Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Free-flow electrophoresis with electrode-less injection molded chips

In this work we present the first approach towards low-cost free-flow electrophoresis (FFE) devices utilizing injection molding as a microfabrication process which has the potential to manufacture FFE chips at a cost which make their use commercially viable. This is achieved by realizing a new straightforward micro free-flow electrophoresis (μFFE) design ensuring both, bubble free electrophoretic separation and effective electrical connection by implementing miniaturized partitioning bars. This creates a defined open gap of 20 μm in height and 500 μm in width between separation zone and electrode channels. The thermoplastic μFFE chips are ready to use, there is no need for a subsequent labor-intensive implementation of membranes or salt bridges to separate the electrode channels from the separation zone.
Situation awareness in context-aware case-based decision support

Humans naturally reuse recalled knowledge to solve problems and this includes understanding the context i.e. the information that identifies or characterizes these problems. For problems in complex and dynamic environments, providing effective solutions by operators requires their understanding of the situation of the environment together with the context. Context-aware case-based reasoning (CBR) applications uses the context of users to provide solutions to problems. The combination of a context-aware CBR with general domain knowledge has been shown to improve similarity assessment, solving domain specific problems and problems of uncertain knowledge. Whilst these CBR approaches in context awareness address problems of incomplete data and domain specific problems, future problems that are situation-dependent cannot be anticipated due to lack of the facility to predict the state of the environment. This paper builds on prior work to present an approach that combines situation awareness, context awareness, case-based reasoning, and general domain knowledge in a decision support system. In combining these concepts the architecture of this system provides the capability to handle uncertain knowledge and predict the state of the environment in order to solve specific domain problems. The paper evaluates the concepts through a trial implementation in the flow assurance control domain to predict the formation of hydrate in sub-sea oil and gas pipelines. The results show a clear improvement in both similarity assessment and problem solving prediction.
What Are the Effective Strategic Orientations for New Product Success under Different Environments? An Empirical Study of Chinese Businesses*

Innovation is an organization's spanning process that must continually change in response to, and in anticipation of, changing business environments. Research in the fields of marketing and management has examined individual strategic orientations (SOs) (such as market orientation) and their relationship to innovation performance. Few studies, however, have compared the effectiveness of different SOs for innovation performance in a single study. It is also not clear from previous research whether the business environment influences the effectiveness of the SOs. The objective of this paper is therefore twofold: it aims to evaluate (1) whether a focus on the customer, the technology, the competitor, or the interfunctional coordination, will have the greatest impact on new product success, and (2) whether the effectiveness of a specific SO varies with the environment. Data were collected from more than 500 senior executives in a wide range of manufacturing and service firms in China. Using cluster analysis and an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model, which are commonly adopted to examine the effects of environments on the relationship between strategy and performance, we identified four subgroups of firms facing distinctively different market and competitive environments. As predicted, the results show that all four SOs have (albeit to a different degree) a significant and positive relationship with innovation performance. More importantly, the results point to the relative advantage in pursuing a specific SO by taking into account its effect under different environments and the effects of other SOs. However, the particularly strong effect of technology orientation compared to that of the other SOs on new product performance across all clusters is somewhat surprising. We offer some tentative explanations for this finding, though further research will be required to fully understand it. Overall, our findings indicate the need for managers to be responsive to environmental contexts and to allocate resources to pursue the effective (hence appropriate) strategic orientations for the specific context.
Is data quality enough for a clinical decision?: Apply machine learning and avoid bias

This paper provides a practical guideline for the assurance and (re-)usage of clinical data. It proposes a process which aims to provide a systematic data quality assurance even without involving a medical domain expert. Especially when (re-)using clinical data, data quality is an important topic because clinical data are not purposely collected. Therefore, data driven conclusions might be false, because a given dataset is not representative. These false data driven conclusions could even harm the life of patients. Thus, all researchers should adhere to some basic principles that can prevent false conclusions. Twelve empirical experiments were conducted in order to prove that my process is able to assure data quality with respect to the descriptive and predictive analysis. Descriptive results obtained by applying stratified sampling are conflicting in four out of nine population inputs. Sampling is carried based on the top ranked feature drawn by the Contextual Data Quality Assurance (CDQA). Between datasets these features are confirmed by the Mutual Data Quality Assurance (MDQA). Stratified sampled inputs improve predictive results compared to raw data. Both Area Under the Curve (AUC) scores and accuracy scores increase by three percent.
Market Liquidity, Managerial Autonomy and the Push for Privacy: Why Do Publicly-Listed Firms Delist?

We analyze a publicly-traded firm's decision to stay public or go private when managerial autonomy from shareholder intervention affects the supply of productive inputs by management. We show that both the advantage and the disadvantage of public ownership relative to private ownership lie in the liquidity of public ownership. While the liquidity of public ownership lets shareholders trade easily and supply capital at a lower cost, the liquidity-engendered trading also results in stochastic shocks to a firm's shareholder base. This exposes management to uncertainty regarding the identity of future shareholders and their extent of intervention in management decisions and in turn curtails managerial incentives. By contrast, because of its illiquidity, private ownership provides a stable shareholder base and improves these inputprovision incentives but results in a higher cost of capital. Thus, capital market liquidity, while being a principal advantage of public ownership, also has a surprising "dark side" that discourages public ownership. Our model takes seriously a key difference between private and public equity markets in that, unlike the private market, the firm's shareholder base, namely the extent of investor participation, is stochastic in the public market. This allows us to extract predictions about the effects of investor participation on the stock price level and volatility and on the public firm's incentives to go private, thereby providing a link between investor participation and firm participation in public markets. Lesser investor participation induces lower and more volatile stock prices, encouraging public firms to go private, whereas greater investor participation encourages younger firms to go public. Moreover, IPO underpricing is optimal because it is shown to lead to a higher and less volatile post-IPO stock price, greater autonomy for the manager and a higher supply of privately-costly managerial inputs.
Efficient Color Histogram Indexing for Quadratic Form Distance Functions

An improved shipping container having novel locking features in the end panel and corner flaps. The novel locking features improved bulge resistance at the end panels from sideward bulge of the product. The improved container comprises a pair of corner flaps being hinged from the side panels and folded inwardly against an end panel with the two corner flaps and end panel on each side of the container having a quadruple lock. The lock is formed by providing a locking tab on each corner flap as well as a pair of locking tabs on the end panel with the end panel and corner flaps locking tabs being designed to be swung and locked in the opening formed by the aligned mating locking tab.
Robust controller design using the Large Gain Theorem: The full-state feedback case

This paper presents full-state feedback controller synthesis methods that are robust to inverse additive uncertainty via the Large Gain Theorem. In particular, the controller synthesis methods can account for unstable uncertainties. Controllers are designed to either maximize robustness or maximize performance while satisfying a linear matrix inequality (LMI) that enforces a sufficient condition on the minimum gain of the closed-loop system. The Large Gain Theorem is used to prove the robust input-output stability of the system subject to inverse additive uncertainty. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the proposed controller design methods.
Information Technology Adoption in Small Family Businesses for Developing Economies

A gap has always existed between affluent countries with access to modern Information Technology (IT) adopted in areas of business management and less technologically developed countries living with more outdated technologies used in business and management areas. Although it is commonly acknowledged that IT adoption in organization makes a significant contribution to the economic and social progress of a country, it is surprising that the activities of such businesses in developing countries have not received greater scrutiny, particularly in South Asia. This paper describes the adoption process of IT within Small Family Businesses (SFBs), especially in South Asia. In addition, it examines the factors relevant to SFBs managers, owners and staff.
Heartfelt Self: Cardio‐Visual Integration Affects Self‐Face Recognition and Interoceptive Cortical Processing

Abstract The sense of body‐ownership relies on the representation of both interoceptive and exteroceptive signals coming from one's body. However, it remains unknown how the integration of bodily signals coming from “outside” and “inside” the body is instantiated in the brain. Here, we used a modified version of the Enfacement Illusion to investigate whether the integration of visual and cardiac information can alter self‐face recognition (Experiment 1) and neural responses to heartbeats (Experiment 2). We projected a pulsing shade, that was synchronous or asynchronous with the participant's heartbeat, onto a picture depicting the participant's face morphed with the face of an unfamiliar other. Results revealed that synchronous (vs. asynchronous) cardio‐visual stimulation led to increased self‐identification with the other's face (Experiment 1), while during stimulation, synchronicity modulated the amplitude of the Heartbeat Evoked Potential, an electrophysiological index of cortical interoceptive processing (Experiment 2). Importantly, the magnitude of the illusion‐related effects was dependent on, and increased linearly, with the participants’ Interoceptive Accuracy. These results provide the first direct neural evidence for the integration of interoceptive and exteroceptive signals in bodily self‐awareness.
The Ethics of Conducting Graduate Medical Education Research on Residents

The field of graduate medical education (GME) research is attracting increased attention and broader participation. The authors review the special ethical and methodological considerations pertaining to medical education research. Because residents are at once a convenient and captive study population, a risk of coercion exists, making the provision of consent important. The role of the institutional review board (IRB) is often difficult to discern because GME activities can have multiple simultaneous purposes, educational activities may go forward with or without a research component, and the subjects of educational research studies are not patients. The authors provide a road map for researchers with regard to research oversight by the IRB and also address issues related to research quality. The matters of whether educational research studies should have educational value for the study subject and whether to use individual information obtained when residents participate as research subjects are explored.
Business Intelligence Success: An Empirical Evaluation of the Role of BI Capabilities and Organization's Decision Environment

Although Business Intelligence (BI) has become the top priority for many organizations, not all BI initiatives have been successful. Research has examined reasons for BI failure extensively; however, a consistent picture about how to achieve success with BI has not yet emerged. The purpose of this research is to provide a better understanding of BI success by proposing a framework that examines the impact of BI capabilities on BI success, in the presence of different decision environments. Using a theoretical lens grounded in decision making and information processing, the primary research question that this research addresses is how BI capabilities influence BI success for different decision environments. This dissertation will help users and developers of BI understand how to better align their BI capabilities with their decision environments and provide a framework within which future research on the relationship between BI capabilities and BI success can be conducted.
Voluntary vs. Mandatory Management Earnings Forecasts in IPOs

Until 2001 companies making initial public offerings in Greece were obliged to include a forecast of next year’s profit in the new issue prospectuses; however in 2001 the regulations changed and made the inclusion of earnings forecasts in the prospectuses voluntary. This study takes advantage of these two regulatory regimes and compares the accuracy of earnings forecasts under both mandatory and voluntary disclosure environments. Findings indicate a change in the properties of the earnings forecasts, as pessimistic earnings forecasts during the mandatory era turn optimistic in the voluntary period. The comparison of these two regimes suggests that mandatory earnings forecasts may force firms to forecast that have neither the incentives nor the ability to do so. Furthermore, the results imply that regulations penalizing IPOs for providing highly inaccurate forecasts appear to be a more appropriate regulatory strategy. Accuracy of earnings improves after the introduction of voluntary disclosures where firms that provide forecasts are characterized as mature, with high demand multiple and low retained ownership.
Symbolic model checking using Zero-suppressed Decision Diagrams

Symbolic model checking represents the set of states and transition relation as Boolean functions, using Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs). One alternative to common BDDs are Zerosuppressed Decision Diagrams (ZDDs), which are BDDs based on a new reduction rule. The efficiency of ZDD representation, in comparison with the original BDD, is noticeable especially for sparse state spaces, in which the actual number of existing states is much smaller than the total number of possible states. To the best of our knowledge, the current implementation for ZDDs is using fixed set of variables, i.e., domain for all possible diagrams. This may result in increase of size for each diagram. The main goal of this project is to develop an implementation of ZDDs with possibility of having different domains for specific diagrams. The secondary goal is to investigate the efficiency of ZDDs in comparison with BDDs, e.g. memory usage and running time, for reachability algorithm.
Understanding the acceptance of mobile health services: A service participants analysis

With the emergence of electronic medical information, mobile health service has been becoming increasingly popular around the world. In order to understand factors affecting the acceptance of mobile health services, our study investigate determinants from perspective of service participants. Based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), this paper also provides a better understanding of antecedents of key acceptance constructs (e.g., perceived usefulness). During the research, the proposed research model and hypotheses were validated with data collected from a field survey of 492 subjects. The results reveal that: (1) while perceived easy of use significantly associates with perceived usefulness, the impact of perceived easy of use and perceived usefulness on adoption intention are insignificant. (2) Outcome quality is positively influences perceived usefulness; (3) Social norm is positively associated with adoption intention and perceived usefulness as well. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications and contributions of this study are discussed.
The Effect of Job Stress on Employees' Job and Organizational Commitment

To decrease employees` job stress in the viewpoint of occupational health is very important to improve the productivity and quality of labor. In this study, the job stress, and it`s influence on job commitment and organizational commitment were investigated by the questionnaire survey of 259 industrial workers. As results, the majority of workers were under job stress resulted from job demand, job control, and coworker`s support. The work times per a week and night work had significant relationships with job demand, and the maximum negative relationship between the work times per a week and job continuous commitment was found. Job demand had the significant relationship with job affective and normative commitment, and job control had the significant relationship with job normative commitment and organizational affective commitment. Moreover, job affective and normative commitment had the significant relationship with organizational continuous commitment. Finally, it was found that cyclic organic chain was composed of work times per a week, night work, salary, job demand, job control, job affective and normative commitment, and organizational affective and continuous commitment. The results of this study indicates that reducing cyclic organic chain is urgently necessary to increase employees` job satisfaction and company commitment.
Genetic diversity and structure of Lolium perenne ssp. multiflorum in California vineyards and orchards indicate potential for spread of herbicide resistance via gene flow

Management of agroecosystems with herbicides imposes strong selection pressures on weedy plants leading to the evolution of resistance against those herbicides. Resistance to glyphosate in populations of Lolium perenne L. ssp. multiflorum is increasingly common in California, USA, causing economic losses and the loss of effective management tools. To gain insights into the recent evolution of glyphosate resistance in L. perenne in perennial cropping systems of northwest California and to inform management, we investigated the frequency of glyphosate resistance and the genetic diversity and structure of 14 populations. The sampled populations contained frequencies of resistant plants ranging from 10% to 89%. Analyses of neutral genetic variation using microsatellite markers indicated very high genetic diversity within all populations regardless of resistance frequency. Genetic variation was distributed predominantly among individuals within populations rather than among populations or sampled counties, as would be expected for a wide‐ranging outcrossing weed species. Bayesian clustering analysis provided evidence of population structuring with extensive admixture between two genetic clusters or gene pools. High genetic diversity and admixture, and low differentiation between populations, strongly suggest the potential for spread of resistance through gene flow and the need for management that limits seed and pollen dispersal in L. perenne.
Do Stock Prices Fully Reflect Information in Current Earnings, Cash Flows Accruals?: Evidence From Quarterly Data

ABSTRACT Recent studies have documented that stock prices behave as if investors do not fully impound information contained in earnings and earnings components in predicting future earnings. In particular, Sloan (1996) provides evidence that stock prices do not fully reflect information about future annual earnings contained in the accrual and cash flow components of current annual earnings. His findings reinforce the idea that stock prices fail to fully reflect available information. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether stock prices fully reflect information contained in quarterly earnings and the cash flow and accrual components of quarterly earnings using the rational expectation framework developed by Mishkin (1983). This investigation is useful because quarterly variables are the basis for much contemporary accounting research. Furthermore, quarterly reports need not be audited. Therefore, one might expect more earnings management during quarters early in the year. This in turn suggest.
The Overconfidence Of Boards And The Increase In CEO Pay Over Time

This paper is based on Robert Shiller’s view that hiring of external CEOs is excessive due to boards’ overconfidence and causes reduced firm performance. External hire selections provide all CEOs with bargaining power. I show excessive external hiring provides an alternative explanation (excessive bargaining power) for the upward trend in CEO pay since 1945 that is largely consistent with the observed facts. A survey of the direct evidence on external hires’ performance provides uniform support for Shiller’s view after accounting for research supporting alternative views that only includes CEOs who survive. After adjusting for survival bias, the survey results consistently suggest that firms predominantly realize greater performance from internal promotion, all else equal. Overall, this paper’s findings increase support for succession through internal executive promotion, and suggest that institutional investors can expect greater bargaining power and wealth by advocating for internal hires more often.
Relational benefits and loyalty in retailing: an inter‐sector comparison

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically a model that reflects the different types of relational benefits perceived by customers, as well as the benefits obtained by the organization in terms of customer loyalty.Design/methodology/approach – In order to achieve the aim of this paper, a quantitative analysis through a personal survey to consumers for four types of retailing activities is performed. Data are analyzed through factor analysis and a structural equation model is estimated.Findings – Confidence benefits and special treatment benefits have major influence on customer loyalty towards the retailer. These results are consistent across retail activities.Research limitations/implications – The present study is limited in its scope and a first approach is considered that it might inspire further research adding new constructs into the model in order to deepen into the analysis of the relationship between customer and retailer relational benefits.Practical implications – Since the benefits .
Yeast Aim21/Tda2 both regulates free actin by reducing barbed end assembly and forms a complex with Cap1/Cap2 to balance actin assembly between patches and cables

Yeast Aim21 is recruited by the SH3-containing proteins Bbc1 and Abp1 to patches and, with Tda2, reduces barbed end assembly to balance the distribution of actin between patches and cables. Aim21/Tda2 also interacts with Cap1/Cap2, revealing a complex interplay between actin assembly regulators.