Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Marketing in an Information-Intensive Environment: Strategic Implications of Knowledge as an Asset

The author presents a framework for thinking about the impact of information and information technology on marketing. The focus is on the concept of “information” or “knowledge” as both an asset to be managed and a variable to be researched. After developing a particular operationalization of the value of information in marketing contexts, which can be used to describe firms in terms of their relative levels of “information intensity,” the author presents a series of propositions examining the consequences of increasing information intensity for some key components of firm strategy and organizational structure. The concepts discussed are illustrated with a description of the transaction-based information systems that are being implemented in a variety of firms in pursuit of competitive advantage.
The prevalence of chronic conditions associated with modifiable health risk factors in corporate employees in South Africa

The Sunday Times Discovery Healthiest Company Index Survey collected a dataset of 13 578 responses from corporate employees in 101 companies. This dataset has been used to assess the prevalence of self-reported modifiable health-risk factors and the association with chronic conditions. The analysis indicates that there is a greater likelihood of an individual reporting a chronic condition where their lifestyle risk factors are outside of the healthy range. This suggests that there are opportunities to manage the costs of health insurance, medical expenses and productivity losses by applying risk management tools aimed at addressing modifiable risk factors. KEYWORDS: Chronic condition, disease management programme, modifiable health risk factors
Phylogenetic Distribution of Potential Cellulases in Bacteria

ABSTRACT Many microorganisms contain cellulases that are important for plant cell wall degradation and overall soil ecosystem functioning. At present, we have extensive biochemical knowledge of cellulases but little is known about the phylogenetic distribution of these enzymes. To address this, we analyzed the distribution of 21,985 genes encoding proteins related to cellulose utilization in 5,123 sequenced bacterial genomes. First, we identified the distribution of glycoside hydrolases involved in cellulose utilization and synthesis at different taxonomic levels, from the phylum to the strain. Cellulose degradation/utilization capabilities appeared in nearly all major groups and resulted in strains displaying various enzyme gene combinations. Potential cellulose degraders, having both cellulases and β-glucosidases, constituted 24% of all genomes whereas potential opportunistic strains, having β-glucosidases only, accounted for 56%. Finally, 20% of the bacteria have no relevant enzymes and do not rely on cellulose utilization. The latter group was primarily connected to specific bacterial lifestyles like autotrophy and parasitism. Cellulose degraders, as well as opportunists, have multiple enzymes with similar functions. However, the potential degraders systematically harbor about twice more β-glucosidases than their potential opportunistic relatives. Although scattered, the distribution of functional types, in bacterial lineages, is not random but mostly follows a Brownian motion evolution model. Degraders form clusters of relatives at the species level, whereas opportunists are clustered at the genus level. This information can form a mechanistic basis for the linking of changes in microbial community composition to soil ecosystem processes.
Pricing and Scheduling Optimization Solutions in the Smart Grid

The future smart grid is envisioned as a large scale cyber-physical system encompassing advanced power, computing, communications and control technologies. In order to accommodate these technologies, it will have to build on solid mathematical tools which can ensure an efficient operation of such heterogeneous and emerging cyber-physical systems. This work provides comprehensive accounts of the application with optimization methods, probability theory, commitment and dispatching technologies for addressing open problems in three emerging areas that pertain to the smart grid: unit commitment, service restoration problems in microgrid systems, and charging services for the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) markets.
Exploring decision behavior of small-business owners/managers in the alliance partner selection: A qualitative case study

This paper aims to examine rules that small-business owners/managers use to estimate partner attractiveness in the process of alliance partner selection. Empirical analysis is based on qualitative case study of alliance in hospitality industry. The research findings show that small-business owners/managers are risk-averse and rely on trustworthiness when estimating partner attractiveness. At the end a model of decision behavior of small-business owners in alliance partner selection is presented.
Marketing Hospitality Industry in an Era of Crisis

Abstract The article examines and evaluates Greek hotels' marketing strategies during recession. It focuses on the investigation of hospitality practices during crisis, marketing strategies and innovation, development of competitive advantage, use of information technology (IT) for marketing, and the influential links between them. It also examines the impacts of accommodation category and geographical type of hotel. The research is based on a nationwide e-mail survey to hospitality managers/owners (N = 914). The results reveal the significant effort put into production cost minimisation, the direct effect of this on marketing strategies, the strong enterprising focus on marketing innovation, and the impact of the use of IT for marketing purposes, whilst the accommodation category has a greater impact on the examined constructs than does geographical type. The conceptualisation adopted provides recommendations for hospitality owners and managers along with a better understanding of the aspects contributing to hospitality marketing in a period of recession and political instability.
e-Sentiment as a Leading Indicator of Daily Price Fluctuation: The Case of MP3 Players

Abstract Online buzz has become more influential on customer decision-making due to increasing product complexity and product availability over the internet. Moreover, online buzz spreads rapidly among customers and can be accessed anytime and anywhere, which further increases its significance. These online conversations describe the quality of products in a positive, negative, or neutral way, but we do not know if and how such customers’ quality perceptions, often referred to as “e-sentiment,” influence important business outcomes such as the behavior of online retail prices. This paper examines the effect of e-sentiment on the daily price fluctuation of MP3 players. Using a cutting-edge web crawling technique, we obtain the relevant buzz information collected from diverse online documents on a daily basis for two months. In particular, we capture e-sentiment, which allows us to investigate the different implications of positive, neutral, and negative online conversations. Econometric time-series modeling reveals that e-sentiment is a leading indicator of price fluctuation after controlling for the effect of competition. Furthermore, the effect of e-sentiment on price fluctuation is moderated by the customers’ expectation level: the effect of negative online buzz is larger for well-known brand items (e.g., Apple products) and high-ticket items for which customers have higher expectations or standards, whereas the effect of positive online buzz is greater for less well-known brand items and low-priced items. These findings establish the relevance of e-sentiment information on online retail price movement, and suggest that managers should frequently monitor the sentiment of online buzz surrounding their products and respond appropriately by promptly adjusting their prices.
Problematic technology use: The impact of capital enhancing activity

This research-in-progress paper gives a brief overview of the technology addiction literature, as well as an introduction to the capital enhancing activity construct from the sociology literature. Previous information systems literature has shown a variety of information technology (IT) artifacts that possibly lead to technology addiction. Hence, this research attempts to demonstrate that today’s ubiquitous technology allows actors to navigate a multitude of artifacts and that addiction stems from many artifacts. Furthermore, the notion of capital enhancing activity is presented to understand how actors use of technology, which they believe is essential to their social status, can, in fact, become problematic. A research model is offered, along with propositions and a proposed study, to determine how certain types of capital enhancing activities can explain variances in problematic technology use.
Experiences with retargeting the Java HotSpot virtual machine

The Java HotSpot virtual machine is Sun Microsystems' newest and most advanced virtual machine for the Java platform, and it is now available on multiple hardware architectures and operating systems. Its primary goal was to push the state of the art in Java performance, through efficient memory management, high-performance thread synchronization, and focused use of sophisticated compiler technology. The SGI Java group has completed its initial retargeting of the HotSpot virtual machine, including the HotSpot client compiler, to the MIPS architecture and the Irix operating system. This paper describes that effort and the technical challenges that were involved, and it evaluates the performance of the retargeted HotSpot virtual machine. Across the board, both in Java bytecode execution and in runtime support, the Java HotSpot virtual machine on Irix/MIPS represents a significant step forward in performance over the previous generation of Java technology, the Classic virtual machine.
The Impacts of Competitive Strategy on the Demand for Management Accounting System Information Characteristics: The Intervening Effects of Decentralization and Environmental Uncertainty

This study explored the direct relationship between competitive strategy and management accounting system (MAS) design. We collected data from 145 responses in a survey of 500 middle managers of publicly owned companies, and used the structural equation model (LISREL 8.0 for Windows) to test our hypotheses. The empirical evidence revealed the following: 1. Differentiation strategy and broad-scope accounting information have positive direct and indirect relationships through perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU) and decentralization. 2. Firms adopting a differentiation strategy have indirect demand on aggregated information through the perceived increase in environmental uncertainty and delegation levels. However, the direct effect of differentiation strategy on aggregated management accounting information dose not exist.
A dual-rate multi-filter algorithm for LiDAR-aided indoor navigation systems

The demand for a reliable and accurate navigation system that can replace Global Positioning System (GPS) in GPS-denied environment has become increasingly imperative. For indoor environment where GPS is almost unavailable or unreliable, the utilization of other sensors such as inertial sensors becomes necessary. However, inertial sensors alone cannot sustain reliable long-term accuracy due to errors accumulation without external periodic corrections. Thus this paper proposes the utilization of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) as an alternative system to provide periodic corrections. In this paper, a tightly-coupled integrated navigation system that integrates LiDAR, a single-axis gyroscope and wheel encoder is introduced. Straight lines detection and extraction algorithm is utilized to estimate the changes in orientation and range from LiDAR to the extracted line. LiDAR-estimated orientation change and range change to the extracted line feature between two consecutive LiDAR scans are first filtered out through a high rate extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to remove the effect of short-term noise associated with LiDAR scans. Then the smoothed orientation and range changes are fused by a low rate EKF with those predicted by gyroscope and wheel encoder. The proposed system is verified through real experiment on a wirelessly controlled Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV). Experimental results indicate that navigation accuracy has been improved to sub-meter and gyroscope bias is precisely estimated.
Portfolio Selection with Options and Transaction Costs

I introduce dynamic option trading and non-linear views into the classical portfolio selection problem. The optimal dynamic option portfolio is characterized explicitly in terms of its expected sensitivities (Greeks) and the role of the mean-variance efficient portfolio is played by the "Greek efficient" portfolio. This is the portfolio that has the optimal sensitivities to chosen risk factors. I test these portfolios empirically and find that options signifi cantly improve the risk-return pro file due to predictability of powers (and other non-linear functions) of returns which allows for optimal management of non-linear views. To test the eff ects of higher moments on portfolio choice, I compute (both analytically and numerically) the Greek efficient portfolios for a CRRA investor and find that accounting for higher moments may have ambiguous eff ects on the optimal tail risk. In fact, even Greek efficient portfolios for a mean-variance investor already o er a highly attractive skewness-kurtosis profi le. In the presence of transactions costs that depend on an option's moneyness and maturity, optimal state contingent option portfolios are characterized in terms of state prices Greeks as well as a new object, the transactions costs Greeks.
Multi-object Tracking based on Soft Assignment of Detection Responses

We introduce a new detection-based method that is able to track multiple objects from a single camera. The method is built upon an approach that combines Kalman filtering and the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. The benefit of this approach is that soft assignment of the detections to corresponding objects can be performed automatically using their a posteriori probabilities. This is a general approach for detectionbased multi-object tracking, and there are various ways to detect the objects. In this paper, we demonstrate the applicability of the approach for tracking multiple pedestrians and faces using a basic cascade detector.
Two-warehouse inventory model with K-release rule and learning effect

In this study, a two-warehouse inventory model with K-release rule by employing learning effect on holding cost and ordering cost is developed. Here, we assumed that the holding cost in both warehouses and ordering cost is partly constant and partly decreasing in each cycle due to learning effect. When stock level exceeds the capacity of own warehouse, it is to be kept in additional rented warehouse with higher holding cost than OW. The inventory held in RW is transferred to OW in bulk size (K) where, K is less than the capacity of OW till the stock in RW gets exhausted and there is an associated transportation cost. The associated total cost minimisation is illustrated by numerical example and sensitivity analysis is carried out by using Mathematica–5.2 for the feasibility and applicability of our model.
Effect of salinity on the uptake of cadmium by the brine shrimp Arternia franciscana

The effect of salinity on cadmium uptake by brine shrimp Artemla franciscana was studied in chemically defined saltwater solutions. Shrimp were acclimated to different salinities and exposed to the metal in solutions of differing salinity and composition. Within each acclimation group, the cadnlium uptake decreased with Increasing salin~ty of exposure. Most of this varlation was expla~ned by changes in the activity of the free metal ion. Among the acclimation groups, uptake increased with increasing salinity of acclimation. Most of this variation was explained by changes in the permeability of the shrimp. Uptake was not influenced by changes in the osmolarity or the concentration of any of the major cations in the solution. The integration of both chemlcal and biological effects of changes in salinity explains almost all variation in cadmium uptake by brine shrimp.
Theoretical analysis and experimental investigation of high frequency bidirectional CPT system

This paper presents the theoretical analysis followed by experimental investigation of a bidirectional LCL-CPT system, where voltage-control is used for the regulation of the transferred power. The system uses an Air Core Transformer, which is a loosely coupled system, where SiC MOSFETs have been experimentally tested to push the frequency up to 110 kHz. The issues rising from the combination of the voltage-controlled LCL-CPT system are underlined and validated through the experimental prototype. In addition, an appropriate control scheme is presented and various control aspects regarding the implementation of the voltage-control are pointed out.
Analysis of interaction among the barriers to total quality management implementation using interpretive structural modeling approach

Purpose – Previous research showed that there are some barriers which hinder the implementation of total quality management (TQM) in organizations. But no study has been undertaken to understand the interaction among these barriers and to develop a hierarchy of TQM barriers model. There is an urgent need to analyze the behavior of these barriers so that TQM may be successfully implemented. This paper therefore, aims to understand the mutual interaction of these barriers and identify the “driving barriers” (i.e. which influence the other barriers) and the “dependent barriers” (i.e. which are influenced by others). Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, an interpretive structural modeling (ISM) based approach has been utilized to understand the mutual influences among the barriers of TQM.Findings – In the present research work, 12 TQM barriers are identified through the literature review and expert opinion. The research shows that there exist two groups of barriers, one having high driving power and low dependency requiring maximum attention and of strategic importance (such as lack of top-management commitment, lack of coordination between departments) and the other having high dependence and low driving power and are resultant effects (such as high turnover at management level, lack of continuous improvement culture, employees’ resistance to change). Practical implications – The adoption of such an ISM-based model on TQM barriers in service organizations would help managers, decision makers, and practitioners of TQM in better understanding of these barriers and to focus on major barriers while implementing TQM in their organizations.Originality/value – Presentation of TQM barriers in the form of an ISM-based model and the categorization into driver and dependent clusters is a new effort in the area of TQM.
An optimization-based, heterogeneous to homogeneous coupling method

An optimization based algorithm is proposed for solving elliptic problems with highly oscillatory coecients that do not exhibit scale separation in a subregion of the physical domain. The given method, written as a constrained minimization problem couples a numerical homogenization method in the subregion of the physical domain with scale separation with a ne scale solver in subregions without scale separation. The unknown boundary conditions of both problems in the overlap region are determined by minimizing the discrepancy of the corresponding solutions in this overlap.
Country of Origin Image and Foreign Markets Strategy: Analysis of the Brazilian Cosmetics Company Natura

This study investigates the use of country of origin image (COI) by an emerging market multinational (EMMN) on their internationalization process. To this end, we integrate COI literature with the attributes that make up Brazil’s image abroad. This study conducts a qualitative and descriptive approach using the single case study on the case of the Brazilian company Natura Cosmeticos S.A. Case analysis, relying on discourse analysis, allowed us to find out that the company uses COI as part of its international strategy; COI attributes can be used positively by an EMMN and might contribute to their image abroad. About the first finding, the study also points out ways Natura integrates Brazilianness attributes into its international marketing strategy, since Natura’s competitive differential is sustained on product development based on the biodiversity of Brazilian fauna and flora. Our study shows ways how an EMMN might use COI concept into their international marketing strategy in order to build their image abroad and differentiate itself positively.
Using buffered playtime for QoE‐oriented resource management of YouTube video streaming

YouTube is the most important online platform for streaming video clips. The popularity and the continuously increasing number of users pose new challenges for Internet service providers. In particular, in access networks where the transmission resources are limited and the providers are interested in reducing their operational expenditure, it is worth to efficiently optimise the network for popular services such as YouTube. In this paper, we propose different resource management mechanisms to improve the quality of experience (QoE) of YouTube users. In particular, we investigate the benefit of cross‐layer resource management actions at the client and in the access network for YouTube video streaming. The proposed algorithms are evaluated in a wireless mesh testbed. The results show how to improve the YouTube QoE for the users with the help of client‐based or network‐based control actions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The ZMET method: using projective technique to understand consumer home choice

This study addresses the recent call for researchers to employ qualitative methods to study property-related issues. Although projective techniques have been adopted by motivation researchers in the past, they have never been employed to explore home choice behaviour. Twelve respondents who had recently put an offer in on a house were interviewed about the factors driving their home choice decisions using a projective technique known as ZMET. Findings revealed that ZMET was a powerful tool for encouraging respondents to identify and discuss the factors shaping their home choice decisions. Furthermore, the ZMET interview enabled respondents to express themselves in their own language. Findings revealed deep-seated motives for the respondents' home choices that until now have not been empirically investigated. The paper concludes by discussing the strengths of the ZMET interview and suggests areas for future research.
Brain imaging in dementia

The introduction of MRI and positron emission tomography (PET) brain imaging has contributed significantly to the understanding of different dementia syndromes. Over the past 20 years these imaging techniques have been increasingly used for clinical characterisation and differential diagnosis, and to provide insight into the effects on functional capacity of the brain, patterns of spatial distribution of different dementia syndromes and their natural history and evolution over time. Brain imaging is also increasingly used in clinical trials, as part of inclusion criteria and/or as a surrogate outcome measure. Here we review all the relatively specific findings that can be identified with different MRI and PET techniques in each of the most frequent dementing disorders.