Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect Of Technology Acceptance On Post Secondary African- American Students Achievement In Mathematics: A Path Analytic Inquiry

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of technology acceptance on post secondary African American students’ achievement in Mathematics. The study was conducted in a historically Black four-year college in Daytona Beach, Florida on students using the computer to enhance their mathematics performance in an introductory algebra mathematics course. By using Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) developed by F. Davis (1989), this study focused on variables such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, computer self-efficacy, subjective norms, attitude and actual use of the computer to account the effect towards the achievement in the final exam which is an outcome variable. The data were collected over four different time periods during the fall semester of 2004 to find how these results changed over time. The study was conducted by using six instruments to measure perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, computer self-efficacy, subjective norms, actual use of computer (frequency and duration), attitude and an additional demographic instrument. The data were analyzed by path analysis using multiple regressions (SPSS for windows) to find the contribution of each independent variable to the dependent variable that ultimately predicted the final outcome. Computer self-efficacy and subjective norms were determinants of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use which in turn determined the attitude of students using computer for enhancing their math score in the final. The findings of path analysis indicated that the research did not support TAM.
What do Investors Look for in a Business Plan?

Most potential funders wish to see a business plan as a first step in deciding whether or not to invest. However, much of the literature on how to write a business plan fails to emphasize that different types of funder look at business plans from different perspectives. Using a real time methodology this article highlights the different investment criteria of bankers, venture capital fund managers and business angels. Bankers stress the financial aspects of the proposal and give little emphasis to market, entrepreneur or other issues. As equity investors, venture capital fund managers and business angels have a very different approach, emphasizing both market and finance issues. Business angels give more emphasis than venture capital fund managers to the entrepreneur and ‘investor fit’ considerations. The implication for entrepreneurs is that they must customize their business plan according to whether they are seeking funding from a bank, venture capital fund or business angel.
THE IMPACT OF FDI INFLOW ON EMPLOYMENT IN V4 COUNTRIES

Paper ́s effort is to analyse the impact of FDI inflow on employment of V4 countries by using panel data. This method allows us to evaluate the effect of FDI inflow on vacancies creation. Further, we discuss and explain the role of FDI inflow in this process with the focus on particularities of the V4 countries labour markets. Finally, paper discusses implications of FDI analysis and tries to verify the positive effect of FDI inflow on employment in V4 countries.
Flexible Exchange Rates And Employment Policy

The theory of employment that grew out of the Great Depression was not long in influencing government policy-makers and revolutionizing older concepts of fiscal policy. The most important of Keynes's practical lessons, that policies which promote investment and exports and inhibit saving and imports increase employment and output, has now hardened into a dogma and filtered down into almost all the elementary textbooks. The lesson, by and large, was a good one, but the dogma presents the danger that the lesson might be uncritically applied in situations where other government policies render it invalid. This paper is concerned with the most important exception to the rule. The mercantilist element in Keynesian policies is definitely inapplicable to countries whose central banks do not peg the price of foreign exchange or gold. Tariffs, trade controls, and export subsidies are likely to worsen employment and output in all those situations in which, with a fixed exchange rate, they would improve employment and output. Moreover, if exchange rates are flexible, an increase in investment or government spending, and a reduction in saving or taxation, will have a substantially different effect on employment than that predicted by the traditional foreign trade multiplier. The reason lies in the fact that equilibrium in the balance of payments is automatically maintained by variations in the price of foreign exchange.
Behavioral Therapy to Augment Oral Naltrexone for Opioid Dependence: A Ceiling on Effectiveness?

The effectiveness of antagonist maintenance with oral naltrexone for opioid dependence has been limited by high dropout rates. Behavioral Naltrexone Therapy (BNT) was developed to improve retention on oral naltrexone by integrating voucher incentives, Motivational and Cognitive Behavioral therapies, and a significant other for monitoring medication adherence. In a 6-month, randomized, controlled trial in heroin dependent patients, BNT (N = 36) improved retention in treatment compared to a standard treatment control (Compliance Enhancement (CE); N = 33) (log rank = 4.28; p = .04). Most patients retained beyond 3 months achieved abstinence from opioids, but retention at 6 months was only 22% on BNT and 9% on CE. A systematic review of related controlled trials revealed similar effect sizes in the small to medium range, and substantial dropout. There may be a limit on the extent to which behavioral therapy can overcome poor adherence to oral naltrexone. Future research should consider combinations of behavioral methods with new long-acting injectable or implantable naltrexone formulations.
The Debt Crisis: A Postmortem

In the first part of the paper, I calculate the returns on the developing countries debt obtained by their (private and public) creditors when taking account of the transfers already generated, and of the liquidative value of the debt. I show that they are good. I then evaluate the conflict of interest between private and public creditors and assess the role of the Brady deal as a vehicle for bringing about a "grand settlement" of the debt crisis. I argue that they are not as good. In the second part of the paper, I show that the group of reschedulers did experience lower growth in the 1980s, but I also show that their rate of capital accumulation was not lifted up in the years before the debt crisis. I evaluate the extent to which sovereign risk, rather than low returns, explains the failure of foreign finance to speed up capital accumulation in the large debtor countries.
Agency Conflict and Bank Interest Spreads in Ghana

type="main" xml:lang="en"> This study examines the relationship between interest rate spreads in the Ghanaian banking industry and variables that reflect convergence/divergence between managerial goals and corporate goals of which the key variables are executive compensation and bank ownership structure. Using data covering the period 1999–2011, this study employs a panel regression to examine how agency factors affect interest rate spreads in Ghana. The results of the study indicate that executive compensation is associated with higher net interest margins, suggesting that managers operate on higher margins since they can extract excess rents. The findings of the study also show that asset size, the level of concentration in the banking industry, the level of capital held by banks, the reserve requirement, and the level of inflation all positively contribute to the observed high interest spreads. Our results are robust to the control of several bank-specific, industry-specific, regulatory and macroeconomic factors.
A Blind Signature-Based Approach for Cross-Domain Authentication in the Cloud Environment

In recent years, Cloud services have become an important part of people's lives, providing them with a large amount of IT resources, available from anywhere and at any time. The access to the services offered is controlled basing on users' identification credentials. As people acquire services from multiple cloud providers, in order to avoid the proliferation of identities associated to a single user, new cross-organization authentication methods, allowing the authorized transfer of users' identification data from one Cloud to another, are emerging. However, since most of these techniques do not protect adequately users' private information, attackers can easily intercept and tamper with confidential identity-related messages. In this paper, the authors use the characteristics of blind signatures to support user verification of the registering provider, to protect the user's identity, and to address known vulnerabilities in these systems. In addition, they use a strong designated verifier signature with message recovery characteristics to strengthen data communication security in the whole process.
How to Manage Radical Innovation

Three of the people attending the meeting in a Chicago suburb were going broke. They had spent most of their money and all of their time for the past two years trying to commercialize a radical innovation called “Liquid Life,” an all-natural beverage made 100% from pureed fruit. They had developed an attractive plastic package, six good tasting flavors, and eye catching point-of-sale promotional materials. Grocery stores had told them they loved the idea and would gladly carry the product. However, consumers knew nothing about “Liquid Life” and it would take millions of dollars to commercialize the innovation the way the three entrepreneurs wanted to do it. Now, they had run out of money and time. Four other people were at the meeting. Two were investment bankers, one a venture capitalist, and one a vice-president from Big Food, Inc., a Fortune 100 food and beverage company. Three of these four tried, once again, to convince the “Liquid Life” entrepreneurs to sell their ideas and technology to the food company. Once again, this advice was met with an emotional refusal. The argument was always the same: the food company loved the breakthrough technology and was desperate for a radical new idea that might pump life into one of its existing product categories, but they could not pay much for an unproved innovation. The “Liquid Lifers” loved the idea of having a big company's resources behind them, but they knew the food company would strangle their commercialization dreams and control the way they developed future products. None of them wanted to join a large—though very successful—public company. The investment bankers had brought the food company to the meeting and advised the “Liquid Lifers” to sell. The venture capitalist wasn't so sure.
Organizational Innovation's Moderation of Culture Effects on Company Financial Performance

Organizational Innovation’s Moderation of Culture Effects on Company Financial Performance by Christopher L. Slaughter MS, Walden University, 2013 MBA, University of Phoenix, 2006 BS, University of Phoenix, 2005 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Psychology
3D WL MEMS with Various TSV Technologies' Thermo-Mechanical Analysis

The through-silicon-via (TSV) technology is one of the most effective approaches to fulfill the form factor, profile, performance, and 3D interconnect demand of next generation handheld and wearable electronics. The TSV technology has been developed into two categories, the TSV Last and the TSV Middle. In this article, we examined a variety of aspects of the two TSV technologies when applied to 3D wafer level (WL) microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). We investigated the thermo-mechanical behavior of both TSV structures in wafer level package (WLP), through finite-element-analysis (FEA). Stress distribution of the package structures was revealed. The simulation study was also performed on the board level to analyze the extent of warpage of the package. The theoretical results were validated with the corresponding reliability and electrical characteristics investigations.
Scientese and Ambiguous Citations in the Selling of Unproven Medical Treatments

Unproven medical treatments are widely marketed, and are especially accessible via the Internet. Little is known about factors that may increase the persuasiveness of information used to promote such unproven treatments. This article examines the effect of scientese (use of scientific jargon) and attributed versus unattributed citations on message persuasiveness on science and nonscience majors. Scientese, as expected, increased message persuasiveness. Contrary to expectations, this effect was not moderated by science versus nonscience major, graduate versus undergraduate status, or potential involvement with the message topic. In addition, no effect was found for attributed versus unattributed citations either as a main effect or in interaction with science major, graduate or undergraduate status, or for an indicator of involvement with the health topic. These findings are consistent with Food and Drug Administration concerns about the ability of the public to critically discern the quality of evidence supporting use of unproven remedies and dietary supplements. Similarly, they raise questions about the judicial reasoning that presumes consumers can make such judgments, though replication with clinical populations would be desirable to strengthen policy-relevant inferences.
How multi‐objective genetic algorithms handle lack of data, sparse data and excess data: evaluation of some recent case studies in the materials domain

An overview of multi‐objective optimization and the associated concept of Pareto‐optimality are elucidated in detail, keeping the biologically inspired genetic algorithms in perspective. The effective role of the genetic algorithms in handling three different kinds of data driven models where the decision has to be made from (i) no data (ii) excess data or (iii) sparse data are elaborated through three materials engineering applications, where other strategies like inverse modeling, neural network and data mining have worked in tandem with the multi‐objective genetic algorithms. Copyright © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining 1: 000‐000, 2009
Study on heat dissipation performance of IGBT module in wind power converter

Thermal design of IGBT is very important during wind power converter design. This paper introduced a theoretical calculation method of IGBT power loss which is applicable in wind power converter engineering applications. Meantime, the corresponding mathematic model was established. Considering the divergence of application environments as well as the inherent thermal properties of different types of radiators, simulation models of ordinary radiator and heat pipe radiator were build in Flotherm. And then the cooling capacity of these two types of radiators was analyzed though simulation. Finally, the experiment results indicated the rationality and practicability of the thermal design, which provided critical references of IGBT thermal design and cooling system design.
Gadolinium Deposits Could Influence the Course of Encapsulating Peritoneal Sclerosis

Andreu AJ, et al. Lower malfunction rate with selflocating catheters. Perit Dial Int 2001; 21(Suppl 3):S209–12. 14. Guiserix J. Spontaneous rupture of peritoneal catheters. Nephron 1997; 75:100. 15. Panuccio V, enia G, Crucitti S, Pustorino M, Biondo A, Zoccali C. Another “epidemic” of spontaneous rupture of peritoneal catheters. Nephron 1998; 79:359. 16. Tsuchida K, Takemoto Y, Nakamura T, Yamagami S. Unexpected complication resulting from peritoneal dialysis catheter break. Perit Dial Int 1998; 18:444–8. doi:10.3747/pdi.2012. 00336
Role of triglyceride-fatty acid cycle in controlling fat metabolism in humans during and after exercise.

We have investigated the role of triglyceride-fatty acid cycling in amplifying control of the net flux of fatty acids in response to exercise and in recovery from exercise. Five normal volunteers were infused with [1-13C]palmitate and D-5-glycerol throughout rest, 4 h of treadmill exercise at 40% maximum O2 consumption, and 2 h of recovery. Total fat oxidation was quantified by indirect calorimetry. Lipolysis (rate of appearance of glycerol) increased from 2.1 +/- 0.3 to 6.0 +/- 1.2 mumol.kg-1.min-1 after 30 min of exercise and progressively increased thereafter to a value of 10.5 +/- 0.8 mumol.kg-1.min-1 after 4 h. Lipolysis decreased rapidly during the first 20 min of recovery, but it was still significantly elevated after 2 h of recovery. The rate of appearance of free fatty acids followed the same pattern of response. Seventy percent of released fatty acids were reesterified at rest, and this value decreased to 25% within the first 30 min of exercise. Reesterification remained less than 35% of lipolysis until the start of recovery, at which time the value rose to 90%. In exercise, more than one-half the increase in fat oxidation could be attributed to the reduction in the percent reesterification. Most of the change in percent reesterification during exercise and recovery was caused by changes in extracellular cycling of fatty acids released into plasma. We conclude that triglyceride-fatty acid cycling plays an important role in enabling a rapid response of fatty acid metabolism to major changes in energy metabolism.
Japanese and Us Trade with China: A Comparative Analysis

The paper provides a simple comparative analysis of Japanese and US trade with China. In recent years, Japanese exports to China had been growing faster than US exports, but Japanese imports from China had been growing more slowly. A large amount of US and Japanese exports were first shipped to Hong Kong, and then re-exported to China. In 1994, Japan's largest export item to China was general machinery, while US largest export item to China was transportation equipment. According to the rivalry index constructed in the paper, competition in 1994 between US and Japanese firms was most intense in the chemical goods sector.
Expressions of type I collagen, α2 integrin and β1 integrin in sclera of guinea pig with defocus myopia and inhibitory effects of bFGF on the formation of myopia.

AIM To investigate the expressions of type I collagen, α2 integrin and β1 integrin in the posterior sclera of guinea pigs with defocus myopia and whether basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) injection inhibits the formation and development of myopia by upregulating the expression of type I collagen, α2 integrin and β1 integrin. METHODS After 14 days of treatment, the refractive state and axial length were measured and the levels of type I collagen, α2 integrin and β1 integrin were assayed in the posterior sclerae of groups of guinea pigs that wore a monocular -7D polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) lens or had -7D lens wear followed by the peribulbar injection of Phosphate Buffer Solution (PBS) or bFGF. The untreated fellow eye served as a control. Guinea pigs with no treatment served as normal group. RESULTS The results showed that 14 days of monocular defocus increased axial eye length and refraction, while bFGF delivery inhibited them markedly. Further, it was also found that the monocular -7D lens could decrease the levels of type I collagen, α2 integrin and β1 integrin expressions, while, unlike PBS, bFGF increased them significantly in comparison to contralateral control eyes and normal eyes. CONCLUSION bFGF can prevent the formation and development of defocus myopia by upregulating the expressions of type I collagen, α2 integrin and β1 integrin. Taken together, our results demonstrate that bFGF promotes sclera remodeling to prevent myopia in guinea pigs.
Supporting information for Synthesis and Directed Self-Assembly of Patterned Anisometric Polymeric Particles

Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) particles of diameter from 300 nm and 3 μm were synthesized following the method of ref. 1. The particles are covalently grafted with comb-like polymeric stabilizers which consists of linear PMMA as the backbone and poly(12-hydroxy-stearic acid) (PHSA) as the teeth (Scheme S1). 1 For the fluorescent comb-like polymeric stabilizer, units containing 7-nitrobenzo-2-oxa-1,3-diazol (NBD) were incorporated as the fluorescent source. A small fraction of glycidyl groups on the backbone can be used as anchors for covalently binding the stabilizers to the surface of the particles. To prepare the stabilizer solution, 1g of (fluorescent) stabilizer was dissolved in 2 mL ethyl acetate/butyl acetate (2:1 in w/w). The resulting solution was then diluted with 10 mL decalin. Hereafter we refer to this solution as the stabilizer solution. Materials for the mechanical stretching to prepare PMMA ellipsoids are: hydroxy-terminated poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS, average Mn ~110,000, viscosity ~50,000 cSt) for the matrix, poly(dimethylsiloxane-co-methylhydrosiloxane) (trimethylsilyl-terminated, average Mn ~950, 50 mol % methylhydrosiloxane) as the cross-linker, and stannous 2-ethylhexanoate as the catalyst. The degrading solution consists of 0.2% (w/w) sodium methoxide in isopropyl alcohol (IPA). All the chemicals were supplied by Sigma-Aldrich in the highest purity and used as received without further purification.
Revisiting Determinants of Convention Participation Decision Making

ABSTRACT In the midst of the unprecedented economic downturn, attracting a large number of attendees at annual conventions is more challenging than ever for associations and meeting planners. In order to boost attendance, an organization must understand what would be the factors affecting convention participation decision of potential delegates, and what would be the reasons to put a particular convention on the top of their must-attend list. This article empirically validated the key determinants of convention participation decision making that had arisen from previous studies, and further examined the relative influence of each factor on the convention participation intention. Four determinants were identified (networking, destination, travelability, education), and they are largely in line with the major factors that had been suggested in the extant literature. The findings of the study showed that “networking” and “travelability” factors significantly influenced the convention participation intention of the survey respondents. Several implications and convention marketing strategies for associations and meeting planners were discussed.
A Comparative Study on Rat Intestinal Epithelial Cells and Resident Gut Bacteria: (I) Effect of Hexavalent Chromium

Toxicants including heavy metals reaching the intestine following ingestion through food and water primarily interact with an ecosystem of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. Gut bacteria having a dynamic interrelationship with intestinal epithelial cells are known to play important and specific metabolic, trophic, and protective functions. The present study was undertaken to compare the effects of hexavalent chromium on rat intestinal epithelial cells and the resident gut bacteria following in vitro and in vivo exposures. The survival rate and viability pattern of two types of cells were comparable. Under in vitro conditions, the gut bacteria were quick to reduce Cr (VI) in early time periods, while, at 30 h time, both types of cells showed similar capacity for the reduction of Cr (VI). Chromium intoxication (10 ppm of Cr (VI) in drinking water for 10 weeks) caused significant decrease in membrane alkaline phosphatase and Ca2 +-Mg2 +-ATPase activities of intestinal epithelial cells as well as of three gut bacteria viz. Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas sp, and Lactobacillus sp. Major structural membrane constituents like carbohydrates and phospholipids also showed significant decline in both types of cells. These findings indicate that 10 ppm and higher Cr concentrations may cause toxic insult, resulting in impaired intestinal functional efficacy. It also implies that the gut bacteria can be used at least for preliminary screening of heavy metals gastrointestinal toxicity.