Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Globalization and organizational restructuring: A strategic perspective

The new market opportunities, competitive threats, and diffusion of business models associated with globalization have been key drivers of organizational restructuring over the past decade. Companies have responded to these developments in a variety of ways with the objective of improving their cost and/or revenue structures through reorganizing their vertical, horizontal, and spatial boundaries and governance mechanisms. Major forms of restructuring at the business level have included labor intensification, investment in new technologies, downsizing and reengineering, the formation of strategic alliances and networks, spatial reconfiguration, and a shift from international and multinational to global and transnational strategies. To be most effective, any type of restructuring must be clearly and explicitly aligned with a firm's business-level strategy in order to maximize the efficient and effective allocation of resources in pursuit of competitive advantage. A strategic use of restructuring which links such efforts to broader competitive strategy, and where possible to a “high-road” approach to overall competitiveness, should result in more sustainable benefits which generate increased value-added to shareholders as well as greater well being in the broader stakeholder community. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Borna Disease Virus Phosphoprotein Modulates Epigenetic Signaling in Neurons To Control Viral Replication

ABSTRACT Understanding the modalities of interaction of neurotropic viruses with their target cells represents a major challenge that may improve our knowledge of many human neurological disorders for which viral origin is suspected. Borna disease virus (BDV) represents an ideal model to analyze the molecular mechanisms of viral persistence in neurons and its consequences for neuronal homeostasis. It is now established that BDV ensures its long-term maintenance in infected cells through a stable interaction of viral components with the host cell chromatin, in particular, with core histones. This has led to our hypothesis that such an interaction may trigger epigenetic changes in the host cell. Here, we focused on histone acetylation, which plays key roles in epigenetic regulation of gene expression, notably for neurons. We performed a comparative analysis of histone acetylation patterns of neurons infected or not infected by BDV, which revealed that infection decreases histone acetylation on selected lysine residues. We showed that the BDV phosphoprotein (P) is responsible for these perturbations, even when it is expressed alone independently of the viral context, and that this action depends on its phosphorylation by protein kinase C. We also demonstrated that BDV P inhibits cellular histone acetyltransferase activities. Finally, by pharmacologically manipulating cellular acetylation levels, we observed that inhibiting cellular acetyl transferases reduces viral replication in cell culture. Our findings reveal that manipulation of cellular epigenetics by BDV could be a means to modulate viral replication and thus illustrate a fascinating example of virus-host cell interaction. IMPORTANCE Persistent DNA viruses often subvert the mechanisms that regulate cellular chromatin dynamics, thereby benefitting from the resulting epigenetic changes to create a favorable milieu for their latent and persistent states. Here, we reasoned that Borna disease virus (BDV), the only RNA virus known to durably persist in the nucleus of infected cells, notably neurons, might employ a similar mechanism. In this study, we uncovered a novel modality of virus-cell interaction in which BDV phosphoprotein inhibits cellular histone acetylation by interfering with histone acetyltransferase activities. Manipulation of cellular histone acetylation is accompanied by a modulation of viral replication, revealing a perfect adaptation of this “ancient” virus to its host that may favor neuronal persistence and limit cellular damage.
Information Asymmetry and Momentum Anomalies

In this paper, we construct an information asymmetry factor (VECINF) based on the price discovery of large trades. VECINF is significantly negatively correlated with market excess return, indicating that market-wide information asymmetry is lower in bull markets, which is consistent with the view that more uninformed investors are attracted into stock markets when the markets offer high returns. In addition, VECINF has the most significant pricing effect among the considered risk factors (MKT, SMB, HML, and UMD), which suggests that ignoring the risk of information asymmetry may give rise to false discoveries of anomalies. As a case in point, we show that momentum anomalies disappear once we control for the risk of information asymmetry. This is because there are fewer informed traders, and hence lower risk of information asymmetry, in bad news firms (past losers or low earning surprise firms) than in good news firms (past winners or high earning surprise firms). The larger cost and risk of arbitrage in taking short positions makes bad news firms less attractive to informed traders. Consistent with this explanation, we find that the loading on VECINF is lower in bad news firms than in good news firms; and is lower only in the holding periods when momentum exists. This difference in loadings increases significantly with idiosyncratic volatility, and this explains why momentum is stronger in firms with large idiosyncratic volatility. Regardless of the level of idiosyncratic volatility, the significantly positive Fama-French factors risk-adjusted returns of zero investment momentum portfolios are no longer significant once we include VECINF as an additional factor for risk adjustment.
Entrepreneurial size, complexity and decentralization of decision-making in the use of temporary help workers in Spain

Using data from a postal survey of Spanish firms, the present work, as its main objective, tries to evaluate the effect of entrepreneurial size, degree of decentralization in decision-making and vertical complexity on the use of temporary help workers. As complementary objectives, it also seeks to confirm the effect of entrepreneurial size on elements of the organizational structure, such as decentralization in decision-making, and on vertical complexity. To respond to the hypotheses, a LISRE model has been used. The results show that entrepreneurial size and degree of decentralization positively affect the frequency with which companies use temporary help workers. In contrast, vertical complexity negatively affects the use of this type of worker. On the other hand, it is confirmed that entrepreneurial size positively affects decentralization in decision-making and vertical complexity.
Optimized Design of Finite-Length Separable Circulant-Based Spatially-Coupled Codes: An Absorbing Set-Based Analysis

In this paper, we characterize the finite-length performance of separable circulant-based spatially-coupled (SCB-SC) LDPC codes for transmission over the additive white Gaussian noise channel. For a general class of finite-length graph-based codes, it is known that the existence of small absorbing sets causes a performance degradation in the error floor regime. We first present the mathematical conditions for the existence of absorbing sets in binary SCB-SC codes. This analysis enables us to find the exact number of absorbing sets as a function of the design parameters. In particular, our results show that the choice of the cutting vector affects the number of absorbing sets and, therefore, the error floor performance of the code. For a fixed column weight, we find provably optimal cutting vectors that result in the least number of absorbing sets. Furthermore, we extend our analysis to nonbinary SCB-SC codes, where we show that the choice of the cutting vector is not as critical as in the binary case. We provide an algorithm which provably removes the problematic nonbinary absorbing sets from nonbinary SCB-SC codes by informed selection of edge labels. Our simulation results show the superior error floor performance of our designed binary and nonbinary SCB-SC codes compared with binary unstructured and nonbinary quasi-cyclic SC codes available in the open literature.
A twin-case study of developmental number sense impairment

The current study reports on 9-year-old monozygotic twin girls who fail to make any progress in learning basic mathematics in primary education. We tested the hypothesis that the twins' core maths problems were deficits in number sense that manifested as impairments in approximate and small number systems, resulting in impairment in nonsymbolic as well as in symbolic processing. While age-matched controls (eight typically developing girls) scored highly, the twins scored at chance on all number sense tasks. More specifically, on a nonsymbolic comparison task, even in the simplest ratio condition of 1:2, and on a subitizing task including only numbers under 4, the twins performed at chance and significantly below the same age control group. Responsiveness to an intervention promoting number sense is discussed. As differences between verbal and performance IQ suggest, there seems to be a high degree of specificity in the twins' developmental number sense delays. The concomitant impairments for visual–spatial processing and working memory in the twins might explain the failure to develop number sense.
Churn Management and Policy: Measuring the Effectiveness of Fixed-Mobile Bundling on Mobile Subscriber Retention

This article uses a Tobit regression model to investigate the factors affecting mobile subscriber retention in South Korea. The results show that fixed and mobile bundling plays a significant role in lengthening mobile subscriber retention, while its effectiveness varies depending on which fixed services are included in the bundle. The provision of 4G wireless broadband service (i.e., WiBro) in a bundle with 2G/3G mobile service showed a positive but insignificant relationship with mobile subscriber retention. In addition, previous relationship of a subscriber with an operator has a significant effect on mobile subscriber retention: Customers who recontracted remained longer with a contractor compared to those who changed operators. Monthly mobile payment has a significant but negative effect on mobile subscriber retention. Subsidy-bound contracts and gender had no effect on retaining mobile subscribers in the long term.
A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF WELL‐BEING

The conceptual framework of the system specifies that societal resources are limited by two basic factors: the amount of available human time, and the stock of wealth inherited from the past. Wealth is defined very broadly to cover not only the conventional tangible capital assets familiar to economists, but also intangible human and other capital assets, stocks of organizational capital reflected by networks of social support systems (the family, the neighbourhood), stocks of environmental assets (the sun and air), and stocks of socio‐political assets (security, freedom of choice). Human time covers market work, household production, leisure, and biological maintenance. Human time and capital stocks are used within households to produce a variety of tangible and intangible outputs, and these outputs in turn are used to produce a variety of satisfactions (utilities) or to augment stocks of capital, or both. The basic sources of well‐being in the system are ultimately of two types: well‐being is produced as a consequence of the intrinsic benefits from all activities engaged in by individuals, which is to say that people have preferences over the way they spend their time; secondly, people derive utilities from the existence of various stocks or states of society, and these satisfactions are independent of the way in which time is used. The satisfactions associated with flows of goods are subsumed by satisfactions derived from activities associated with those goods. The system contains a set of linkages among the various parts: inputs of goods and time are used to produce tangible household output, using the familiar notions of household production functions and constrained optimization; tangible household products, which are intermediate in the system, are used in conjunction with human time to produce direct satisfactions or to augment household capital stocks; both household (micro) and societal (macro) capital stocks are linked directly to psychological well‐being; household activities are linked directly to flows of satisfactions, termed process benefits in the system; household preferences and values relating to policy variables are linked to public policies of various sorts, and policies modify the constraints and opportunities relevant for household decisions. The system also has dynamic linkages. Modifications of household or public stocks produce impacts on future flows of well‐being; satisfactions from activities may adapt to the existence of constraints, hence changes in constraints can modify preferences and subsequently modify activities; and household behavior has a life‐cycle dimension which is inherently dynamic.
Functionally localized representations contain distributed information: insight from simulations of deep convolutional neural networks

Preferential activation to faces in the brain’s fusiform gyrus has led to the proposed existence of a face module termed the Fusiform Face Area (FFA) (Kanwisher et. al, 1997). However, arguments for distributed, topographical object-form representations in FFA and across visual cortex have been proposed to explain data showing that FFA activation patterns contain decodable information about non-face categories (Haxby et. al, 2001; Hanson & Schmidt, 2011). Using two deep convolutional neural network models able to perform humanlevel object and facial recognition, respectively, we demonstrate that both localized category representations (LCRs) and high-level face-specific representations allow for similar decoding accuracy between non-preferred visual categories as between a preferred and non-preferred category. Our results suggest that neuroimaging of a cortical “module” optimized for face processing should yield significant decodable information for non-face categories so long as representations within the module are activated by non-face stimuli.
ECONOMIC POLICY ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH BEACH RENOURISHMENT

Coastal beaches are a source of considerable recreational activity, but are also eroding at a rapid rate. Since beach resources are common property, there is no organized market to determine economic benefits from recreational use. Through a willingness to pay equation for beach use, this article demonstrates how proposed beach renourishment policy can be evaluated within a benefit-cost analysis framework. Benefits are estimated as the incremental willingness to pay per day for a larger beach width which is translated into annualized benefits. Annualize cost of achieving maximum benefits are calculated from a cost function. Given the existing cost of beach renourishment, it was found that all beaches in Florida that are overcrowded (i.e., had less than 112 square feet per personsday) could be renourished at a benefit-cost ratio greater than unity. In Florida, beach renourishment policy for overcrowded beaches yields more economic benefits than costs. However, this technique does not lend itself to policy analyses of uncrowded beaches that are undergoing considerable erosion. Copyright 1986 by The Policy Studies Organization.
Handwritten digits recognition using PCA of histogram of oriented gradient

This paper presents a multiclass classifier based on principal component analysis (PCA) of histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) for accurate and fast recognition of handwritten digits. HOG is known as an effective feature descriptor for computer vision and image processing, and PCA has shown its ability for fast multiclass recorgenition. By combining PCA with HOG, the PCA-of-HOG based classifier is developed. The proposed algorithm was applied to the MNIST database of handwritten digits to demonstrate its performance in comparison with classifiers based on PCA of raw input data.
Algorithm and Architecture Design of the H.265/HEVC Intra Encoder

Improved video coding techniques introduced in the H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard allow video encoders to achieve better compression efficiencies. On the other hand, the increased complexity requires a new design methodology able to face challenges associated with ever higher spatiotemporal resolutions. This paper presents a computationally scalable algorithm and its hardware architecture able to support intra encoding up to 2160p@30 frames/s resolution. The scalability allows a tradeoff between the throughput and the compression efficiency. In particular, the encoder is able to check a variable number of candidate modes. The rate estimation based on bin counting and the distortion estimation in the transform domain simplify the rate-distortion analysis and enable the evaluation of a great number of candidate intra modes. The encoder preselects candidate modes by the processing of 8 × 8 predictions computed from original samples. The preselection shares hardware resources used for the processing of predictions generated from reconstructed samples. To support intra 4×4 modes for the 2160p@30 frames/s resolution, the encoder incorporates a separate reconstruction loop. The processing of blocks with different sizes is interleaved to compensate for the delay of reconstruction loops. Implementation results show that the encoder utilizes 1086k gates and 52-kB on-chip memories for TSMC 90 nm. The main reconstruction loop can operate at 400 MHz, whereas the remaining modules work at 200 MHz. For 2160p@30 frames/s videos, the average BD-rate is 5.46% compared with that of the HM software.
Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder with Iyengar Yoga and Coherent Breathing: A Randomized Controlled Dosing Study

Abstract Objectives: The aims of this study were to assess the effects of an intervention of Iyengar yoga and coherent breathing at five breaths per minute on depressive symptoms and to determine optimal intervention yoga dosing for future studies in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD). Methods: Subjects were randomized to the high-dose group (HDG) or low-dose group (LDG) for a 12-week intervention of three or two intervention classes per week, respectively. Eligible subjects were 18–64 years old with MDD, had baseline Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) scores ≥14, and were either on no antidepressant medications or on a stable dose of antidepressants for ≥3 months. The intervention included 90-min classes plus homework. Outcome measures were BDI-II scores and intervention compliance. Results: Fifteen HDG (Mage=38.4±15.1 years) and 15 LDG (Mage=34.7±10.4 years) subjects completed the intervention. BDI-II scores at screening and compliance did not differ between groups (p=0.26). BDI-II scores declined significantly from screening (24.6±1.7) to week 12 (6.0±3.8) for the HDG (–18.6±6.6; p < 0.001), and from screening (27.7±2.1) to week 12 (10.1±7.9) in the LDG (–17.7±9.3; p < 0.001). There were no significant differences between groups, based on response (i.e., >50% decrease in BDI-II scores; p=0.65) for the HDG (13/15 subjects) and LDG (11/15 subjects) or remission (i.e., number of subjects with BDI-II scores <14; p=1.00) for the HDG (14/15 subjects) and LDG (13/15 subjects) after the 12-week intervention, although a greater number of subjects in the HDG had 12-week BDI-II scores ≤10 (p=0.04). Conclusion: During this 12-week intervention of yoga plus coherent breathing, depressive symptoms declined significantly in patients with MDD in both the HDG and LDG. Both groups showed comparable compliance and clinical improvements, with more subjects in the HDG exhibiting BDI-II scores ≤10 at week 12.
Strand-specific miR-28-5p and miR-28-3p have distinct effects in colorectal cancer cells.

BACKGROUND & AIMS MicroRNAs (miRNAs) can promote or inhibit tumor growth and are therefore being developed as targets for cancer therapies. They are diverse not only in the messenger RNAs (mRNA) they target, but in their production; the same hairpin RNA structure can generate mature products from each strand, termed 5p and 3p, that can bind different mRNAs. We analyzed the expression, functions, and mechanisms of miR-28-5p and miR-28-3p in colorectal cancer (CRC) cells. METHODS We measured levels of miR-28-5p and miR-28-3p expression in 108 CRC and 49 normal colorectal samples (47 paired) by reverse transcription, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. The roles of miR-28 in CRC development were studied using cultured HCT116, RKO, and SW480 cells and tumor xenograft analyses in immunodeficient mice; their mRNA targets were also investigated. RESULTS miR-28-5p and miR-28-3p were down-regulated in CRC samples compared with normal colon samples. Overexpression of miRNAs in CRC cells had different effects and the miRNAs interacted with different mRNAs: miR-28-5p altered expression of CCND1 and HOXB3, whereas miR-28-3p bound NM23-H1. Overexpression of miR-28-5p reduced CRC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro, whereas miR-28-3p increased CRC cell migration and invasion in vitro. CRC cells overexpressing miR-28 developed tumors more slowly in mice compared with control cells, but miR-28 promoted tumor metastasis in mice. CONCLUSION miR-28-5p and miR-28-3p are transcribed from the same RNA hairpin and are down-regulated in CRC cells. Overexpression of each has different effects on CRC cell proliferation and migration. Such information has a direct application for the design of miRNA gene therapy trials.
Investimentos em Infra-Estrutura e Produtividade Total dos Fatores na Agricultura Brasileira, 1985 - 2004

Infrastructure investments reduced significantly since the decade of 1980, compromising Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and Brazilian agricultural competitivity. Solow’s growth model with panel data is used to estimate TFP. An adaptation of the model of Zhang and Fan (2004) for India, using the Generalized Method of Moments, was applied to verify the effect of infrastructure investments on TFP. Estimations suggest that these investments affect agriculture TFP in the first years and its return occurs in the period of 0 to 2 years. Road investments have the highest impact on TFP, followed by investments on research, telecommunications, irrigation, and electric energy.
Technical Note: Properties of the Cubic Production Function

In the interest of improving the understanding of both students and practitioners of technical economics of some fundamental aspects of the subject, this note provides a clarification of the isoquant properties of the two-input cubic production function. Two alternatives to the “usual” cubic production function are proposed herein: the “additive” and the “multiplicative. ” In contrast to the usual function, both of these alternatives possess the intuitively expected isoquant properties: the three-dimensional surface of the function is a “hill” or “protuberance” with a unique peak, and the corresponding family of isoquants is a set of closed oblongs reminiscent of a contour map.