Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WHERE DO INNOVATIONS COME FROM

This paper is based on a descriptive study of two types of innovation awards within a manufacturing company. The purpose is to identify sources and understand the background of these awarded innovations. An industrial view of the concept innovation is of importance in order to support future product development processes. Based on the interviews of several team members in awarded innovation projects, some aspects can be emphasized: the importance of the exploration and knowledge acquisition phase, importance of external triggers and that innovation is not a linear process.
Comparison of two forms of strain decomposition in an elastic-plastic damaging model for concrete

In the paper a new modified form of the constitutive equations for concrete in the general framework for elastic-plastic damaging models proposed by the authors in (Contrafatto and Cuomo 2006 J. Plast. 22 2273–300) is presented. The modification concerns the definition of the internal energy potential. In the original paper the expression of the elastic energy potential depends on the sign of the trace of the elastic strain tensor. In the new formulation a decomposition of the strain tensor in its positive and negative component by means of a basis-free representation in terms of eigenprojections is used. As a consequence a different evolution of damage, affecting in a different way the tensile and compressive component of the strain tensor, is obtained. The two models belong to the class of continuum scalar damage models and are developed within the context of simple materials. The new model, first formulated in an arbitrary cartesian coordinate system, is presented in a principal axes representation, in order to reduce the algebraic complexity of the expressions and to make easier the analysis of simple load processes, while the treatment of the constitutive equations for the general case will be an object of future developments. A comparison between the predictions of the two models is performed by means of the analysis of some loading processes. The new formulation is able to overcome some drawbacks of the original model, especially in the tensile regime. In contrast, in the compressive regime, for which already the original formulation yielded satisfactory results, no change was detected.
Making Sense in Hypercompetitive Environments: A Cognitive Explanation for the Persistence of High Velocity Competition

This paper explores the cognitive aspects underlying industries in hypercompetitive environments. Hypercompetition represents a state of competition with rapidly escalating levels of competition and reduced periods of competitive advantage for firms. In hypercompetitive industries member firms act boldly and aggressively to create a state of competitive disequilibrium. In this paper we explore the particular conditions that managers encounter in making sense of hypercompetitive industries and argue that the nature of these conditions is such that conventional sensemaking frameworks will not work. We then describe the 'adaptive sensemaking' practices established in the literature for dealing with temporary turbulence and suggest that in hypercompetition those processes continue indefinitely. We argue that these processes can become institutionalized as standard operating procedures within firms, and as shared recipes within industries, which in turn perpetuates hyperturbulent conditions.
Green Supply Chain Management: A Potent Tool for Sustainable Green Marketing

The concept of ‘Greening’ is intrinsically linked to offsetting and abatement of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, resulting largely from fossil fuel–based and energy-intensive industrial operations and various anthropogenic actions. ‘Kyoto Protocol’ pioneered the concept of mandatory reduction and compliance of GHG reduction norms applicable for major polluting nations in the world by 2012 and beyond. This prompted the corporate world to go in for introduction and commercialisation of ‘clean’ and ‘green technologies’ to mass produce and market wide-ranging green products. This had in turn led to the concept of Green Marketing. The concept of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) has been a parallel development to push the green products in an ever-expanding market with huge future potential—given growing customer consciousness towards eco-friendly green products and changing lifestyles. The article reviews and analyses different dimensions and facets of GSCM, including the evolution of the concept, approaches of building the constructs of GSCM, implementation strategy, linkage with transport systems, ‘Lean’ concept in supply chain management (SCM), green innovations and sustainability issues of GSCM and Green Logistics strategies for evolving integrated GSCM system.
Near and dear? The role of location in CSR engagement

Research summary: Building on economic geography and institutional theory, we develop and test theory relating geographic variables to the strength of corporate social responsibility ( CSR) engagement and the cost of equity capital. For a large sample of U.S. firms over the period 1998-2009, we find strong and robust evidence that firms located in areas characterized by high levels of local CSR density score higher in CSR engagement. In addition, firms located close to major cities and financial centers exhibit higher CSR engagement compared to firms located in more remote areas. Moreover, the effect of CSR engagement on reducing equity financing costs is even greater for firms in high CSR density areas than for firms in low CSR density areas. Managerial summary: Does the location of CSR engagement by firms affect the strength of CSR engagement by their neighbors? Does the geography of engagement have an impact on financial performance? Our findings show that a firm's CSR engagement increases in areas where there is dense CSR engagement and when it is located near large cities. In these areas, norms, values, and knowledge related to CSR are transmitted to firms through face-to-face meetings and frequent social interactions with groups such as peers, labor unions, news media, universities, and community organizations, which tend to be concentrated in large cities. Our findings further highlight that CSR engagement reduces equity financing costs for firms in areas where CSR is widely practiced. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Effective Reconstruction of Data Perturbed by Random Projections

Random Projection (RP) has raised great concern among the research community of privacy-preserving data mining, due to its high efficiency and utility, e.g., keeping the euclidean distances among the data points. It was shown in [33] that, if the original data set composed of m attributes is multiplied by a mixing matrix of k\times m (m>;k) which is random and orthogonal on expectation, then the k series of perturbed data can be released for mining purposes. Given the data perturbed by RP and some necessary prior knowledge, to our knowledge, little work has been done in reconstructing the original data to recover some sensitive information. In this paper, we choose several typical scenarios in data mining with different assumptions on prior knowledge. For the cases that an attacker has full or zero knowledge of the mixing matrix R, respectively, we propose reconstruction methods based on Underdetermined Independent Component Analysis (UICA) if the attributes of the original data are mutually independent and sparse, and propose reconstruction methods based on Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) if the attributes of the original data are correlated and nonsparse. Simulation results show that our reconstructions achieve high recovery rates, and outperform the reconstructions based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Successful reconstructions essentially mean the leakage of privacy, so our work identify the possible risks of RP when it is used for data perturbations.
Molar Extinction Coefficient of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes

The molar extinction coefficient of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) is determined using fluorescence tagging, as well as atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging, which facilitate the correlation of nanotube concentrations with absorption spectra. Tagging of SWNTs is achieved using fluorescence-labeled single-strand DNA oligomers as the dispersion additive, while AFM imaging is used to determine the mass of SWNTs in the retentate of vacuum-filtered colloidal SWNT suspensions. The resulting absorption cross section for the first exciton transition of (6,5) nanotubes of 1.7 × 10–17 cm2 per C-atom corresponds to an extinction coefficient of (4400 ± 1000) M–1·cm–1, which is equivalent to an oscillator strength of 0.010 per carbon atom.
Study of the Forecasting Method for Railway Freight Traffic Volume Based on the System of National Economy

Railway transportation system is a complex system, and it is greatly influenced by national economy. Based on the qualitative analysis of the influence, we select GDP, proportion of the second industry, output of coal, output of steel, throughput goods of port, infrastructure investment, railway market share and volume of freight traffic as the influence index and construct the relation among them by BP neural networks model. We also use the model to forecast the volume of freight traffic and get a satisfying effect.
Infrastructure Investment: Combining Listed with Unlisted

In this paper we discuss…The term ‘infrastructure assets’ and the key investment characteristics investors look for.How the listed and unlisted sectors differ and how allocations to listed infrastructure are determined.The benefits of combining listed and unlisted infrastructure and the benchmarks that can be used for unlisted infrastructure.The most appropriate methodology for determining the impact of combining listed and unlisted infrastructure.The impact of combining listed and unlisted infrastructure and the practical applications for adding listed infrastructure to a portfolio of unlisted infrastructure assets.
An Experimental Prototype for Automatically Testing Student Programs using Token Patterns

Automated systems and tools for assessing student programs are now commonly used for enhancing the teaching and learning of computer programming. However, many such systems employ rudimentary techniques in comparing program outputs when testing student programs for determining their correctness. These comparison techniques are typically inflexible and disallow even slight deviations of program output which a human assessor would normally tolerate. This may give rise to student frustrations and other undesirable pedagogical issues that can undermine the benefits of using these assessment tools. This paper presents an experimental prototype we have developed that adopts a token-pattern-based approach to accommodate more tolerant output comparisons in testing student programs, followed by a preliminary validation of the prototype by showing how it can be configured to handle the assessment of variants of
Developments in the Biology of Neuroblastoma: Implications for Diagnosis and Treatment

There has been little improvement in the prognosis for neuroblastoma in childhood over recent years. The authors review recent investigations into the biology of the tumour and discuss their implications for diagnosis and therapy. Immunological studies suggest a heterogeneity in cell‐surface antigens on different human neuroblastoma lines/fresh tumours. The reagents being developed against these antigens will play a role in the diagnosis of metastatic spread, and may be useful in autologous bone‐marrow transplantation programmes. The occasional in vivo differentiation of the tumour is reviewed, with particular reference to in vitro studies on the differentiation of human and murine neuroblastoma cell‐lines. This work may have implications for therapy if ways can be found to cause in vivo differentiation of the tumour into a benign ganglioneuroma.
ОБЛІК І АНАЛІЗ ВИРОБНИЧИХ ВИТРАТ В УМОВАХ БЮДЖЕТУВАННЯ: ТЕОРІЯ І ПРАКТИКА

Dissertation is devoted to grounding of the theoretical statements and working out the practical recommendations on improving organization and methods of accounting and analysis of production costs under the conditions of budgeting. Peculiarities of the technological process of extracting gas and gas condensate have been detected, their influence on working out accounting for production costs has been determined. Composition of production costs of gas producing companies has been specified as well as their classification for accounting purposes has been developed. Expediency of introducing budgeting at the enterprises of gas producing industry has been grounded as well as complex system of accounting and analytical provision of production costs’ management under the conditions of budgeting has been worked out. Forms of source documents and reports have been developed as well as analytical accounting has been improved according to the objects of cost accounting (responsibility centers, cost centers, costs’ incurrence places) and costing objects. The organizational and methodic aspects of carrying out economic analysis of production costs for budgeting purposes have been improved that enables optimizing financial results of gas producing companies, minimizing cost of products.
Is It Still Pizza, Spaghetti and Mandolino? Effect of Governance Reforms on Corporate Ownership in Italy

This paper investigates the effect of corporate governance reforms on the balance between ownership and control in a country characterized by poor investor protection. We use the example of Italy, where major reforms were passed in 1998 to protect minority shareholders from the risks of expropriation on account of the exercise of high voting rights (or high control) by the ultimate owner despite low cash flow rights (or low ownership). Using a two-stage longitudinal research design incorporating both quantitative and qualitative analyses (1995-2005), we find that reforms led to improved disclosure and greater representation of minority shareholders. In turn, this led to a decline in the risk of expropriation of minority shareholders. The reforms had a greater effect on firms where an institutional investor was present. We also find that while reforms led to an increase in the cash flow rights of the ultimate owner, they did not lead to a decrease in voting rights. This paper highlights the importance of studying the mechanisms by which the content of reforms affects actual business practices through the use of longitudinal research designs and the crucial role played by institutional investors in improving governance practices of firms. This paper also suggests that corporate governance reforms are more likely to be successful when regulatory coercion is accompanied by provisions that facilitate market-based control mechanisms.
Gas Sensing Properties of SWCNT and Teflon AF Composites

The electrical properties of Telfon AF thin films loaded with single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) have been studied in the presence of water vapor, CO, CH4, and NO2. In pure Teflon AF and at low concentration of SWCNT the impedance of the films decreased approximately exponentially with increasing the relative humidity, whereas the addition of nanotubes amplified the change by two orders. At higher concentration of nanotubes (above the percolation threshold), the effect of H2O on the conductance was negligible. However, a significant effect was observed in these films for NO2 -the sensitivity (expressed as a relative change of the resistance DeltaR/R per ppm of the target gas) was in the order of 1%. For the other gases studied the effects were at least 103 times smaller. It was also found that the sensitivity to NO2 could be enhanced by irradiation with UV light, which induced both photo-desorption and -adsorption phenomena. The title compound provides hence a chemically inert and non-swelling material with a rigid SWCNT network suitable for detecting high humidity levels or low NO2 levels. The material can be used for sensing at room temperature as well as in high temperature environments (up to 280degC in case of NO2).
Firing Frictions and the U.S. Mergers and Acquisitions Market

Following the adoption of state laws that increase firing costs, there is an immediate reduction in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity and increase in the percentage of withdrawn mergers. The reduction in M&A activity persists in the long-run and is most pronounced in labor intensive industries and for large deals. We corroborate these findings using a sample of publicly traded acquirers. Finally, event study analyses suggest that the market anticipates that firing costs will disproportionately affect active acquirers. Overall, this link between firing frictions and M&A activity suggests that post-merger labor force restructuring is an important source of M&A value.
The Mediating Role Of Competitive Advantage On The Link Between Hotel Environmental Marketing Strategy And Hotel Performance In Samui Island Hotels

This study building on the resource-based view, we develop a model of the mediating role of competitive advantage on the link between hotel environmental marketing strategy and hotel performance in Samui Island hotels, Suratthani province, Thailand. Data collected from 154 the hotel manager’s questionnaires were carried out in the period between September 2013 and December 2013. The findings suggest that first of all, the level of the hotel environmental marketing strategy (i.e., price, distribution, and processes) increases the hotel performance (i.e., market performance, financial performance, environmental performance, and overall performance). Secondly, the level of the hotel environmental marketing strategy (i.e., price, distribution, promotion, and processes) increases the level of the competitive advantage. Finally of all, the relationship between the hotel environmental marketing strategy (i.e., price) and the hotel performance (i.e., market performance, financial performance, and overall performance) will be mediated by the competitive advantage. The type of competitive advantage is both perfect mediator and partial mediator.
Multinomial classification of web attacks using improved fuzzy rules learning by Neuro-Fuzzy

Neural Networks are used together with fuzzy inference systems in Neuro-Fuzzy, a prominent synergy of rules parameters unsupervised discovery and supervised tuning of classification model. The binary classification task in Network Forensics applications are the most widely used and applied for detection “benign” and “malicious” activities. However, in many areas it is not enough to distinguish between those two classes, yet also important to provide a more specific determination of what exactly “malicious” sub-class some action belongs to. Despite the inherited properties and limitations of Neural Networks, the Neuro-Fuzzy may be tuned to handle non-linear data in multinomial classification problems, which is not a simple addition to a binary classification model. This work targets the optimization of the Neuro-Fuzzy output layer construction and rules tuning in multinomial classification problems as well as solving accompanying challenges. Moreover, we performed extensive study of ML methods designed for binaryand multinomial classification problems. We believe that our approach will help to derive more accurate fuzzy rules multinomial model to be used for web attacks identification.
Nutritional and Quality Assessment of Peanut Milk Blend

Peanut (Arachis hypogeae) is an annual herbaceous plant belonging to family leguminoseae. Parachinar variety of peanut was used in this study. Both roasted and raw peanuts were used to prepare milk. To improve taste and overall acceptability, various times and temperatures of soaking were used. It was found that soaking of roasted peanuts in ordinary water with pH 7 for 1 hour at 40°C gave good results. Peanut milk was prepared by grinding the pre-shelled and pre-soaked roasted peanuts in an osterizer with same amount of simple water. The resulting slurry was then diluted with water so that 100 g shelled peanuts produced 100 ml of peanut milk. The peanut milk was then blended with various levels of skim milk powder and sugar. The blending levels of skim milk and sugar @ 10% and 1% on total solid basis of peanut respectively were more stable and acceptable as compared to other treatments. Further for nutritional value, the peanut milk from roasted peanuts so prepared was compared with cow’s milk, regarding different nutrients. The results showed that the peanut milk blend had more protein contents and minerals like Mg, K and Fe than cow’s milk.
It has to be ME (not YOU): the role of competitive message on the effectiveness of sales promotion

In the present study, we find that a restrictive message that limits the availability of the product amount (vs. purchasing time) is perceived as more competitive by consumers. Previous literature on gender difference suggests that men (vs. women) tend to respond more positively to competition in a competitive setting. Based on the previous findings on gender difference, we prove that gender has a moderating role in predicting more positive attitudes toward a competitively framed sales promotion. In addition, acquiring the products over competition may provide the consumer with a sense of triumph. Therefore, male consumers' desire to win might elicit a more positive attitude toward the product and higher purchase intention under a competitively framed sales promotion. As hypothesized, we also find that amount-limited sales promotions lead to a more positive attitude toward the products and a higher purchase intention for male customers who are more competitively inclined than women. However, no such effect was found in time-limited sales promotions.
Deep water formation in the North Pacific and deglacial CO2 rise

Deep water formation in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean is widely thought to influence deglacial CO_2 rise and climate change; here we suggest that deep water formation in the North Pacific may also play an important role. We present paired radiocarbon and boron isotope data from foraminifera from sediment core MD02-2489 at 3640 m in the North East Pacific. These show a pronounced excursion during Heinrich Stadial 1, with benthic-planktic radiocarbon offsets dropping to ~350 years, accompanied by a decrease in benthic δ^(11)B. We suggest that this is driven by the onset of deep convection in the North Pacific, which mixes young shallow waters to depth, old deep waters to the surface, and low-pH water from intermediate depths into the deep ocean. This deep water formation event was likely driven by an increase in surface salinity, due to subdued atmospheric/monsoonal freshwater flux during Heinrich Stadial 1. The ability of North Pacific Deep Water (NPDW) formation to explain the excursions seen in our data is demonstrated in a series of experiments with an intermediate complexity Earth system model. These experiments also show that breakdown of stratification in the North Pacific leads to a rapid ~30 ppm increase in atmospheric CO_2, along with decreases in atmospheric δ^(13)C and Δ^(14)C, consistent with observations of the early deglaciation. Our inference of deep water formation is based mainly on results from a single sediment core, and our boron isotope data are unavoidably sparse in the key HS1 interval, so this hypothesis merits further testing. However, we note that there is independent support for breakdown of stratification in shallower waters during this period, including a minimum in δ^(15)N, younging in intermediate water ^(14)C, and regional warming. We also re-evaluate deglacial changes in North Pacific productivity and carbonate preservation in light of our new data and suggest that the regional pulse of export production observed during the Bolling-Allerod is promoted by relatively stratified conditions, with increased light availability and a shallow, potent nutricline. Overall, our work highlights the potential of NPDW formation to play a significant and hitherto unrealized role in deglacial climate change and CO_2 rise.