Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The performance implications of management fads and fashions: an empirical study

The initial adoption of many management fads and fashions is frequently fuelled by studies claiming direct associations between such practices and organizational performance. Pilot work with practitioners has identified (1) a developing market orientation, (2) organizational culture management, (3) strategic human resource management (HRM) and (4) environmental management as four concepts that have emerged consistently over the last few years. However, a literature review revealed that the results were equivocal in each of these four areas of research, with some studies finding a link with performance and others being less certain. This paper argues that a potential explanation for these results is the discipline-specific nature of the majority of these studies. Consequently, the aim of this study is to provide descriptive, empirical evidence of the relative importance of market orientation, organizational culture, environmental management and strategic HRM in terms of organizational performance. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the links between these four concepts and organizational performance. The paper begins with a brief review of the literature on each concept, with a focus on the implied and stated links with performance. Thereafter, the methodology adopted for the study is discussed, leading to presentation of the findings. The paper culminates with a series of discussions, implications and conclusions.
Pointing Out Differences: Consumer Evaluations of Comparative Information Across Product Types

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of comparative claims across search and experience product types. Data was obtained from 159 Taiwanese college students. Results reveal that comparative claims used in blogs (compared to those in print ads) produce lower counterarguments and consumers more easily accept claims made on a blog. Comparative claims lead to higher brand attitude and purchase intention for search products on the blog; however, noncomparative ads lead to higher brand attitude and purchase intention for experience products on the blog. For both search and experience products, there is no significant difference.
CTH03-1: Reduced Complexity Receiver Design for MIMO-OFDM Systems with Space-Time-Frequency Coding

Space-time-frequency coding is an important technology for OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) under MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) channels to achieve high speed wireless multimedia transmission. Traditionally, multiple DFT (discrete Fourier transform) blocks, each corresponding to one receive antenna, are employed at the receiver of a MIMO-OFDM system with space-time- frequency coding, which induces huge complexity. In this paper, we propose a pre-DFT processing scheme for such a system, where the number of DFT blocks employed can be adjusted, thus enabling effective complexity and performance tradeoff. Simulation results will show that, under some channel conditions, the performance of the proposed scheme can be almost as good as the traditional optimal scheme but with much lower complexity.
Deep learning for facial expression recognition: A step closer to a smartphone that knows your moods

By growing the capacity and processing power of the handheld devices nowadays, a wide range of capabilities can be implemented in these devices to make them more intelligent and user friendly. Determining the mood of the user can be used in order to provide suitable reactions from the device in different conditions. One of the most studied ways of mood detection is by using facial expressions, which is still one of the challenging fields in pattern recognition and machine learning science. Deep Neural Networks (DNN) have been widely used in order to overcome the difficulties in facial expression classification. In this paper it is shown that the classification accuracy is significantly lower when the network is trained with one database and tested with a different database. A solution for obtaining a general and robust network is given as well.
Protein Fingerprinting for the Determination of Relatedness in Acinetobacter calcoaceticus subspecies anitratus Isolated from Patients in a Surgical Intensive Care Unit

Abstract The use of protein fingerprinting for the establishment of relatedness among isolates of Acinetobacter calcoaceticus subspecies anitratus, isolated from patients in a surgical intensive care unit was examined. Poly-acrylamide gel electrophoresis was used to analyze the cellular proteins from whole cell lysates of 14 intensive care unit A calcoaceticus subspecies anitratus isolates and 11 control strains. Antimicrobial susceptibilities and plasmid profiles were also determined for all isolates. All intensive care unit A calcoaceticus subspecies anitratus isolates exhibited identical cellular protein fingerprints, no detectable plasmids, and minimum inhibitory concentrations within ±1 log2 dilution of the mode value for each of the antimicrobial agents tested. The other clinical isolates demonstrated a range of antimicrobial susceptibilities, various numbers and sizes of plasmids, and distinctly different protein fingerprints. These data indicate that protein fingerprinting may be useful as an epidemiologic tool in A calcoaceticus subspecies anitratus outbreaks and this method deserves further study.
Identifying entrepreneurs through risk taking behaviour: illegal downloading

Purpose – This paper aims to explore, and is the first in a series, whether it is possible to use risk-taking activities as way of identifying potential entrepreneurs. The research examines the motivations of individuals to engage in deviant consumer behaviour, in this case illegal downloading and the link between this behaviour and possible entrepreneurial characteristics. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology approach was of a quantitative nature using a 32-item questionnaire disseminated to 215 undergraduate students at a UK university. Findings – Although there was strong evidence of entrepreneurial traits existing across the participants, including risk-taking propensity, no relationship could be found between risk-taking propensity and illegal downloading. Reasons put forward for these findings were that the level of risk involved was too low to be identified as such by the downloaders, even though the non-downloaders were worried about being caught and, therefore, were not participating in .
An Efficient Method for Link Prediction in Complex Multiplex Networks

A great variety of artificial and natural systems can be abstracted into a set of entities interacting with each other. Such abstractions can very well represent the underlying dynamics of the system when modeled as network of vertices coupled by edges. Prediction of dynamics in these structures based on topological attribute or dependency relations is an important task. Link Prediction in such complex networks is regarded useful in almost all type of networks as it can be used to extract missing information, identify spurious interactions and evaluate network evolving mechanisms. Various similarity and likelihood based indices have been employed to infer different topological and relation based information to form a link prediction algorithm. These algorithms however are too specific in domain and/or do not encapsulate the generic nature of the real world information. In most natural and engineered systems, the entities are linked with multiple type of associations and relations which play a factor in the dynamics of the network. This forms a multiple subsystem or a multiple layer of networked information. These networks are regarded as Multiplex Networks. This work presents an approach for link prediction on Multiplex Networks where the associations are learned from the multiple layer of networks for link prediction purposes.
First Results From a High-Resolution Small Animal SiPM PET Insert for PET/MR Imaging at 7T

We present the initial results from a small animal PET insert designed to be operated inside a 7T MRI. The insert fits within the 114 mm inner diameter of the Bruker BGA-12S gradient coil while accommodating the Bruker 35 mm volume RF coil (outer diameter 60 mm), both used in the Bruker 70/20 MRI systems. The PET insert is a ring comprising 16 detectors. Each detector has a dual-layer offset (DLO) lutetium-yttrium oxyorthsilicate (LYSO) scintillator array read out by two SensL SPMArray4B SiPM arrays. The DLO scintillator has bottom (top) layers of: 22 × 10 (21 × 9) crystals of size 1.2 × 1.2 × 6 (4) mm3 for a total of 409 crystals per block, providing an axial extent of 28.17 mm. The detector outputs are multiplexed to four signals using a custom readout board and digitized using the OpenPET data acquisition platform. The detector flood images successfully resolve over 99% of the crystals, with average energy resolution of 12.5 ± 2.0% at 511 keV. Testing of the PET system inside the MRI showed that the PET insert had no effect on MRI image homogeneity and only a small effect on echo planar images (EPI) signal to noise ratio (SNR) (-9%), with neither PET nor MRI images showing obvious artefacts. These acquisitions used the OpenPET operating in “oscilloscope mode” with USB2.0 interface, allowing a maximum total singles event rate of 280 kcps, strongly limiting the count rate capabilities of the system. The PET radial spatial resolution (as measured with a 22Na point source and FBP-3DRP reconstruction) is 1.17 mm at the centre, degrading to 1.86 mm at a 15 mm radial offset. Simultaneous phantom and mouse PET/MR imaging produced good quality images that were free of any obvious artefacts.
THE IMPACT OF FISCAL SUPPORT ON EARNINGS MANAGEMENT: EVIDENCE FROM EQUITY OFFERINGS IN CHINA

The Impact of fiscal support on earnings management: Evidence from equity offerings in China By HE Guanming Master of Philosophy It is well documented in existing literature that firms manipulate earnings before IPOs (initial public offerings) and SEOs (seasoned equity offerings). This study contributes to prior research by being the first to examine whether fiscal support from local governments has impact on the earnings management behavior of Chinese listed firms. Using data from firms that conduct IPOs and SEOs from 1997 to 2006, I find that firms are less likely to manipulate earnings prior to the offerings if they enjoy more income tax savings attributed to the preferential tax favor or more financial subsidy from the local governments. The findings of the study have important policy implications. Noticeably, the new Enterprise Income Tax Law effective from 1 January, 2008 abrogates the original tax system that allows various preferential tax rates for firms of different properties and stipulates a 25% enterprise income tax rate for all firms in China. Given the abolishment of the preferential tax favor, local governments lose a potent avenue of lending fiscal support to the listed firms. To this end, based on the findings in this study, I expect that the opportunistic earnings management by listed firms will probably be aggravated after the new income tax law is duly enforced.
Design of Electrically Small Metamaterial Antenna With ELC and EBG Loading

Two novel metamaterial antennas applied for WLAN and WiMAX are proposed in this letter. Antenna 1 is composed of a monopole radiator with an electric-LC (ELC) element. By employing these structures, three frequency bands of 2.49 ~ 2.55, 3.0 ~ 3.68, and 5.03 ~ 6.04 GHz are achieved. Each band is well matched and can be easily adjusted. Antenna 2 is integrating with EBG structure, which has a good impedance matching in 2.49 ~ 2.53 GHz, together with an ultrawideband of 2.95 ~ 6.07 GHz. Both antennas have operational bands covering WiMAX in 2.5/3.5/5.5-GHz and WLAN in 5.2/5.8-GHz, omnidirectional radiation patterns over the operating bands. The proposed antennas have the advantages of simple fabrication, miniaturization, and compactness, which can be applied to wireless mobile communication system.
Higher order epistasis and fitness peaks

We show that higher order epistasis has a substantial impact on evolutionary dynamics by analyzing peaks in the fitness landscapes. There are 193,270,310 fitness graphs, or cube orientations, for 4-locus systems, distributed on 511, 863 isomorphism classes. We identify all fitness graphs with 6 or more peaks. 81 percent of them imply 4-way epistasis, whereas 9 percent of all 4-locus fitness graphs imply 4-way epistasis. Fitness graphs are useful in that they reflect the entire collection of fitness landscapes rather than focusing on a particular model. Our results depend on a characterization of fitness graphs that imply $n$-way epistasis. The characterization is expressed in terms of a partition property that can be derived from Hall's marriage theorem for bipartite graphs. A similar partition condition holds for any partial order. The result answers an open problem posed at a conference on interactions between algebra and the sciences at the Max Planck institute.
DUAL ULTRASTRUCTURAL LOCALIZATION OF ACID PHOSPHATASE IN MOUSE KIDNEY TUBULE CELLS

Localization of a membrane-associated acid phosphatase of the tubule epithelial cells of mouse kidney was demonstrated at the fine structural level using a postdiazo coupling technique designed by Smith and Fishman (1969). Enzyme activity appeared in the plasma and infolding membranes and in the lysosomes of epithelial cells of both proximal and distal tubules. Basal infolding membranes were stained most intensely by dense deposits of the enzyme product, which were localized in the outer leaflets. Basement membranes underlying the tubule cells also revealed dense enzyme product. These results were compared with those obtained by Gomori's technique on the same mouse kidney. In this case, lysosomes were positive and infolding and basement membranes were negative. The plasma membrane acid phosphatase is considered to be the morphologic counterpart of microsomal acid phosphatase observed in earlier biochemical studies in our laboratory. Finally, these findings can be interpreted as suggesting separate kidney microsomal and lysosomal isoenzymes of acid phosphatase, each possessing a separate ultrastructural identity.
Bone scan appearances in a case of Ollier's disease.

A 63-year-old woman had a large, hard tumor surrounding her left elbow joint. She reported that it had been growing slowly since the 1950s. The tumor was not painful, and there was only a slight restriction of movement. The bone scan showed involvement of the left side of the body, largely confined to the upper limb. Radiographs of the left arm showed multiple radiolucent lesions surrounding the elbow joint. A diagnosis of Ollier's disease was made. This comprises enchondromatosis involving predominantly one side of the body. The bone scan clearly documents increased bone metabolism in Ollier's disease.
DNA methylation-independent growth restriction and altered developmental programming in a mouse model of preconception male alcohol exposure

ABSTRACT The preconception environment is a significant modifier of dysgenesis and the development of environmentally-induced disease. To date, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs) have been exclusively associated with maternal exposures, yet emerging evidence suggests male-inherited alterations in the developmental program of sperm may be relevant to the growth-restriction phenotypes of this condition. Using a mouse model of voluntary consumption, we find chronic preconception male ethanol exposure associates with fetal growth restriction, decreased placental efficiency, abnormalities in cholesterol trafficking, sex-specific alterations in the genetic pathways regulating hepatic fibrosis, and disruptions in the regulation of imprinted genes. Alterations in the DNA methylation profiles of imprinted loci have been identified in clinical studies of alcoholic sperm, suggesting the legacy of paternal drinking may transmit via heritable disruptions in the regulation of imprinted genes. However, the capacity of sperm-inherited changes in DNA methylation to broadly transmit environmentally-induced phenotypes remains unconfirmed. Using bisulphite mutagenesis and second-generation deep sequencing, we find no evidence to suggest that these phenotypes or any of the associated transcriptional changes are linked to alterations in the sperm-inherited DNA methylation profile. These observations are consistent with recent studies examining the male transmission of diet-induced phenotypes and emphasize the importance of epigenetic mechanisms of paternal inheritance beyond DNA methylation. This study challenges the singular importance of maternal alcohol exposures and suggests paternal alcohol abuse is a significant, yet overlooked epidemiological factor complicit in the genesis of alcohol-induced growth defects, and may provide mechanistic insight into the failure of FASD children to thrive postnatally.
Government Regulation, Corporate Board, and Corporate Value: Evidence from China

My study examines how institutional features of transition economies, i.e., goverment ownership, legal investor protection, and government regulation distort the choice of directors, and the firm value impact of independent director and political-connected director in China. We find that SOEs would be more likely to choose political-connected directors without professional background, but Non-SOEs are more likely to have independent directors, or political-connected directors with professional business background. Appointment of independent directors has no effect on firm value, as there is no mature market for directors and the dominant shareholder can easily remove independent directors due to weak legal investor protection in China. Political-connected directors without professional business background are negatively associated with firm value. Although those directors can help company establish relationship with the government, firms might sacrifice due to their less professionalism.
Comparing Biocompatibility of Nanocrystalline Titanium and Titanium-Oxide with Microcrystalline Titanium

Titanium (Ti) is the material of choice for orthopaedic applications because it is biocompatible and encourages osteoblast ingrowth. It was shown that the biocompatibility of Ti metal is due to the presence of a thin native sub-stoichiometric titanium oxide layer which enhances the adsorption of mediating proteins on the surface [1]. The present studies were devised to evaluate the adhesion, survival, and growth of cells on the surface of new engineered nano-crystal films of titanium and titanium oxides and compare them with orthopaedic-grade titanium with microcrystals. The engineered nano-crystal films with hydrophilic properties are produced by employing an ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) technique. IBAD combines physical vapor deposition with concurrent ion beam bombardment in a high vacuum environment to produce films (with 3 to 70 nm grain size) with superior properties. These films are “stitched” to the artificial orthopaedic implant materials with characteristics that affect the wettability and mechanical properties of the coatings. To characterize the biocompatibility of these nano-engineered surfaces, we have studied osteoblast function including cell adhesion, growth, and differentiation on different nanostructured samples. Cell responses to surfaces were examined using SAOS-2 osteoblast-like cells. We also studied a correlation between the surface nanostructures and the cell growth by characterizing the SAOS-2 cells with immunofluorescence and measuring the amount alizarin red concentration produced after 7 and 14 days. The number of adherent cells was determined by means of nuclei quantification on the nanocrystalline Ti, TiO2, and microcrystalline Ti and analysis was performed with Image J. Our experimental results indicated that nanocrystalline TiO2 is superior to both nano and microcrystalline Ti in supporting growth, adhesion, and proliferation. Improving the quality of surface oxide, i.e. fabricating stoichiometric oxides as well as nanoengineering the surface topology, is crucial for increasing the biocompatibility of Ti implant materials.
Impact of Military Expenditures on Third-World Debt

ABSTRACT The general purpose of this paper is to determine the main causes of Third World external public debt, and in particular the role military expenditures have played in contributing to that debt, For purposes of analysis, it was found useful to separate developing countries into two groups. The first were classified as largely undynamic and resource constrained, while the second group were dynamic and less constrained by such factors as domestic savings and foreign exchange. Examining each group separately, it was found that military expenditures have significantly contributed to the external debt position of the constrained group of countries, but not those countries with relatively high foreign exchange earning capacity. Given that military expenditures are largely “unproductive”, it appears that the resource constrained countries will face particularly severe problems in servicing their external liabilities.
The mediating effect of supplier oriented purchasing on conflict in inter‐firm relationships

Purpose – The paper has two main purposes: to define and examine supplier oriented purchasing (SOP) as an effective relational exchange practice for organizational buyers and to empirically examine the degree to which supplier oriented purchasing can mediate the impact of manifest conflict on buyer‐supplier relationships.Design/methodology/approach – A model is developed and tested examining the relationship among manifest conflict, relationship satisfaction and SOP. Data collection involved judgment sampling and survey methodology in a field setting using organizational buyers as subjects. Construct measures were based on existing measures and previous research. Measurement reliability and validity were established using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Hypotheses were tested using SEM and accepted methods for testing mediation effects.Findings – All hypotheses were supported concerning SOP mediating the negative impact of manifest conflict on relationship satisfaction. Post hoc analyses of .
Family influences on strategic decision-making processes in family firms

Family firms can be characterised by a unique business setting, where family and work conditions are closely intertwined. This particular business setting promotes distinctive strategic behaviour. Yet, scholarly understanding of strategic decision processes in family firms remains limited, particularly from a perspective that pays attention to the role of micro-processes in the overall decision-making process. This study addresses this gap from a strategy-as-practice perspective and by posing the research question: ‘how does the family context influence the strategic decision-making process in the family firm? ’ The author uses a critical realist lens and case study method to examine multiple strategic decisions across 7 family firms.