Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Factor That Affects Consumer Buying Behavior: An Analysis of Some Selected Factors

2 Abstract: The current debate was started between the economic theory and marketing theory on the issue of key determinants of consumers' response to product offer. Through in depth analysis of the available data, it has confirmed that the level of education and income level are only two key determinants of consumers' response to product offer. Moreover, the consumers' are not homogeneous in terms of their response to product offer in context of level of education and income level. Consumers' who earn more i.e. have high income level are more responsive to product offers as compared to those who earn less within a month. Convincingly, the consumers with high level of income have adequate saving and surplus amount to spend on such extra product offerings. Contrary to this condition the consumers with limited earnings do not have something extra to pay against such product offers. It is therefore confirmed that the level of income is a significant predictor of consumer response to product offer.
Asymmetric Multiproduct Firms, Profitability and Welfare

In a differentiated multiproduct Cournot duopoly with linear demand, industry profit usually falls (even though concentration rises) when the distribution of products across firms becomes more asymmetric, if the products are not very differentiated or the total number of products is large. Consumer surplus and overall welfare always fall as the degree of asymmetry increases. These results contrast with the conventional wisdom on the effects of firm heterogeneity and the links between concentration and industry profits.
Business expatriates' cross‐cultural adaptation and their job performance

While a positive relationship between the cross-cultural adaptation and job performance of business expatriates is widely assumed and intuitively plausible, empirical studies do not consistently confirm this relationship. The current quantitative study investigated expatriates sent to and from China, two hitherto neglected but increasingly important groups. The sample of more than 800 participants is considerably larger than in previous studies of other types of expatriates. The study, in the China-based contexts, confirms the existence of links between cross-cultural adaptation, job performance and other factors. It is also shown, among other relationships reported on here, that expatriates accompanied by their partners or family members display better cross-cultural adaptation and job performance. Length of assignment is shown – counter-intuitively – to be only weakly related to adaptation and performance, and, surprisingly, expatriation experience – often regarded as predictive of expatriate effectiveness – to be unrelated to cross-cultural adaptation and job performance. The implications of the findings for expatriate selection, training, and assignment management are discussed.
Impact of Older-Worker-Friendly Organizational Policies on Retirement Attitudes and Planning

This study develops and analyzes a model of the impact of older-worker-friendly (OWF) organizations' policies on retirement, specifically attitudes toward retirement, preparation for retirement, and years to planned retirement age. This is particularly a timely topic as the Baby Boomer generation heads into retirement and organizations need to better understand the retirement intentions of this group. A model was developed and tested using linear regression, and results indicate that the hypothesized relationships are supported. Instituting certain OWF policies leads to older workers who are more prepared for retirement, and thus have more positive attitudes about retiring, which ultimately leads to an earlier planned retirement age. While this study is limited, these findings provide some interesting insights for researchers and practitioners.
The Role of Auditing in Small, Private Family Firms: Is It About Quality and Credibility?

The authors present empirical evidence of how family ownership and control affect the demand for audit quality measured by audit firm size in a sample of small private firms. The results indicate that family-held or -controlled firms are less likely to use Big 4 auditors than nonfamily firms and that an increase in family ownership decreases the likelihood of a Big 4 audit. The results imply that the less concentrated family ownership is, the more need there is for outside control mechanisms because of higher agency costs. The results imply that family influence increases firms’ incentives to employ Big 4 audit firms, thereby increasing the credibility of their financial statements vis-à-vis outside stakeholders.
Media Effects on Voters: A Panel Study of the 1992 Presidential Election

How do today's voters react to the phenomenon of 'attack journalism' in this age of televised presidential campaigns? This book presents an intensive analysis of mass media effects on a panel of eighteen voters from Columbia, South Carolina during the 1992 presidential elections. Beginning with individual interviews in July of 1992 and continuing through November, Cavanaugh's study provides a long-term look at voters in the decision-making process as well as insight into how various news items affect their voting choices.
Efficacy of narrowband UVB vs. PUVA in patients with early‐stage mycosis fungoides

Introduction Mycosis fungoides (MF) is a non‐Hodgkin’s T‐cell lymphoma of the skin that often begins as limited patches and plaques with slow progression to systemic involvement. Narrowband ultraviolet (UV) B therapy has been proven to be an effective short‐term treatment modality for clearing patch‐stage MF. The effect of psoralen plus long‐wave ultraviolet A (PUVA) in the treatment of patch‐ and plaque‐type MF has also been thoroughly documented.
Total Worker Health and Work–Life Stress

Objective: Review relationships between work–life stress and health behaviors to advance understanding of pathways between occupational and individual risk factors and health and safety outcomes. Methods: A background on the Total Worker Health concept is provided, and a review of research on the relationship between work–life stress and health behaviors is presented. Results: Research evidence indicates that work–life stress serves as a negative occupational exposure relating to poor health behaviors, including smoking, poor food choices, low levels of exercise, and even decreased sleep time. Conclusion: The association between work–life stress and adverse health behaviors suggests that interventions at both the occupational (health protection) and individual (health promotion) level may be helpful in mitigating effects of work–life stress, consistent with the Total Worker Health approach. Further study is needed to investigate gains from an integrated prevention strategy.
Inferring amino acid interactions underlying protein function

Protein function arises from a poorly defined pattern of cooperative energetic interactions between amino acid residues. Strategies for deducing this pattern have been proposed, but lack of benchmark data has limited experimental verification. Here, we extend deep-mutation technologies to enable measurement of many thousands of pairwise amino acid couplings in members of a protein family. The data show that despite great evolutionary divergence, homologous proteins conserve a sparse, spatially distributed network of cooperative interactions between amino acids that underlies function. This pattern is quantitatively captured in the coevolution of amino acid positions, especially as indicated by the statistical coupling analysis (SCA), providing experimental confirmation of the key tenets of this method. This work establishes a clear link between physical constraints on protein function and sequence analysis, enabling a general practical approach for understanding the structural basis for protein function.
Effects of fulvestrant on biological activity and Wnt expression in rat GH3 cells

The present study investigated the influence of anti-estrogen treatment (fulvestrant) on pituitary adenoma cell line GH3 biological activity, the estrogen receptor α pathway, the WnT pathway, and mechanisms of decreased Wnt inhibitory factor-1 expression in GH3 cells. Results showed that fulvestrant suppressed GH3 cell proliferation and reduced hormone secretion in a dose-dependent manner. Estrogen receptor α and Wnt4 expression decreased, but Wnt inhibitory factor-1 expression increased in a dose-dependent manner following fulvestrant treatment, and β-catenin expression remained unchanged. Inhibitors of DNA methylation and histone modification upregulated Wnt inhibitory factor-1 expression. Results suggested that fulvestrant suppressed biological activity of GH3 cells via the estrogen receptor α and Wnt pathways. These results suggested that decreased Wnt inhibitory factor-1 expression in GH3 cells played a role in epigenetic mechanisms. Anti-estrogen therapies could provide novel treatments for growth hormone adenomas.
Host cell actin assembly is necessary and likely to provide the propulsive force for intracellular movement of Listeria monocytogenes

Listeria monocytogenes is able to escape from the phagolysosome and grow within the host cell cytoplasm. By 3 h after initiation of infection, actin filaments begin to concentrate at one end of the bacterium. Polarization of F-actin is associated with intracellular bacterial movement, long projections of actin filaments forming directly behind the moving bacteria. New actin monomers are added to the region of the projection in proximity to the bacterium. The rate of new actin filament growth correlates closely with the speed of bacterial migration. This actin structure is anchored within the cytoplasm, serving as a fixed platform for directional expansion of the actin filament network. The actin projection progressively lengthens as the bacterium migrates. Cytochalasin blocks both elongation of the projection and bacterial movement but does not result in complete depolymerization of the bacterially induced actin structure, residual actin and alpha-actinin persisting in proximity to one end of the bacterium. Bacteria initially migrate within the cortical cytoplasm but later move to the peripheral membrane, where they form filopodiumlike structures which pivot and undulate in the extracellular medium. In the filopodia, bacteria are occasionally seen to abruptly change direction, turn 180 degrees, and move back into the medullary region of the host cell. All filopodium movement ceases once the bacterium containing the F-actin projection returns to the cortical cytoplasm. These results indicate that host cell actin polymerization is necessary for intracellular migration of listeriae and suggest that directional actin assembly may in fact generate the propulsive force for bacterial and filopodial movement.
Loss of Earnings Following Personal Injury: Do the Courts Adequately Compensate Injured Parties?

The law provides that any person injured through the fault of another can claim monetary compensation in the form of damages. This study focuses on compensation paid for loss of future earnings and the fact that little use has been made of economic analysis by courts in Britain in determining such damages. This is in contrast both to what happens in the US and to the extensive use made in British courts of experts from other disciplines. A comparison of awards adjudicated in British courts with a US-style approach reveals substantial and systematic under-compensation under the English legal system.
Using second life virtual simulation environment for mock oral emergency medicine examination.

OBJECTIVES Oral examination is a method used to evaluate emergency medicine (EM) residents and is a requirement for board certification of emergency physicians. Second Life (SL) is a virtual three-dimensional (3-D) immersive learning environment that has been used for medical education. In this study we explore the use of SL virtual simulation technology to administer mock oral examinations to EM residents. METHODS This was a prospective observational study of EM residents who had previously completed mock oral examinations, participating in a similar mock oral examination case scenario conducted via SL. EM residents in this training program completed mock oral examinations in a traditional format, conducted face to face with a faculty examiner. All current residents were invited to participate in a similar case scenario conducted via SL for this study. The examinee managed the case while acting as the physician avatar and communicated via headset and microphone from a remote computer with a faculty examiner who acted as the patient avatar. Participants were surveyed regarding their experience with the traditional and virtual formats using a Likert scale. RESULTS Twenty-seven EM residents participated in the virtual oral examination. None of the examinees had used SL previously. SL proved easy for examinees to log into (92.6%) and navigate (96.3%). All felt comfortable communicating with the examiner via remote computer. Most examinees thought the SL encounter was realistic (92.6%), and many found it more realistic than the traditional format (70.3%). All examinees felt that the virtual examination was fair, objective, and conducted efficiently. A majority preferred to take oral examinations via SL over the traditional format and expressed interest in using SL for other educational experiences (66.6 and 92.6%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Application of SL virtual simulation technology is a potential alternative to traditional mock oral examinations for EM residents.
Long Term Performance and Choice of SEO Method by UK Firms

The long term performance of firms making seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) in the UK, in an era of discretion over the choice of issue method, is shown to differ according to the chosen method across a number of different models of expected returns. The combination of prior and post-SEO performance suggests that rights offering firms are less likely to time offers to exploit overvaluation than firms using placings. When judged on a long term basis rights offering firms are not of lesser quality than firms that choose other offering methods.
The Value of the Firm under Regulation

The basic theoretical relationships between the value of the firm and leverage were set forth by Modigliani and Miller (MM). Much work has tested the MM relationships empirically, including studies which used data from regulated industries. Gordon has stated that, because earnings before interest and taxes are not held constant in regulated industries, the MM formula used in empirical work is invalid. However, Elton-Gruber (EG) challenge Gordon’s statement. The present paper shows that both the Gordon and the EG formulae hold only under special conditions. Under "normal" conditions of demand, both formulae underestimate the value of the levered firm. We show that there is no a priori method of estimating the effect of leverage on the value of a regulated firm without knowledge of specific supply and demand conditions. As researchers do not usually know these conditions, the results of papers testing the MM propositions with data on regulated industries are ambiguous. General formulae for the discount rate and the valuation of a levered firm in a regulated industry are presented. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Bank Dividend Policy and Holding Company Affiliation

This study compares the dividend policies of independently owned and bank holding company-affiliated commercial banks. The hypothesis tested is that there exists a significant, positive relationship between the amount of cash dividends paid by a bank and its affiliation with a holding company. The issue is an important one because the distribution of earnings as dividends obviously reduces a bank's ability to generate capital internally, and retained earnings have been the chief source of growth in bank equity capital. For some time the bank supervisory authorities have been concerned over the relative decline in importance of capital in the balance sheet of the average bank, such funds permitting banks to absorb unexpected losses and weather periods of financial crises. Capital adequacy is thus a major consideration in the regulators' assessment of bank dividend policy. Prior research has shown that the banking subsidiaries of bank holding companies have maintained lower capital in relation to assets than have other banks despite achieving greater profitability. Since a bank's capital position is usually positively correlated with its earnings, this implies that affiliated banks have been more generous in paying dividends. Indeed, the statistical evidence of this study indicates that the banking subsidiaries of holding companies paid significantly higher dividends than other banks over the four–year period from 1973 through 1976. Whether or not this has resulted in these firms maintaining less than “adequate” capital is a question that goes far beyond the scope of this paper, but which ultimately must be considered.
Going forward financially: credit unions as an alternative to commercial banks

The global financial meltdown brought to light a number of weaknesses in the U.S. financial system. Not all financial institution types will be taking large sums of taxpayer money to address their crippling decisions. Credit unions in the United States represent a type of financial cooperative that will probably not take any taxpayer money directly due to their structure and prudential oversight. Commercial banks, especially the megabanks, are likely to see even more bailouts in the future unless structural weaknesses are addressed in the clarifications as part of the enforcement of the Dodd-Frank Act. Using a unique panel data set on U.S. commercial banks, thrifts and credit unions from 1994 through 2010 performance metrics on a number of dimensions (over 300,000 observations) point to strengths and weaknesses of the various financial institutional forms. Credit unions also have had far fewer adjustable rate mortgages and mortgage-backed securities as a percentage of their portfolio. Robust estimators to correct for potential endogeneity are used to analyze the return on assets differentials between different institutional forms and portfolios. When controlling for size, region and portfolios credit unions are often estimated to have a better return on assets. Institutions with assets under 50 million dollars, about 50 percent of the total sample, show credit unions having higher efficiency in that they control more assets per dollar spent on salaries than commercial and savings banks.
Immigrant Parents and Children: An Analysis of Decisions Related to Return Migration

It is not unusual for immigrants to leave the host country and resettle permanently in their country of origin. This paper examines the interaction among some of the key factors that influence the return decision of immigrant households. These include purely economic variables such as wages of the two countries and the costs and benefits of accumulating country-specific human capital, but also subjective factors such as the intensity of the locational preferences of immigrant parents and children and of their desire to remain together in a single location. The analysis is conducted under alternative assumptions with respect to the role of parents and children in the household's decision-making process.
Training and Analysing Deep Recurrent Neural Networks

Time series often have a temporal hierarchy, with information that is spread out over multiple time scales. Common recurrent neural networks, however, do not explicitly accommodate such a hierarchy, and most research on them has been focusing on training algorithms rather than on their basic architecture. In this pa- per we study the effect of a hierarchy of recurrent neural networks on processing time series. Here, each layer is a recurrent network which receives the hidden state of the previous layer as input. This architecture allows us to perform hi- erarchical processing on difficult temporal tasks, and more naturally capture the structure of time series. We show that they reach state-of-the-art performance for recurrent networks in character-level language modelling when trained with sim- ple stochastic gradient descent. We also offer an analysis of the different emergent time scales.
Discretionary Accrual Models and the Accounting Process

This paper introduces a discretionary accrual model based on the accounting process developed by Dechow, Kothari and Watts (1998). Our model tries to prevent a big proportion of nondiscretionary accruals from being judged as discretionary. Using data from the Japanese stock market, we find that our model fits accruals much better than versions based on Jones (1991). Evidence in this paper shows that our model may modify the findings of previous research in two areas: 1) studies that use the versions of Jones model to detect earnings management and 2) studies that analyze the relation between discretionary accruals and future performance or the relation between discretionary accruals and stock returns.
Paradoxical tensions in open innovation networks

Purpose – This paper aims to advance the paradox management perspective by applying it to open innovation networks in Finland and argues that paradox management is an important explicit logic to consider in the management of open innovation.Design/methodology approach – Interviews sought the views of diverse network participants, including companies, universities, and government agencies.Findings – The open innovation networks exhibited many of the same tensions discussed in innovation initiatives within organizations, but additional complexities arose from both internal and external factors.Research limitations/implications – The study examined open innovation networks when the collaboration in the networks was still in early phases. Thus, the study does not capture the paradoxes, underlying tensions, and management approaches as they change in later phases.Practical implications – The open innovation networks require the ability to excel in managing a set of paradoxical tensions using a complex repertoi.
Migration, behaviour change and HIV/STD risks in China

Abstract This paper examines if and how temporary migration increases the risk for HIV/STDs in China. Results suggest that temporary migrants had significantly higher prevalence of HIV-risk sexual and drug using behaviours but no significant differences were found between migrants and non-migrants in prevalence of HIV/STDs. Employing logistic regression analysis, we examined three mechanisms—lax social control, social isolation and migrant selectivity—by which the process of migration may lead to behaviour changes that increase migrants’ HIV/STD risks. Results indicate that post-migration lax social control was the most significant mediating factor between migration and HIV risk behaviours. Temporary migrants are at high risk of HIV/STDs. Prevention interventions need to pay particular attention to migrants’ post-migration lax social control.
A current perspective on distributed antenna systems for the downlink of cellular systems

Providing uniformly high capacity in cellular systems is challenging due to fading, path loss, and interference. A partial solution to this problem is the deployment of distributed antenna systems, where transmission points are distributed throughout the cell using coax cable or fiber, instead of being centrally located on a single tower. This article reviews how distributed antenna systems are evolving to provide higher performance on the downlink in cellular systems. Research trends in distributed antennas for the downlink of cellular systems are described along with current progress on their integration into commercial wireless cellular standards. A key observation is that distributed antenna systems are tightly integrated into the cellular architecture, and incorporate physical layer technologies like MIMO communication and multiuser MIMO to provide higher data rates.