Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rewarding Carrots & Crippling Sticks: Eliciting Employee Preferences for the Optimal Incentive Mix in Europe

A ranking of a variety of incentive devices used by firms according to their perceived effectiveness by employees is identified. The determinants of employee incentive preferences are also investigated, suggesting a ‘menu’ of conditions under which an organization’s personnel policies will have maximum motivational impact on its workforce. Based on the beliefs of a unique sample of workers from seven European countries, the results suggest that (a) the primary determinant of the level of employee effort is the amount of discretion offered at work; (b) pay incentives and ‘gift exchanges’ are the most important motivators; (c) the use of monitoring and Taylor-type assembly lines are the least effective incentives; and (d) the optimal design of incentive strategies by firms is strongly shaped by a host of contextual factors. The expressed desire for autonomy, and distaste for control, by employees gives credibility to the “participative” management approach.
Prevalence and Antibiotic Resistance Pattern of Escherichia coli Isolated from Raw Dairy Milk

E. coli is one of the most important food borne pathogen, which could be transmitted by milk and milk products. To assess the role of dairy milk as the source of drug resistant E. coli, we examined 50 raw dairy milk samples (25-farm milk + 25-market milk) from some selected areas of Bangladesh by cultural, morphological, biochemical and antimicrobial sensitivity tests. In the preliminary observation, the mean total aerobic mesophilic count of market and farm raw milk samples were 8.98 and 8.68 log CFU/ml, while mean coliform count were 4.20 and 3.03 log CFU/ml respectively. Thirty-three E. coli isolates were recovered from collected samples (66% 33 of 50) and this pathogen was more prevalent in market milk (76%, 19 of 25) than farm milk (56%, 14 of 25). In addition, most of the isolated E. coli exhibited resistance against ampicillin and cefotaxime. This result shows that, the raw dairy milk and its products could be a source of human drug resistant E. coli.
Musings on methodology

As an applied science, community interpreting research is often tributary to the social sciences for its methods. Indeed, focus groups, interviews, questionnaires and case studies, in other words both quantitative and qualitative surveys and analyses are part and parcel of the social sciences methodology and are becoming increasingly common in CI research as well.But, as is often the case with applied scientific research, when it comes to adopting the methodological orthodoxy of the parent science, it is sometimes found lacking in methodological coherence and rigour. In our view, the most commonly found methodological hiatus in the current empirical CI research literature is the (mis)use of research designs of an essentially exploratory nature to generate broad sweeping conclusions at medium or even grand theory level, typically resulting in a total lack of falsifiability.A second point of concern is a rather generalised lack of validation of the outcomes of field research. That is why this article proposes a critical reflection on empirical research methodology in the field of community based interpreting in the form of a tentative typology of research methodologies, illustrated with an example taken from the authors’ own research.
Gender Differences in Communicate with People Who Stuttering: an Explain of Attitude, Subjective Norms and Behavior Intention

The most important role of language, its communicative function, stuttering could be disrupted this function. Our study focused on ex- ploring gender difference in attitude, subjective norms and behavior intention toward communicate with people who stutter. This cross- sectional study was conducted on 240 boys and girls high school students in Hamadan County, the west of Iran, during 2013. Partici- pants filled out a standard self-report questionnaire. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 21 using bivariate correlations, and linear re- gression statistical tests at 95% significant level. Our findings showed, attitude and subjective norm variables accounted for 59% of the variation in the outcome measure of the behavioural intention (R2=59% & P<0.01). Girl students have a better subjective norms and more intention to communicate with people who stutter. Wrong beliefs could have prevented normal communication, due to misconcep- tions about people who stutter our study recommend implementing training programs In order to change wrong beliefs about people who stutter especially for the adolescents.
A Research of Predicting the B-factor Base on the Protein Sequence

The B-factor, also called the Debye-Waller factor or the temperature factor, is a descriptor of the flexibility of protein and is commonly used in PDB (Protein Data Bank) format files. A B-factor could be measured from a protein crystal by x-ray scattering, but could not be got from the protein sequence directly. Thus, predicting the B-factor only based on the protein sequence could provide some references for the related researchers. In this study, we attempt to predict the B-factor based on the protein sequence. The information in AAindex and the predicted protein secondary structure, relative accessibility, disorder and energy changes are used to describe the amino acid residues. Four machine learning methods are used for modeling and prediction. The 5-fold cross validation is used to evaluate the modeling performance. As a result, this work provided some new methods for predicting and analyzing the B-factor based on the protein sequence, and we hope that this work could be helpful for the related researches.
Morphology and adsorption of chromium ion on uranium 1,2,4,5-benzenetetracarboxylic acid metal organic framework (MOF)

In this paper, we report the synthesis of metal organic framework of uranium 1,2,4,5-benzene tetracarboxylic acid (U-H4btec MOF) by solvothermal method. The obtained MOF was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD), Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), thermogravimetric and differential thermogravimetric analysis (TGA/DTA). The morphology of the uranium 1,2,4,5-benzene tetracarboxylic acid MOF observed by SEM, revealed the presence of flaky porous structure. Adsorption of Cr3+ from aqueous solution onto the uranium 1,2,4,5-benzene tetracarboxylic acid MOF was systematically studied. Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms were applied to determine the adsorption capacity of the MOF to form a monolayer. Kinetic determination of the adsorption of Cr3+ suggested both chemisorption and physisorption probably due to the presence of carbonyl groups within the MOF and its porous structure.
Satellite constraint for emissions of nitrogen oxides from anthropogenic , lightning and soil sources over East China on a high-resolution grid

Vertical column densities (VCDs) of tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) retrieved from space provide valuable information to estimate emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) inversely. Accurate emission attribution to individual sources, important both for understanding the global biogeochemical cycling of nitrogen and for emission control, remains difficult. This study presents a regression-based multi-step inversion approach to estimate emissions of NO x from anthropogenic, lightning and soil sources individually for 2006 over East China on a 0.25 ◦ long× 0.25 lat grid, employing the DOMINO product version 2 retrieved from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument. The inversion is done gridbox by gridbox to derive the respective emissions, taking advantage of differences in seasonality between anthropogenic and natural sources. Lightning and soil emissions are combined together for any given gridbox due to their similar seasonality; and their different spatial distributions are used implicitly for source separation to some extent. The nested GEOS-Chem model for East Asia is used to simulate the seasonal variations of different emission sources and impacts on VCDs of NO2 for the inversion purpose. Sensitivity tests are conducted to evaluate key assumptions embedded in the inversion process. The inverse estimate suggests annual budgets of about 7.1 TgN ( ±39 %), 0.21 TgN ( ±61 %), and 0.38 TgN (±65 %) for the a posteriori anthropogenic, lightning and soil emissions, respectively, about 18–23 % higher than the respective a priori values. The enhancements in anthropogenic emissions are largest in cities and areas with extensive use of coal, particularly in the north in winter, as evident on the high-resolution grid. Derived soil emissions are consistent with recent bottom-up estimates. They are less than 6 % of anthropogenic emissions annually, increasing to about 13 % for July. Derived lightning emissions are about 3 % of anthropogenic emissions annually and about 10 % in July. Overall, anthropogenic emissions are found to be the dominant source of NO x over East China with important implications for nitrogen control.
Beta glucanase (Bgn13.1) expressed in transgenic Brassica napus confers antifungal activity against Sclerotinia sclerotiorum

Abstrcat: Brassica napus is an important oilseed crop and the yield loss due to fungal disease stem rot caused by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is a serious problem in cultivation of this crop. The pathogenesis-related (PR) protein, glucanase, hydrolyzes a major cell wall component, glucan, of the pathogenic fungi and acts as a plant defense barrier. In this study, a β-1,3-glucanase (bgn13.1) gene was isolated from the biocontrol fungus Trichoderma virens-10 (showing the high β-glucanase activity) and cloned in pUC19 cloning vector. The cloned fragment was confirmed by molecular analysis and showed to contain two short introns, 52 and 57 bp and an open reading frame coding 761 amino acids. The bgn13.1 gene was over-expressed under the CaMV35S promoter in B. napus, R line Hyola 308. Transformation of cotyledonary petioles was achieved by pBIKH1 containing bgn13.1 gene via Agrobacterium tumefaciens LBA4404. The insertion of transgene was verified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and genomic DNA Southern dot blotting in T0 generation. RTPCR analysis indicated that the transgenic canola plants were able to transcribe the β-1,3 glucanase gene. Also, we used transgenic over-expression approach in order to investigate antifungal activity of expressed Bgn13.1 on S. sclerotiorum. The heterologous expressed Bgn13.1 of line # 7 and line # 10 compared with other lines showed stronger inhibition against hyphal growth of S. sclerotiorum with inhibition rate of 35.2% and 32.8%, respectively.
Health status and labour force status of older working-age Australian men

This research uses the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to investigate the impacts of health on labour force status of older working-age Australian men. We estimate a model that exploits the longitudinal nature of the data and takes the correlation between the two error terms in the health and labour force status equations into account. The results show that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and the correlation between the two equations is important. It is also found that any restriction on the correlation between the two equations appears to lead to underestimation of the direct health effects.
Using the Servoual Model to Evaluate the Service Delivery of the Consumer Protection Council in Nigeria

This study is an in-depth empirical investigation that seeks to compare consumer expectations to perceptions in the delivery of services in the consumer protection council (CPC) in Nigeria. The aim of this study is to use SERVQUAL instrument to ascertain any actual or perceive gap between consumer expectations and perceptions of the service offered by the council. The objectives are to ascertain the tangible, reliability, assurance, responsiveness and empathy dimensions of the service quality by measuring consumers’ expectations to perceptions using the twenty-two (22) statements developed in the modified five dimension SERVQUAL. The questionnaire was subjected to reliability and validity tests. Seven research questions and seven hypotheses were formulated and tested. The statistical analysis used are mean, paired t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Findings show that there are no significant differences between the expectation and perceived CPC services for the five SERVQUAL dimensions.The study sets a ground for further research in evaluating service deliveries performance in other service industries in Nigeria such as NAFDAC, SON etc by applying both technical and image quality. Keywords: Servqual, NAFDAC, t-test, ANOVA.
Portfolio Tilting: Hunt for Positive Alpha Through Style Tilts

A long discussion in literature exist to answer the question how a fund manager can generate extra returns? In order to answer the question this study is concerned with two aspects of this problem. First it discusses the portfolio construction process from separation theorem to modern style tilts. And in second step it provide empirical evidence for superior performance of style tilts. First of all active and passive style of management are compared. Data on returns is taken from KSE for five years and two sets of style based portfolios are constructed. Strong evidence is found in favor of active style of management. Actively managed funds are used as proxy for tilted portfolios. Data of Net asset value is taken from MUFAP. Tilted portfolios are tested for Size and value tilts. This study confirms higher performance of portfolio with style tilts.
AN ITERATIVE PIXEL-LEVEL IMAGE MATCHING METHOD FOR MARS MAPPINGUSING APPROXIMATE ORTHOPHOTOS

Abstract. Mars mapping is essential to the scientific research of the red planet. The special terrain characteristics of Martian surface can be used to develop the targeted image matching method. In this paper, in order to generate high resolution Mars DEM, a pixel-level image matching method for Mars orbital pushbroom images is proposed. The main strategies of our method include: (1) image matching on approximate orthophotos; (2) estimating approximate value of conjugate points by using ground point coordinates of orthophotos; (3) hierarchical image matching; (4) generating DEM and approximate orthophotos at each pyramid level; (5) fast transformation from ground points to image points for pushbroom images. The derived DEM at each pyramid level is used as reference data for the generation of approximate orthophotos at the next pyramid level. With iterative processing, the generated DEM becomes more and more accurate and a very small search window is precise enough for the determination of conjugate points. The images acquired by High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on European Mars Express were used to verify our method’s feasibility. Experiment results demonstrate that accurate DEM data can be derived with an acceptable time cost by pixel-level image matching.
On Cosmic-Ray Production Efficiency at Realistic Supernova Remnant Shocks

We demonstrate by using three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics simulations that the cosmicray (CR) production efficiency at supernova remnants (SNRs) is over-predicted if it is based on proper motion measurements of Ha filaments in combination with Rankine-Hugoniot relations. Density fluctuations of upstream medium make shock waves oblique almost everywhere. For oblique shock, the kinetic energy of the shock wave is transferred into that of downstream turbulence as well as thermal energy related to the shock velocity component normal to the shock surface. Our synthetic observations shows that the apparent CR production efficiency as estimated from a lower downstream temperature, depends on the amplitude of density fluctuations of the upstream medium. They are roughly consistent with our analytical estimation of the efficiency. When the upstream medium has density fluctuations of typical diffuse interstellar medium, the apparent CR productions efficiency is observed as 10‐40 %.
Testing the validity of the vignette approach for improving comparability of self-reported health:

Self-assessments are often subject to heterogeneity in reporting behaviour. Anchoring vignettes have been introduced to purge self-assessments of reporting heterogeneity. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the validity of the vignette approach for improving comparability of self-reported health. This is done by observing whether correcting for reporting heterogeneity with the use of anchoring vignettes brings the self-assessments closer to the respondents’ objective health status, with the main focus being the comparison of Germany and Sweden. In particular, this paper compares adjusted self-reported health in the domain of mobility and breathing to an objective health index for German and Swedish respondents. The main results indicate that there is some mild evidence that the vignette approach improves cross-country comparability between Germany and Sweden, since it brings the self-assessments closer to the objective situation. More positive results are found for within-country validity, which reveal that adjusted self-reported health is in line, in terms of direction and significance, with objective health measures. Although this research gives some evidence in favour of the validity of the vignette approach, future research should focus on formally testing the assumptions of the anchoring vignettes, response consistency and vignette equivalence, in order to test the validity of the vignette approach more accurately. Lisa Voois – 388675 Erasmus University Rotterdam
Capital Injection, Restructuring Targets and Personnel Management: The Case of Japanese Regional Banks

A case study of the Japanese bank recapitalization by Hoshi and Kashyap (2005) identified a bank that overstated the progress of required personnel downsizing by shifting employees to subsidiaries. This paper asks if the recapitalization program had a design flaw. We focus on regional banks with a unique panel dataset of 81 banking groups that allows us to observe the employment levels of subsidiaries, in addition to those of parent banks, over fiscal 1994–2006. We estimate a labor-demand equation with sluggish adjustment to compare the employment patterns of public capital recipients and other banks. The result indicates that the shuffling of personnel to subsidiaries was a common response among banks that received large capital injections. Our finding highlights a tension between a reconstruction program and labor law when a country has a tight law on dismissal.
Effect of BAP and IAA on shoot regeneration in cotyledonary explants of Costa Rican melon genotypes

Efecto del BAP y el AIA en la regeneracion de brotes a partir de explantes cotiledonares de genotipos de melon costarricense. Para establecer una metodologia para la regeneracion del melon criollo (Cucumis melo L), se investigo la influencia del genotipo (OSO-1, OSO-2, OSO- 3, PQRG-1, PQRG-2, PQRG-3, y EM-1) y la interaccion de N6-bencilaminopurina (BAP) (0,1, 0,5 y 1,0 mg.l-1) con acido indolacetico (AIA) (0, 0,05 y 0,5 mg.l-1) en la induccion de brotes y regeneracion de plantas. Independientemente de la concentracion de BAP y AIA, el mayor porcentaje de formacion de brotes se obtuvo en EM-1>OSO- 1>PQRG-3>OSO-2>PQRG-2>PQRG-1>OSO-3. Por otra parte, independientemente del genotipo, el mayor porcentaje de formacion de brotes se obtuvo con 0,5 mg.l-1 BAP y 0,05 mg.l-1 AIA o 1 mg.l-1 BAP y 0 mg.l-1 AIA. El protocolo de cultivo in vitro establecido puede ser utilizado para la micropropagacion de genotipos “criollos” de melon.
Antioxidant Activity of Some Nigerian Medicinal Plants Used in Malaria Treatment

Free radicals such as reactive oxygen species (ROS) are continuously produced by an organism’s normal use of oxygen. There are ample evidence that an imbalance between formation and removal of these free radicals can lead to a pathological condition called oxidative stress resulting in many physiological processes like aging and chronic diseases, such as cancer, arthritis, cardiovascular diseases and liver injury. However, the human body employs molecules known as antioxidants to counteract these free radicals thus repairing free radical damage by initiating cell regeneration or cell repair. 3 This has led to keen interest and widespread researches in the investigation of plant materials with antioxidant activity that can protect against these reactive oxygen species such as superoxide radical, hydroxyl radical, peroxyl radical, and nitric oxide radical and thus may play a role in disease prevention. 5 In recent times, studies have shown that free radicals associated with oxidative stress play crucial role in the development of complication caused by malaria. Plants contain high concentrations of antioxidants, including polyphenols, tocopherols, tocotrienols, ascorbic acid, glutathione, carotenoids, which are believed to be the effective nutrients in the prevention of oxidative stress-related diseases. 8 A number of traditional herbs including the leaves of Mangifera indica, Artemisia annua, Carica papaya, Azadirachta indica,, Melissa officinalis, Alafia
A NEW NESTED SPACE-FILLING DESIGNS ON EXPERIMENTS WITH DIFFERENT RANGES OF FACTORS

Experiments with different levels of accuracy or fidelity are very common in statistics, applied mathematics and engineering. Nested space-filling designs are useful approach to deal with those questions. But in some special situations, e.g., the captive flight tests and missile tests in radar homing precision experiments, the rangers of factors are different in some accuracy experiments and sometimes they have overlapping portions. The existing methods deal almost exclusively with experiments with same ranges of factors. In this paper, we propose a new construction of nested space-filling designs named NDF(Nested Designs on Factor with different ranges ) to solve these problems.The proposed construction are useful in the experiments with different ranges of factors and achieves uniformity in low dimensions. 663 Available online at www.eccomasproceedia. org Eccomas Proceedia UNCECOMP (2017) 663-670 ©2017 The Authors. Published by Eccomas Proceedia. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of UNCECOMP 2017. doi: 10.7712/120217.5401. 17171 Jin Xu, Xiaojun Duan, Zhengming Wang and Liang Yan
Vehicle Tracking and Locking System Using GPS and GSM

: In this paper, we presented a vehicle tracking system using GPS modem and GSM module and locking it down using remote mobile accessing. The system is designed to provide security to vehicle owners from theft and unauthorized access. The system performs multiple operations which include:-When an unauthorized person tries to gain access of your vehicle, the information is analyzed using sensors and transmitted to user through GSM. The coordinates of the location of vehicle are sent via GPS. The controlling of vehicle is done through microcontroller. The doors of the vehicles and accelerator pedal are locked down when reading instructions from the user. The speed of the motor is gradually reduced and comes to a halt. By using the control concepts listed in the paper number of control features can be implemented in the same fashion.