Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enlivening Political Science Courses with Kolb's Learning Preference Model

Conceptualization Abstract conceptualization can be fostered through model-building assignments, asking for critiques of models in the literature, assigning readings and/or providing analogies or descriptions of models and theories in lectures. The abstract conceptualization phase of the learning process lends itself to demonstrations of intellectual modeling by theconceptualization can be fostered through model-building assignments, asking for critiques of models in the literature, assigning readings and/or providing analogies or descriptions of models and theories in lectures. The abstract conceptualization phase of the learning process lends itself to demonstrations of intellectual modeling by the instructor in lectures. It is very inmportant that students observe the instructor "thinking out loud," for it is by seeing the instructor's mind at
Accounting for the social dimension of sustainability: experiences from the biotechnology industry

Accounting for the social dimension of sustainability proves to be a challenge for corporate practitioners, due to its intangible, qualitative nature and lack of consensus on relevant criteria. We suggest a semi-quantitative approach based on stakeholder involvement to identify relevant aspects for a sector specific assessment of the social dimension. Our case study on biotechnology illustrates that the dialogue with internal and external stakeholders enabled the creation of a key performance indicator (KPI) set to account for social sustainability in the early design stages of biotechnological processes and product development. Indicators for eight aspects are identified for the social assessment: health and safety, quality of working conditions, impact on employment, education and training, knowledge management, innovation potential, customer acceptance and societal product benefit, and social dialogue. We describe the integration of the KPI set in a software application, tailor made for practitioners of the sector, and highlight first user experiences. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
A Self-Referent Thinking Model: How Older Adults May Talk Themselves Out of Being Physically Active

The purpose of this qualitative study was to ground current theory on exercise behavior with authentic voices of older adults as they thought about physical activity. Aged 55 to 92, 41 adults of various activity levels provided interviews with regard to personal experiences, health issues, and motivation for active lifestyles. Key constructs from four contemporary health behavior theories were integrated into a decisional balance template. Interpretive analysis organized positive and negative thinking on the template and thereby animated important theoretical constructs with the actual voices of older adults. Although generally supporting current theoretical models, the surprising finding was that active people expressed as much negative self-talk as did inactive people. However, they differed in their ability to balance each issue with strong positive thinking based on previous personal successes and direct experience of benefits. This finding suggests that promoting health through lifestyle change is very difficult to do without positive past-mastery experiences.
Exporting intensity, human capital and business ownership experience

This article examines whether human capital, particularly prior business ownership experience, is associated with the opportunity exploitation outcome relating to the intensity of exporting. A distinction is made between entrepreneurs who acquire their business ownership experience sequentially (that is, serial entrepreneurs) or concurrently (that is, portfolio entrepreneurs). Using survey data from 432 entrepreneurs in Ghana, this study explores whether human capital theory relating to prior business ownership experience is associated with superior exporting intensity. Notably, portfolio entrepreneurs reported higher exporting intensities than other entrepreneurs. The case for customized assistance to each type of entrepreneur with regard to prior business ownership experience is made.
Lehman on the Brink of Bankruptcy: A Case about Aggressive Application of Accounting Standards

ABSTRACT : In September 2008, Lehman became the largest company in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy. Nine months earlier, Lehman had reported record revenue and earnings for 2007, and had started the year with a market capitalization of over $30 billion. Lehman's precipitous fall has been attributed to a high-risk business strategy and to aggressive interpretation of accounting rules. Lehman was both a victim of—and an important contributor to—the worst U.S. economic recession since the Great Depression, and the firm's accounting choices warrant scrutiny. This case is structured around collateralized short-term borrowings, commonly used by financial institutions, called repurchase agreements. Lehman modified the terms of the standard agreement and used an aggressive interpretation of SFAS No. 140 to account for these modified agreements as a sale of the collateral. These transactions, called Repo 105s, affected the firm's reported financial position. The case requires students to evaluate those effects.
A quantitative structure-activity relationship study for structurally diverse HIV-1 protease inhibitors: contribution of conformational flexibility to inhibitory activity

In this study, we investigated by linear regression model the SAR data of the 15 HIV-1 protease inhibitors possessing structurally diverse scaffolds. First, a regression model was developed only using the enzyme-inhibitor interaction energy as a term of the model, but did not provide a good correlation with the inhibitory activity (R2 = 0.580 and Q2 = 0.500). Then, we focused on the conformational flexibility of the inhibitors which may represent the diversity of the inhibitors, and added two conformational parameters into the model, respectively: the number of rotatable bonds of ligands (ΔSrot) and the distortion energy of ligands (ΔElig). The regression model by adding ΔElig successfully improved the quality of the model (R2 = 0.771 and Q2 = 0.713) while the model with ΔSrot was unsuccessful. The prediction for a training inhibitor by the ΔElig model also showed good agreement with experimental activity. These results suggest that the conformational flexibility of HIV-1 protease inhibitors directly contributes to the enzyme inhibition.
Culturable marine actinomycete diversity from tropical Pacific Ocean sediments.

Actinomycetes were cultivated using a variety of media and selective isolation techniques from 275 marine samples collected around the island of Guam. In total, 6425 actinomycete colonies were observed and 983 (15%) of these, representing the range of morphological diversity observed from each sample, were obtained in pure culture. The majority of the strains isolated (58%) required seawater for growth indicating a high degree of marine adaptation. The dominant actinomycete recovered (568 strains) belonged to the seawater-requiring marine taxon 'Salinospora', a new genus within the family Micromonosporaceae. A formal description of this taxon has been accepted for publication (Maldonado et al., 2005) and includes a revision of the generic epithet to Salinispora gen. nov. Members of two major new clades related to Streptomyces spp. , tentatively called MAR2 and MAR3, were cultivated and appear to represent new genera within the Streptomycetaceae. In total, five new marine phylotypes, including two within the Thermomonosporaceae that appear to represent new taxa, were obtained in culture. These results support the existence of taxonomically diverse populations of phylogenetically distinct actinomycetes residing in the marine environment. These bacteria can be readily cultured using low nutrient media and represent an unexplored resource for pharmaceutical drug discovery.
Nonlinear Pricing Strategies and Competitive Conditions in the Airline Industry

type="main" xml:lang="en"> This paper empirically examines the effect of competitive conditions on nonlinear pricing strategies in the airline industry. We use a unique data set to analyze the impact of concentration and the competitive pressures generated by Southwest and other low cost carriers on the relative prices within a menu of fares. The menu orders tickets by quality based upon cabin and ticket restrictions. We analyze the ratio of fares charged for various qualities within the menu to the fares charged for the lowest quality nonrefundable, restricted tickets. We observe a fare compression for only the highest fares on only the most concentrated (i.e., monopoly) routes. This result is something of a puzzle given a monopolist's market power. We find, however, that actual and potential competition from Southwest reduces low end fares and generally leads to substantial fare compression throughout the fare menu. (JEL L11, L93)
DeepConf: Automating Data Center Network Topologies Management with Machine Learning

In recent years, many techniques have been developed to improve the performance and efficiency of data center networks. While these techniques provide high accuracy, they are often designed using heuristics that leverage domain-specific properties of the workload or hardware. In this vision paper, we argue that many data center networking techniques, e.g., routing, topology augmentation, energy savings, with diverse goals share design and architectural similarities. We present a framework for developing general intermediate representations of network topologies using deep learning that is amenable to solving a large class of data center problems. We develop a framework, DeepConf, that simplifies the process of configuring and training deep learning agents by using our intermediate representation to learn different tasks. To illustrate the strength of our approach, we implemented and evaluated a DeepConf-agent that tackles the data center topology augmentation problem. Our initial results are promising --- DeepConf performs comparably to the optimal solution.
Social Informatics Education in I-Schools

This essay focuses on the philosophical and conceptual underpinnings of a program of study in Social Informatics. We examine foundational concepts and analytical tools, ideas worked out by Rob Kling and others about the key components of an ICToriented education (even when the intent of their discussion was not pedagogical). Our intention is to assay Kling’s program of critical inquiry for a Social Informatics education that prepares information professionals to respond appropriately and ethically in their future careers. We do not to recommend the adoption of specific courses for a Social Informatics education. We had also planned to identify those components of a Social Informatics education that I-schools and library and information science schools have incorporated in their program offerings to determine how much progress has been made to adopt a critical perspective on the relationship between technology and people. However, this proved to be nearly impossible; we discuss our limited findings based on our initial exploration. Our concluding remarks address additions to the Kling perspective on a Social Informatics education that we would like to see and offer some thoughts on ways to support a Social Informatics education for information professionals.
The governance of privatized firms: authority, reposnisbility and disclosure

In any market economy, a fundamental question is how to make management accountable to shareholders and also to the requirements of law. This paper raises selective, critical issues of corporate governance that are particularly relevant to problems of the accountability of boards of directors to their shareholders in transition economies. These issues include the separation of ownership and control and the duties of directors; the need for disclosure given that separation; and the corporate charter as a vehicle for the direct participation of shareholders in governance. The paper suggests that one of the best models of corporate governance that transition economies can use is that employed by the leveraged-buyout (LBO) and venture capital funds operating in the West. It argues that weaknesses in corporate governance may undermine the entire privatization process. Economics and law are too often seen as separate disciplines. In reality, they come together in transition economies perhaps with greater impact than elsewhere. Copyright The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1998.
Growth of output and productivity in Pakistan's agriculture : trends, sources and policy implications

The paper aims to review the growth performance of Pakistan’s agriculture from 1950 to 1995. The long-term growth rate of agriculture, although respectable, has exhibited considerable yearly fluctuations even between decades. The period of the fifties and early seventies lacked any growth. Accelerating and high growth rates marked the decade of the sixties but the performance has not been satisfactory since 1979-80 and average growth rates have barely exceeded the population growth rate, with widespread implications for growth of national economy, food security, and social welfare of the masses. Area, modern inputs, and technology have been the major determinants of growth but prices were equally important because of their incentive and disincentive effects. The agriculture price policies adopted during the 1980s are known to have had a negative effect on the development and use of technology in agriculture. In order to boost agricultural productivity, a change in price policy is needed to ensure incentive prices. This could be done by setting agricultural commodity prices at par with corresponding import and export parity prices. A higher investment in research and development can hardly be overemphasised. There is an urgent need to remove the bottlenecks in agricultural input markets since these markets represent the typical monopoly position. To break up the monopoly of registered dealers and to promote competition, free sales in the open market by interested parties and individuals may be allowed.
EXCHANGE RATE VOLATILITY AND U.S. POULTRY EXPORTS: EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA

Very little research exists on the potential impact of exchange rate volatility on agricultural trade. This paper evaluates the effects of exchange rate volatility on U.S. poultry exports using the gravity model on panel data. We find that exchange rate volatility has a negative effect on the U.S. poultry export but only statistically significant for the model in which we use the variance of spot exchange rate as the measurements. Consistent with previous studies, foreign incomes are also a very important determinant of poultry trade.
A hardware-accelerated infrastructure for flexible sketch-based network traffic monitoring

Sketch-based data streaming algorithms are used in many network traffic monitoring applications to obtain accurate estimates of traffic flow. However, the flexibility is limited as hardware implementation of sketch counters may not be re-used for different measurement tasks. In this paper, we develop a generic hardware infrastructure for collecting flow statistics. The purpose is to achieve the goal of adopting various sketch-based algorithms with arbitrary flow aggregations for monitoring applications and measurement tasks in a flexible manner. Multiple-choice hashing with linear probing scheme is utilized for high-speed counter update process. Simulation results based on real traffic traces for monitoring applications are presented. The proposed hardware infrastructure is implemented on the NetFPGA-10G platform. The system is capable of processing network traffic at 53 Gbps in a worst-case scenario of 64-byte minimum-sized Ethernet frame.
An Analysis Of The Temporal Evolution Of Agrarian Prices

At the end of 2007 and principles of 2008 took place the greater nourishing crisis of the last decades. This crisis was caused by a spectacular increase in the prices of some agricultural raw materials and in the costs of the agrarian production. Since the end of 2008 the prices of the agricultural raw materials have decreased with similar intensity as when they raised. In the upward period, the increases of prices quickly were moved to the final consumer prices without great impact in the farmer’s income but when the prices decreased they do not allow seeing so fast in the final consumers prices. In this paper, we analyse the evolution of the agricultural activity results over the last years. In order to do so, we consider the prices of agricultural raw materials and products made with these, without forgetting the production costs. This study analyses the evolution of: the differential between the producer (farmer and stockman) prices and the prices charged for agrarian products to the final consumers and the differential between the producer price and the production cost.
UNSTEADY STATE DISPERSION OF AIR POLLUTANTS UNDER THE EFFECTS OF DELAYED AND NONDELAYED REMOVAL MECHANISMS

Abstract In this paper, we present a two‐dimensional time‐dependent mathematical model for studying the unsteady state dispersion of air pollutants emitted from an elevated line source in the atmosphere under the simultaneous effects of delayed (slow) and nondelayed (instantaneous) removal mechanisms. The wind speed and coefficient of diffusion are taken as functions of the vertical height above the ground. The deposition of pollutants on the absorptive ground and leakage into the atmosphere at the inversion layer are also included in the model by applying appropriate boundary conditions. The model is solved numerically by the fractional step method. The Lagrangian approach is used to solve the advection part, whereas the Eulerian finite difference scheme is applied to solve the part with the diffusion and removal processes. The solutions are analyzed to observe the effects of coexisting delayed and nondelayed removal mechanisms on overall dispersion. Comparison of delayed and nondelayed removal processes of equal capacity shows that the latter (nondelayed) process is more effective than the former (delayed removal) in the removal of pollutants from the atmosphere.
The Inflationary Effects of Effective Exchange Rate Depreciation in Selected African Countries

This paper investigates the long-run relationship between the nominal effective exchange rate and domestic inflation in selected African countries. Given that the study period is 1979--97, data availability is very limited. A new panel data cointegrating technique proposed by Pedroni is employed which lessens the likelihood of accepting non-stationarity on account of limited test power. We find that effective exchange rate depreciation is inflationary but this is unlikely to outweigh the gains from increased price competitiveness. The results also point towards limited effectiveness in monetary policy controlling inflation. Finally, the Pedroni methodology is expanded through the estimation of panel data error correction models that indicate a fairly sluggish adjustment towards long-run equilibrium. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.
Supporting Cooperative Forest Management among Small-Acreage Lifestyle Landowners in Southeast Queensland, Australia

Effective landscape-level biodiversity conservation requires cooperative forest management across public and private-tenure boundaries. This study explores the potential for cooperative cross-boundary forest management among small-acreage lifestyle landholders in southeast Queensland using 17 in-depth qualitative case-study analyses. Landholders typically possessed mutual objectives concerning forest management, a sense of neighborly stewardship, and positive predispositions toward cooperative cross-boundary forest management. However, capacity, institutional, and neighbor-related barriers were limiting landholder interest and involvement. We find that peer-mentoring networks have a critical role to play in promoting and delivering programs that support cross-boundary forest management. Government should ideally play a background “out-of-sight” facilitator role. We also find the capacity for urbanizing rural landscapes to retain their natural values can be greatly enhanced by facilitating small-acreage landholder cooperation to maintain and restore their contiguous forests, mitigate wildfire hazards, and revegetate paddocks to buffer existing forests or create new fire-retardant forests.
Book-Tax Conformity and Earnings Management: Insights from European One- and Two-Book Systems

ABSTRACT: There is an ongoing debate in the U.S. about the effect of book-tax conformity on earnings management in consolidated statements. Although both one- and two-book systems are present in Europe, European data have not been used to contribute to this debate. In this study, we examine the influence of one- and two-book systems on earnings management using consolidated statements and single financial statements of European firm-years from 2004 to 2011. A one-book system is defined as a situation in which financial accounting income and taxable income are highly conformed, whereas a two-book system is characterized by differences between consolidated financial income and taxable income. We find that firms in one-book systems show significantly more (downward) earnings management in their consolidated statements than do firms in two-book systems. With these findings, we contribute to the U.S. policy debate on book-tax conformity and earnings management.
Are emerging stock market price indices really stationary?

This study re-examines the univariate property of stock market price indices in ten emerging markets which are evidenced by prior empirical work, specifically by Chaudhuri and Wu (2003), to be I(0) or stationary. Important findings from variants of standard Dickey and Fuller (1979, 1981) and Zivot and Andrews (1992) unit root tests include: (1) the majority of these price indices can be more appropriately regarded as I(1) or non-stationary, and (2) the I(1) processes in these price indices have been increasingly discernible over time. These results imply non-mean reversion in stock market prices and unpredictability based on past prices in the majority of emerging stock markets under investigation.