 protein spots processed, 62 spots were identified; they represented 35 genes, including 16 kinds of OMP. Moreover, we identified 9 immunoreactive proteins by immunoblot analysis. This study contributes to the characterization of the H. pylori strain 26695 proteome and may help to further elucidate the biological function of H. pylori OMPs and the pathogenesis of H. pylori infection.
Shaping the firm’s external search strategy

Abstract This paper explores the determinants of external knowledge search strategies, specifically, exploitative and exploratory searches. The literature emphasizes environmental context and technological resources, especially R&D, as important determinants of the search strategy. In this paper we focus on two types of the firm’s formal structure: formalized and decentralized structures. The study uses survey data from the ceramic tile industry in Spain. The results show that a competitive environment and a decentralized organizational structure play a role in shaping the firm’s external search strategy, but that R&D has no effect. We find that competition inhibits exploratory search, while a decentralized firm structure encourages the use of this type of search strategy to the detriment of exploitative search. Our results emphasize that the mechanisms driving exploratory and exploitative searches are intrinsically different.
Strategic planning in SMEs – some empirical findings

Strategic frameworks and tools of analysis have been the subject of much academic debate over the last 20 years. This paper reviews the main approaches to strategic management and, by presenting the results of a survey of 159 small and medium sized enterprises selected from both the service and manufacturing sectors, demonstrates a divide between the theoretical concepts and the practical realities of strategic planning. While there are strong indications of business planning among the organisations surveyed, there is less evidence of strategic thinking except among larger businesses. Even in this latter group there are only a few instances where the recognised tools of strategic management appear to play a role in planning, the exception being internal financial analysis, which is widely undertaken.
The division between fast- and slow-growing species corresponds to natural relationships among the mycobacteria

Comparative 16S rRNA sequencing was used to infer the phylogenetic relationships among selected species of mycobacteria and related organisms. The phylogeny inferred reflects the traditional classification, with major branches of the phylogenetic tree in general correspondence to the four Runyon groups and with numerical classification analyses. All the mycobacterial species compared, with the exception of M. chitae, are closely related (average similarity values greater than 95%). The slow growers form a coherent line of descent, distinct from the rapid growers, within which the overt pathogens are clustered. The distant relationship between M. chitae and the remaining mycobacteria suggests that this organism is incorrectly classified with the mycobacteria. M. paratuberculosis 18 was indistinguishable from M. avium-M. intracellulare-M. scrofulaceum serovar 1 by this analysis.
Racial Discrimination and Resilience in African American Young Adults: Examining Racial Socialization as a Moderator

Research has indicated that racial discrimination places African Americans at risk for psychological distress, in which they experience low levels of well-being. Yet many African Americans are resilient, or have preserved well-being, when faced with this adversity. Using a strength-based approach, this study determined whether racial socialization messages preserved African Americans’ resilience when experiencing racial discrimination. Results with a sample of 290 young adult African American college students indicated that overall racial socialization messages, as well as specific messages to appreciate cultural legacy, moderated the relationship between racial discrimination and resilience. As expected, racial discrimination was negatively related to resilience for students who reported fewer racial socialization messages, and racial discrimination was no longer negatively associated with resilience for students reporting a greater number of these messages. Additionally, racial socialization messages predicted unique variance in resilience.
Wave dissipation by vegetation

Flooding resulting from hurricanes and other extreme storm events is a prominent risk along the coasts. These coastal areas are typically of low elevation and relief,making land and infrastructure highly susceptible to inundation by storm surge and waves. These verity of this threat is exacerbated by sea level rise and a possible increase in storm frequency and strength due to climate change. Although hard protection structures such as levees and flood walls reduce flood risk, these structures may fail when storm conditions exceed the design threshold. There is a general consensus that wetlands, which often serve as transition zones between open water and dry land, could act as buffers and reduce storm surge and propagatingwaves substantially before they encounter coastal development. Unfortunately, the capability of wetlands to serve as protection during extreme storms is not understood fully or well documented; furthermore, water level and wave height reductions by vegetation are studied only in low-energy environments. Nonetheless, these studies present methods to quantify vegetation induced wave attenuation for both modeling and design. This technical note focuses on the damping of propagating water waves by vegetation, but also discusses surge reduction briefly.Although waves may be encountered in freshwater environments(e.g., boat wakes, lake fetch,flood waves, etc.), this review focuses on coastal vegetation and resultant effects on flood and storm damage reduction.
A single-stage three-level isolated PFC converter

The single-stage forward and flyback derived converter topologies are widely preferred at low power applications. For high dc link voltage applications, research efforts focus on multi-level topologies. This paper proposes a new single-stage three-level (SSTL) isolated ac/dc PFC converter for high dc link voltage low-power applications achieved through an effective integration of ac/dc and dc/dc stages, where all of the switches are effectively shared between two operations. With the proposed converter and switching scheme, input current shaping and output voltage regulation can be achieved simultaneously without introducing additional switches or switching action, through two independent PI controllers. Theoretical analyses are supported with experimental results, achieving 90.8% peak efficiency under low line voltage at 500W/48V.
La hipótesis de la inestabilidad financiera y la crisis de 2007-2009

En el texto que sigue examinamos la capacidad explicativa del planteamiento fundamental de Hyman Minsky en la crisis desatada a partir del estallido de la burbuja hipotecaria. Con este objetivo, se presenta la hipotesis de la inestabilidad financiera formulada por Minsky, luego se plantea una propuesta de desarrollo de esta hipotesis que incorpora nuevas formas de funcionamiento de las entidades financieras, despues se exponen caracteristicas distintivas de este momento critico y mostramos diferencias en el proceso de transicion de la estabilidad a la inestabilidad en esta crisis de 2007-2009 respecto a la explicacion ofrecida por Minsky.
Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952-1996

I assess the extent of "partisan voting" in American national elections since 1952 using a series of simple probit analyses. My measure of partisan voting is sensitive both to changes in the distribution of partisanship and to changes in the electoral relevance of partisanship. I find that the impact of partisan loyalties on voting behavior has increased in each of the last six presidential elections, reaching a level in 1996 almost 80 percent higher than in 1972-and significantly higher than in any presidential election in at least 50 years. The impact of partisanship on voting behavior in congressional elections has also increased markedly, albeit more recently and to a level still well below that of the 1950s. I conclude that the conventional wisdom among scholars and commentators regarding the "decline of parties" in American politics is badly outdated. he "decline of parties" is one of the most familiar themes in popular and scholarly discourse about contemporary American politics. One influential journalist has asserted that "The most important phenomenon of American politics in the past quarter century has been the rise of independent voters" (Smith 1988, 671). Textbook writers tell their students that "Voters no longer strongly identify with one of the major parties as they once did" (Wilson and Dilulio 1995, 180) and that "the two major parties are no longer as central as they once were in tying people's everyday concerns to their choices in the political system" (Greenberg and Page 1997, 269). The most persistent academic analyst of partisan decline has argued that "For over four decades the American public has been drifting away from the two major political parties" (Wattenberg 1996, ix), while another prominent scholar has referred to a "massive decay of partisan electoral linkages" and to "the ruins of the traditional partisan regime" (Burnham 1989, 24). I shall argue here that this conventional wisdom regarding the "decline of parties" is both exaggerated and outdated. Partisan loyalties in the American public have rebounded significantly since the mid-1970s, especially among those who actually turn out to vote. Meanwhile, the impact of partisanship on voting behavior has increased markedly in recent years, both at the presidential level (where the overall impact of partisanship in 1996 was almost 80 percent greater than in 1972) and at the congressional level (where the overall impact of partisanship in 1996 was almost 60 percent greater than in 1978). Far from "partisans using their identifications less and less as a cue in voting behavior" (Wattenberg 1996, 27), my analysis suggests that "partisan loyalties had at least as much impact on voting behavior at the presidential level in the 1980s as in the 1950s" (Bartels 1992, 249)-and even more in the 1990s than in the 1980s.
Real-time Guided Procedural Terrain Generation

This paper presents an application that allows real-time large terrain generation using crude user input regarding the terrain’s height features. Our technique uses a preprocessing phase to generate plausible terrain out of crude bitmaps and achieves real-time performances by splitting the large terrain into chunks and processing and displaying only the chunks surrounding the user, while maintaining the height features suggested in the original crude input.
Comparing Patterns of Natural Selection across Species Using Selective Signatures

Comparing gene expression profiles over many different conditions has led to insights that were not obvious from single experiments. In the same way, comparing patterns of natural selection across a set of ecologically distinct species may extend what can be learned from individual genome-wide surveys. Toward this end, we show how variation in protein evolutionary rates, after correcting for genome-wide effects such as mutation rate and demographic factors, can be used to estimate the level and types of natural selection acting on genes across different species. We identify unusually rapidly and slowly evolving genes, relative to empirically derived genome-wide and gene family-specific background rates for 744 core protein families in 30 γ-proteobacterial species. We describe the pattern of fast or slow evolution across species as the “selective signature” of a gene. Selective signatures represent a profile of selection across species that is predictive of gene function: pairs of genes with correlated selective signatures are more likely to share the same cellular function, and genes in the same pathway can evolve in concert. For example, glycolysis and phenylalanine metabolism genes evolve rapidly in Idiomarina loihiensis, mirroring an ecological shift in carbon source from sugars to amino acids. In a broader context, our results suggest that the genomic landscape is organized into functional modules even at the level of natural selection, and thus it may be easier than expected to understand the complex evolutionary pressures on a cell.
External debt and military spending: the case of Africa's conflict countries

In the light of the exigency and apparent irrationality of war and, the fact that most Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) in Africa are associated with prolonged conflicts, there is more than a suspicion that military spending contributes to the indebtedness of Africa’s conflict countries. We therefore model this suspected nexus and compute the impulse response functions to the shock in military spending and, particularly determine what precise time around war external debt accumulation is prevalent. We confirm a positive correlation between military spending and external debt for most of the conflict countries, with external debt increasing in response to a shock to military spending for all these countries. Using panel analysis, we find evidence of military expenditure’s upward pressure on external indebtedness during pre-war, war and post-war periods; interestingly, the post-war period registers the fastest rate of external debt accumulation than other relevant periods. Our results suggest that military spending can be an important and nuanced factor in designing external debt management policies for Africa’s conflict countries and their likes.
East meets West: the case of Polish expatriates in the UK

This paper attempts to redress the balance in research on expatriation by exploring the experiences of an under-researched group of expatriates in an under-researched destination. Although there has been an increase in research on the adjustment of expatriates, the focus of IHRM research has, to date, tended to view the expatriation process through a narrow lens, emphasising the role of managers from affluent ‘Western’ countries working in less affluent countries. The growing numbers of multinationals and therefore expatriates from other countries means that the research agenda must be broadened, in this case to the experience of Poles in the UK. By focusing on expatriates from a former socialist economy we highlight the differing motives and experience of adjustment that they face. We show how the economic and social benefits of this East–West transfer can be a powerful motivating factor and may override adjustment difficulties. Furthermore, the analysis of East to West European expatriate transfers, from less to more developed nations, contributes to and widens the range of parent and host countries studied within the realm of expatriate adjustment.