Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distilling mobile privacy requirements from qualitative data

As mobile computing applications have become commonplace, it is increasingly important for them to address end-users’ privacy requirements. Mobile privacy requirements depend on a number of contextual socio-cultural factors to which mobility adds another level of contextual variation. However, traditional requirements elicitation methods do not sufficiently account for contextual factors and therefore cannot be used effectively to represent and analyse the privacy requirements of mobile end users. On the other hand, methods that investigate contextual factors tend to produce data which can be difficult to use for requirements modelling. To address this problem, we have developed a Distillation approach that employs a problem analysis model to extract and refine privacy requirements for mobile applications from raw data gathered through empirical studies involving real users. Our aim was to enable the extraction of mobile privacy requirements that account for relevant contextual factors while contributing to the software design and implementation process. A key feature of the distillation approach is a problem structuring framework called privacy facets (PriF). The facets in the PriF framework support the identification of privacy requirements from different contextual perspectives namely actors, information, information-flows and places. The PriF framework also aids in uncovering privacy determinants and threats that a system must take into account in order to support the end-user’s privacy. In this work, we first show the working of distillation using qualitative data taken from an empirical study which involved social-networking practices of mobile users. As a means of validating distillation, another distinctly separate qualitative dataset from a location-tracking study is used, in both cases, the empirical studies relate to privacy issues faced by real users observed in their mobile environment. To my parents Thomas & Mariarose, my wife Rebeca and son Timothy
Market Situation Interpretation and Response: The Role of Cognitive Style, Organizational Culture, and Information Use

Improving marketing decision making requires a better understanding of the factors that influence how managers interpret and respond to a market situation. Building on extant literature, the authors develop a model that delineates antecedents of and responses to the interpretation of a market situation. Using case-scenario methodology, the authors test the model in the context of a marketing decision (annual advertising and promotion budget recommendation) with data collected from a nationwide sample of hospital marketing executives. The results of the partial least squares analysis show that (1) cognitive style, organizational culture, and information use affect the extent to which managers perceive a given market situation as one in which they can control the outcomes of their decision; (2) the more managers perceive a situation as controllable, the more they appraise that situation as an opportunity; and (3) the more managers appraise a situation as an opportunity, the greater is the magnitude of their response.
The entry of Wal‐Mart in Brazil and the competitive responses of multinational and domestic firms

Investigates the entry of Wal‐Mart in Brazil, and subsequent moves of established retailers and new entrants with data taken from secondary sources and interviews with executives. First, internationalization of Wal‐Mart and its entry are discussed, which caused an impact on Brazilian retailing by accelerating the concentration, automation and modernization of the industry. Competitive reactions were classified in four categories: neutralizing competitors actions, establishing competitive advantage, redefining markets, and changing ownership. It is argued that Wal‐Mart’s experience in Brazil could be an interesting source of learning for foreign retailers desirous of entering the Brazilian market as well as for local companies that need to remain competitive to survive.
Financial Integration and Foreign Banks in Latin America: Do They Amplify External Financial Shocks?

This paper explores the impact of international financial integration on credit markets in Latin America. Using a cross-country dataset covering 17 Latin American countries between 1996 and 2008, the authors find that financial integration amplifies the impact of international financial shocks on aggregate credit and interestrate fluctuations. Despite this pernicious effect, the net impact of integration on deepening credit markets is positive and dominates for the large majority of states of nature. The paper also uses a detailed bank-level dataset covering more than 500 banks in Latin America for a similar time period to explore the role of financial integration—captured through the participation of foreign banks—in propagating external shocks. The authors find that interest rates charged and loans supplied by foreign-owned banks respond more to external financial shocks than those supplied by domestically owned banks. However, this result does not hold for all foreign banks: Spanish banks in the sample behave more like domestic banks and do not amplify the impact of foreign shocks on credit and interest rates. Important policy recommendations to avoid foreign banks’ amplification of external financial shocks include the establishment of ring-fencing mechanisms, the development of early-warning systems, and the incorporation for agreements between domestic and foreign supervisors.
Delegation in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly

In a context of vertical product differentiation we analyze the effect of delegation on quality. We consider a duopoly where firms can delegate to an agent the quality determining activities. The quality level is determined by the level of a random fixed cost. The actual realization of this fixed cost is known, at no cost, to the firm or to the agent that undertakes the activities a.c;sociated with this fixed cost. By delegating a firm faces an asymmetry of information since the owner cannot observe the realization of the random variable, while his agent has ex ante full information concerning the actual state of nature. When one firm delegates and the other does not, we find two equilibria that mimic the full information situation, and two equilibria which display quality levels for the delegating firm lower than the full information ones. When the delegation decision is endogenous there are equilibria configurations with zero, one and two delegating firms.
Online Banking and Perceievd Risk.

Existing research has examined the impact of perceived risk on consumers’ purchases of various goods and services. The study reported in this paper expands on the existing literature by exploring the nature of risk that may be associated with the adoption and use of commercial technologies used for service delivery by banking organizations. The study focuses on the risk associated with the use of online banking transactions. Data were collected via a mail questionnaire administered to Western Australian respondents who use one or more of the four modes of electronic banking: EFTPOS, ATMs, telephone banking, and Internet banking. The findings are similar to those of previous research that suggests that perceived risk has multiple dimensions and its intensity depends on the nature of the product/service. The results demonstrate that consumers using online banking transactions may experience various forms of perceived risk including performance, psychological, and financial risks.
Complicated and Complex Systems: What Would Successful Reform of Medicare Look Like?

Although the views expressed in the paper are those of the author(s), each of the papers was subjected to an independent peer-review process. The Commission would like to thank the Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (IHSPR) of the Canadian Institute of Health Research for their oversight and administration of the peer-review process for these papers. The work of the authors, the reviewers and IHSPR will serve to make these papers an important contribution to the Commission's work and its legacy. Bibliography 27 iii Highlights Introduction Distinction between simple, complicated and complex problems Health care systems are complex They have been treated as complicated Complicated solutions have not worked We will consider how to intervene in complex systems Complex View of Canadian Medicare Before Reforms Canadian health care as infrastructural Canadians among most satisfied with system up to 1990s: ranked first Federal transfers administered by a staff of 23 Five values of the Canada Health Act (CHA) broadly deeply entrenched The Process of Deterioration A steady decline in public confidence Everyone is more unhappy: system destabilized Resource allocation issues remain Five principles of CHA threatened Four clusters of tensions remain despite many interventions Why We Need a New Perspective on Health Complicated solutions to complex problems have failed Expert advice is too narrowly focussed Unforeseen consequences when advice was implemented Complex perspectives are needed v Executive Summary This paper begins by distinguishing simple, complicated and complex problems. In simple problems like cooking by following a recipe, the recipe is essential. It is often tested to assure easy replication without the need for any particular expertise. Recipes produce standardized products and the best recipes give good results every time. Complicated problems, like sending a rocket to the moon, are different. Formulae or recipes are critical and necessary to resolve them but are often not sufficient. High levels of expertise in a variety of fields are necessary for success. Sending one rocket increases assurance that the next mission will be a success. In some critical ways, rockets are similar to each other and because of this there can be a relatively high degree of certainty of outcome. Raising a child, on the other hand, is a complex problem. Here, formulae have a much more limited application. Raising one child provides experience but no assurance of success with the next. Although expertise can contribute to the process in valuable ways, it provides …
High frequency behavior of AC machine: application of turn insulation aging diagnostic

The stator insulation breakdown is a major cause of AC machine failures. Ground insulation defaults are easily detected by classical systems based on the leakage current measurements, however the turn to turn insulation degradations are more difficult to detect. For large machines, on-line methods, based on partial discharge detection and analysis, give good results but they cannot be used for low-voltage machines fed by adjustable speed drives (ASD). This paper presents a new monitoring system able to detect slight variations of high frequency resonances in the winding of a working machine fed by an industrial inverter. The new system works in association with statistical data on the accelerated aging of the magnet wire
Market Timing and Selectivity Performance: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Malaysian Unit Trust Funds

This study examines the extent to which fund characteristics contributes to explaining fund returns differentiated by managers´ stock picking and market timing abilities. The findings show that funds characterized by high exposures to broad market movements have good timing returns but show poor selectivity performance, suggesting the presence of activity specialization among fund managers. It is shown that large funds enhance managers´ timing returns, reflecting the efficiencies of large funds in responding to market-wide movements. However, as the size of the fund gets larger, managers find it more challenging to identify worthwhile investments and hence results in poor selectivity performance.
Determinants of the target capital structure and adjustment speed - evidence from Asian, European and U.S.-capital markets

Even though Asia, Europe and the U.S.A. are major regions of the world economy, geographically comprehensive and comparable evidence on the determinants of capital structure does not exist. The aim of this study is to close this gap in the literature by providing an econometrically robust analysis of the determinants of capital structure and the speed of adjustment towards target capital structure ratios in Asia, Europe and the United States. We use a homogeneous panel of 2706 companies with market capitalizations of at least 1 bn. USD. Our main findings are based on GMM-estimations for the determinants of capital structure, respectively system-GMM-estimations for the speed of adjustment towards target capital structures. Robustness is checked by comparing the GMM results with TSLS and OLS estimation techniques. We contribute to the existing literature by finding strong evidence that companies in Asia, Europe and the U.S. pursue target capital structures during the period 1995 – 2009. The convergence towards target capital structures in Asia is 31%, in Europe 56% and in the U.S.A. 46%. The results indicate that the tradeoff theory has large explanatory power for the capital structure choices of large firms in Asia, Europe and the U.S.A. Additionally, our results provide evidence that industry-fixed effects influence capital structure choices and adjustment speeds across these major regions of the world
Pipeline damage and leak sound recognition based on HMM

In order to protect pipeline transportation and prevent from leakage incident caused by manmade damage or natural factors, it is very important to carry out such researches as active protecting and accurate positioning. Designed the pipeline prevention monitoring and leak detecting system based on calculating sound LPCC (linear prediction cepstrum coefficient) and recognizing damage or leak signals with HMM (hidden Markov models). The continuous non-steady time-variety process is sub-framed and described with a series of short steady state sequences on the basis of acoustic signal characteristic analyses. LPCC which represents accurately each short-time acoustic signal is selected as the acoustic signal characteristic parameters and extracted effectively using Durbin algorithm; HMM is established to recognize damage types by Baum-Welch revaluation algorithm with the state-transfer probability and observing time sequences characteristic parameters; using Viterbi decoding algorithm realizes the search of best transfer route and achieved the corresponding export probability. The results show that the acoustic signal recognition rate is improved effectively based on sound spectrum LPCC and HMM, and can be up to 97%.
Impact of Organizational Culture on Reverse Knowledge Transfer: Synthesising the Parts

The “Think Global, Act Local” concept pioneered by one of the popular multinational enterprises (MNEs) appears to have become the norm today. From an organization’s internal perspective, there are pressures for standardization to reap the benefits of scale and scope economies. On the other hand, from a customer’s perspective, there are equally strong pressures at adaptation and customization. Successful organizations tend to balance these conflicting forces by learning from their subsidiaries operating in different regions and locations. The notion of the transnational corporation proposed by Sumantara Ghoshal and Christopher Bartlett implies a two-way learning between corporate headquarters and strategic business units. Scholars have favoured the use of a number of inter-dependent factors – subsidiary autonomy, communication mechanisms, ability to absorb disparate patterns of knowledge, to name a few – to explain the phenomenon of Reverse Knowledge Transfer (RKT). This work argues that more than any other factor, organizational culture determines (1) the extent to which reverse knowledge flows from subsidiaries to headquarters and (2) the extent to which it is assimilated and adopted throughout the organization. The analysis is based on the experience of subsidiaries of multinational enterprises operating in India. The aim of this work is to enable a better understanding of reverse knowledge flows and their impact on organizational success in multinational enterprises.
Mechanism of binding of the antisense and target RNAs involved in the regulation of IncB plasmid replication

The replication frequency of the IncB miniplasmid pMU720 is dependent upon the expression of the repA gene. Binding of a small, highly structured, antisense RNA (RNA I) to its complementary target in the RepA mRNA (RNA II) inhibits repA expression and thus regulates replication. Analyses of binding of RNA I to RNA II indicated that the reaction consists of three major steps. The first step, initial kissing complex formation, involves base pairing between complementary sequences in the hairpin loops of RNA I and RNA II. The second step is facilitated by interior loop structures in the upper stems of RNA I and RNA II and involves intrastand melting and interstrand pairing of the upper stem regions to form an extended kissing complex. This complex was shown to be sufficient for inhibition of repA expression. The third step involves stabilization of the extended kissing complex by pairing between complementary single-stranded tail regions of RNA I and RNA II. Thus, the final product of RNA I-RNA II binding is not a full duplex between the two molecules.
International business travellers' experience with luxury hotel restaurants: the impact of foodservice experience and customer satisfaction on dining frequency and expenditure.

Prior literature has mainly focused on the conceptualisation and examination of tourist behaviour in general. This study attempts to examine international business travellers’ experience with luxury hotel restaurants and propose foodservice experience as a key driver of satisfaction, dining frequency and dining expenditure in formation of causal relationships. A total of 278 questionnaires were collected to conduct statistical analysis. Partial least squares (PLS) based structural equation modelling (SEM) technique was performed to assess the proposed relationships. Empirical findings support the positive relationship between foodservice experience, customer satisfaction, their dining frequency and dining expenditure. It was found that customer satisfaction positively influences their dining expenditure while the proposed positive relationship between customer satisfaction and their dining frequency was not supported. Furthermore, the first order constructs on the designated second order construct support customer foodservice experience as second order reflective construct with four dimensions comprising of product component, service component, price component and healthy component. The practical implications and limitation are discussed in detail.
The Development and Management of a Department of Marketing Advisory Council

Colleges of business administration are under continuing pressure to make their curriculum and faculty research more relevant to the business community. At the same time, resources are either declining or not keeping pace with growing enrollment at many institutions. This article addresses the formation and governance of a department of marketing advisory council based on the experiences of a marketing department at a large midwestern public university. An innovative approach for building trust and commitment with advisory council members, while increasing a department’s human, intellectual, and financial resources, is outlined using relationship-marketing principles as a foundation. Examples of bylaws, activities, annual meetings, and methods of ongoing communication to ensure the success of a departmental advisory council are provided. Finally, some caveats and pitfalls associated with developing and managing an advisory council are discussed.
Evolving from Reactive to Proactive Medicine: Community Lead (Pb) and Clinical Disparities in Pre- and Post-Katrina New Orleans

In 2012 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) set the blood Pb reference value at ≥5 µg/dL. Clinical analysis of children’s blood Pb levels is the common way to diagnose environmental Pb contamination, and intervention ensues with education and household dust cleanup. Recent review indicates that education and household dust cleanup are not effective at reducing children’s Pb exposure. Here we review mapping environmental Pb and children’s blood Pb response as an alternative approach for proactive Pb dust intervention. New Orleans was divided into a high (≥100 mg/kg) and low (<100 mg/kg) soil Pb communities. The children’s blood Pb prevalence ≥5 µg/dL for the high and low Pb domains were 58.5% and 24.8% respectively pre-Katrina vs. 29.6% and 7.5% post-Katrina. Elevated soil Pb (mg/kg) and consequently Pb loading (µg/square area) permeates the high Pb domain and outdoor locations lack Pb dust safe play areas. The U.S. EPA 400 mg/kg soil Pb standard poses an outside Pb dust loading burden >37 times larger than allowed on interior residential floor environments. Environmental Pb dust is decreasing because of the transfer of large quantities of low Pb soil into selected communities. City-scale soil Pb mapping is an alternative diagnostic tool that provides information for planning proactive medicine to prevent clinical Pb exposure in the first place.
Low power high performance carry select adder

Carry Select Adder (CSA) is faster than any other adders used in many data-processing processors to achieve arithmetic functions speedily. By observing the structure of the CSA, it is clear that there is way for reducing the delay and power consumption. This work uses a sophisticated and efficient gate-level modification to significantly reduce the delay and power of the carry select adder. From the structure of the CSA, it is clear that there is scope for reducing the delay and power consumption in the CSA. Based on this modification 8-, 16-, 32-, and 64-bit CSA architecture have been developed and compared with the regular CSA architecture. The proposed design has reduced delay as compared with the regular CSA with only a slight increase in area. This work evaluates the performance of the proposed designs in terms of delay, area, power, and their products by hand with using tools like synopsis (VCS), Xilinx ISE. The results analysis shows that the proposed CSA structure is better than the regular CSA according to delay.
The Reasons of Young Consumers’ Choice on Chain Café Stores: A Research on Starbucks

Corporations providing services and making goods are forced to ensure customer satisfaction, to build brand loyalty, to change the way being in service by taking some changes into consideration, such as changes in living conditions, in consumers’ supply and demand, fi erce competition environment. At this point, chain cafe stores are appeared as preferred ones by especially young consumers in direct proportion to changes in consumers’ supply and demand. Young consumers, while going for a chain cafe store, pay regard to several criteria, such as store image, store atmosphere, goods/services specifi cations, and price policies. This study aims to measure the effect of young consumers going for Starbucks chain cafe stores on customer loyalty. This research, according to the analysis of surveys taken by 187 persons, reveals that brand image and brand follow-up have an effect on brand loyalty.