Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence of curvilinear effects

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the curvilinear effects of firm innovativeness (i.e. product, organisational and marketing innovation) on international expansion as well as the effect of expansion on performance in the developing countries (DCs) setting. Design/methodology/approach – Research hypotheses are tested using survey data obtained from firms located in four South-East European DCs. Covariance-based structural equation modelling is used to test the proposed conceptual framework. Findings – Empirical findings support the hypothesised U-shaped relationship between product innovation and organisational innovation and the level of international expansion of firms in developing markets. The authors found an inverse U-shaped relationship between marketing innovation and the level of international expansion. Furthermore, the existence of a strong positive link between the level of international expansion and firm performance is also confirmed. Research limitations/implications – While this research utilises a sample of firms from a homogenous group of DCs, further research could use a more heterogeneous sample and thus control the model for various contingency effects (e.g. environment turbulence, market structure and competitive dynamics). Practical implications –When it comes to product and organisational innovation, international expansion is achieved only with a higher level of innovativeness. On the contrary, beyond a certain level, further investments in marketing innovation do not have additional positive effects on international expansion. Originality/value – This study is one of the first that explicitly focuses on examining the non-linear effects of innovativeness on international expansion in the DC context.
Comparison of approaches for estimating carbon sequestration at the regional scale

Abstract. Many former estimates of regional scale C sequestration potential have made use of linear regressions based on long‐term experimental data, whilst some have used dynamic soil organic matter (SOM) models linked to spatial databases. Few studies have compared the two methods. We present a case study in which the potential of different land management practices to sequester carbon in soil in arable land is estimated by different methods. Two dynamic SOM models were chosen for this study, RothC (a soil process model) and CENTURY (a whole ecosystem model with a SOM module). RothC and CENTURY are the two most widely used and validated SOM models worldwide. A Geographic Information System (GIS) containing soil, land use and climate layers, was assembled for a case study in central Hungary. GIS interfaces were developed for the RothC and CENTURY models, thus linking them to the spatial datasets at the regional level. This allowed a comparison of estimates of the C sequestration potential of different land management practices obtained using the two models and using regression based approaches. Although estimates obtained by the different approaches were of the same order of magnitude, differences were observed. Some of the land management scenarios studied here showed sufficient C mitigation potential to meet Hungarian CO2 reduction commitments. For example, afforestation of 12% current arable land could sequester 0.042–0.092 Tg yr–1 in the soil alone, or 0.285–0.588 Tg C yr–1 in both soil and biomass; 1990 level CO2 emissions for the study area were 4.7 Tg C with a corresponding reduction commitment of 0.282 Tg C. It is not, however, suggested that this is the only, or the most favourable way, in which to meet the commitments.
A proposed method for rapid and economical extraction of petroleum hydrocarbons from contaminated soils

Petroleum hydrocarbons (PHC) are common soil contaminants. A number of methods have been used to extract PHCs from soil prior to quantification by gas chromatography (GC). These methods often require long extraction times and expensive, specialized equipment. A shaking method was assessed for simple, rapid removal of PHCs from contaminated soils. Shaking spiked and aged contaminated soils for 4 h with acetone:hexane (1:1) at a soil:solvent ratio of 1:30 (g:mL) recovered 74 to 108% of PHC, compared with a Soxhlet extraction, yielding a good correlation (4 h = −93.7 + 0.99 Soxhlet r = 0.99, P < 0.001). Preliminary results show that this 4-h procedure has potential for the quick, inexpensive extraction of PHCs from contaminated soils. Key words: Petroleum hydrocarbons, soil analysis, extraction method, gas chromatography, Soxhlet extraction
The Long and Short-term Determinants of Inflation in Indonesia’s Regions

Although inflation rate was down from 6.96% in 2010 to 3.79% in 2011, the average inflation in Indonesia has been relatively high since 1998. The high and persistent inflation recently becomes important issues for both central bank and Indonesia government. Therefore, the controlling inflation is a key policy concern in Indonesia. However, this is a difficult task due to differences across regions. Since each region has specific characteristics, determinants of inflation may be different in each region. This research aims to analyze the factors of inflation in the long-term and shortterm. The result will be important to understand the differences between long-term and short-term factors of inflation among regions. This study develops the long-term and shortterm models of inflation by applying panel co-integration techniques (Smith and Pesaran, 1995; Im, Pesaran and Shin, 1997; Breitung 2001; Breitung and Pesaran 2005). It also applies an extended Engle Granger method of error correction mechanism (ECM). This study extends previous research approaches (Leheyda, 2005) which applied Johansen’s procedure and based on purchasing power parity theory. The model will be classified in five regions: Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Papua. Cross section data are Indonesia’s provinces in each region and time series is over the period 1989-2010. Data are provided by Statistic Bureau of Indonesia and Bank Indonesia. The empirical results report that inflation in each region has been determined by similar factors which are foreign price and exchange rate in the long term. These findings confirm previous studies found that both foreign price and exchange rate have long-term effects on domestic prices (e.g. Listiani, 2006; Endri, 2008; Kandil and Morsy, 2009; Khan and Gill, 2010). The effects of both factors are different in each region which the highest effect of foreign price to inflation is in Sumatra and the highest effect of exchange rate to inflation is in Sulawesi. In the short term, the factors of inflation are different in each region. They are wage, total factor productivity (TFP), money supply, interest rate and the price of kerosene.
Juvenile Incarceration and Crime after Release: Evidence from a Harsher Law

We analyze the impact of longer sentence lengths in juvenile correctional facilities on criminal recidivism. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment given by a recent legal modification in Uruguay. We find that more time in custody, even under very harsh conditions; does not increase future criminal activities. Moreover, in most specifications we find a negative and statistically significant effect on recidivism. Our findings question recent empirical findings in the literature suggesting that juvenile incarceration increases post-release criminal activity.
Disentangling FDI Spillover Effects: What Do Firm Perceptions Tell Us?

Policymakers in developing countries place attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) high on their agenda, expecting FDI inflows to bring new technologies and know-how to their economy, which will help increase the productivity and competitiveness of domestic industries. Many governments go beyond national treatment of multinationals by offering foreign companies, through subsidies and tax holidays, more favorable conditions than those granted to domestic firms. As economic rationale for this special treatment, policymakers often cite positive externalities generated by FDI through productivity spillovers to domestic firms. Despite its importance to public policy choices, there is little conclusive evidence on whether domestic firms benefit from foreign presence in their country. Research based on firm-level panel data, which examines whether the productivity of domestic firms is correlated with the extent of foreign presence in their sector, tends to produce mixed results and often fails to find a significant effect in developing countries. However, the picture is more optimistic for vertical spillovers, namely those occurring through contact between multinationals and their local suppliers of intermediate inputs. New research (e.g., Javorcik 2004b) demonstrates that the productivity of domestic firms is positively correlated with the presence of multinationals in downstream industries.
A NOVEL IMAGE PROCESSING SCHEME TO EVALUATE BREAST THERMAL IMAGES

A substantial amount of procedures is available to examine the breast abnormality, such as cancer and Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) in literature. This work proposes a novel image processing practice to investigate the breast abnormality recorded with thermal imaging procedure. It implements a pre-processing procedure based on the Kapur’s multiple thresholding with level three and post-processing approach based on the watershed algorithm. In order to intensify the quality of pre-processing technique, recent heuristic algorithm called Social Group Optimization (SGO) is adopted. The proposed approach in this paper includes the subsequent stages: i) Tri-level thresholding based on the Kapur + SGO, ii) Edge detection based dimension analysis of left and right breast region to identify the abnormality, and iii) Watershed based segmentation to extract the DCIS region. The proposed technique is tested using the benchmark breast thermal dataset available at Visual lab. The investigational work is accomplished with the Matlab software. The results of this work endorse that, the proposed approach has improved efficacy in examining the breast thermal images when compared to conventional heuristic approaches. It extracts the initial changes of tissues when affected by diseases. The advantage of infrared images combined with SGO multi-thresholding method provides more vital information for early diagnosis.
Linear-Time Self Attention with Codeword Histogram for Efficient Recommendation

Self-attention has become increasingly popular in a variety of sequence modeling tasks from natural language processing to recommendation, due to its effectiveness. However, self-attention suffers from quadratic computational and memory complexities, prohibiting its applications on long sequences. Existing approaches that address this issue mainly rely on a sparse attention context, either using a local window, or a permuted bucket obtained by locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) or sorting, while crucial information may be lost. Inspired by the idea of vector quantization that uses cluster centroids to approximate items, we propose LISA (LInear-time Self Attention), which enjoys both the effectiveness of vanilla self-attention and the efficiency of sparse attention. LISA scales linearly with the sequence length, while enabling full contextual attention via computing differentiable histograms of codeword distributions. Meanwhile, unlike some efficient attention methods, our method poses no restriction on casual masking or sequence length. We evaluate our method on four real-world datasets for sequential recommendation. The results show that LISA outperforms the state-of-the-art efficient attention methods in both performance and speed; and it is up to 57x faster and 78x more memory efficient than vanilla self-attention.
A Hierarchical Three-Dimensional Multiscale Electro–Magneto–Thermal Model of Quenching in REBa2Cu3O7−δ Coated-Conductor-Based Coils

Quench detection and protection in REBa2Cu3O7−δ (REBCO) coated conductor (CC)-based superconducting magnets is difficult due to slow normal zone propagation velocity and the multilayer composite architecture of the conductor. To design effective quench detection and protection methods, it is essential to know the electrical, thermal, and structural behavior during the quench at multiple length scales ranging from the micrometer scale within the layers of the conductor to the macroscopic behavior of the coil. Here, a hierarchical multiscale approach is used to develop a modular 3-D electro–magneto–thermal coil quench model. The model uses an accurate experimentally validated micrometer-scale REBCO CC model as the basic building block. The CC model is embedded within a homogenized coil framework at one or more locations in the form of multilayer tape modules. This multiscale approach makes possible the studies of quench behavior at the micrometer scale within a tape at any location of interest within a coil without requiring a computationally extensive model of the entire coil. This approach also enables the building of more complicated models by hierarchically integrating smaller modular blocks with the same repeatable modeling techniques. Here, the development of the electro–magneto–thermal coil quench model is first presented, followed by its experimental validation. Simulation results and their implications for coil reliability and quench detection and protection are then discussed.
GENETIC DIVERSITY OF EMBELIA SPECIES, MAESA INDICA AND ARDISIA SOLANACEA SAMPLED FROM WESTERN GHATS OF KARNATAKA USING DNA MARKERS

Genetic diversity of three Embelia species, Maesa indica, and Ardisia solanacea were assessed using RAPD and ISSR markers. Twenty-five sample was collected from various parts of Western Ghats of Karnataka. Nine RAPD primer and five ISSR primer produced a total of 48 and 40 loci respectively. Overall percentage polymorphism of RAPD and ISSR was 44.17%±13.13, 36.5±13.57% respectively. Polymorphic information content for RAPD and ISSR analysis had a range of 0.629-0.884, and 0.524-0.783 respectively. Resolving power of RAPD primers ranged from 1.6 to 6.24, while for ISSR primer the range was 4.64-10.16. UPGMA dendrogram of RAPD and ISSR revealed two and three clusters respectively. Within the population, E. tsjeriam-cottam had the highest polymorphism (>80%). Three principal coordinates accounted for 62.66% and 73.2% cumulative variation for RAPD and ISSR respectively. Marker index of ISSR primer (5.568) was higher than the RAPD primers (3.54), hence ISSR was the efficient marker in the current analysis.
“AN ENTERPRISE ODYSSEY: MANAGING CHANGE TO ACHIEVE QUALITY DEVELOPMENT” Proceedings

The main purpose of the research is to analyze the significance of determinants of young people’s online shopping behaviour in the Republic of Macedonia. The research was conducted among more than 355 students (graduate and postgraduate) using structured questionnaire (both online and offline) including demographic characteristics of the respondents and their online behaviour measured by time spend online, devices predominantly used to connect to internet and frequently visited sites for online shopping. In addition, questions concerning their preferences for types of goods that are bought online are included in the questionnaire. Online shopping is gaining popularity especially among youth in the Republic of Macedonia. It has been recognized that youth are strongly representative sample of today’s online population in our country. The research model is based on Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model which provides a framework for explaining and predicting technology use behaviour, in our case online shopping behaviour. Original constructs that were included are: performance expectancy; effort expectancy; social influence; facilitating conditions and behavioural intention toward using technology. As extensions of the original model, we added three more constructs proposed by UTAUT2 model – hedonic motivation, price value and habit that are proven to be determinants of online behaviour. The results showed that all predicted relationships are proved to be significant. From the regression analysis and the proved relationships between constructs we can conclude that UTAUT2 model is good representation of real determinants that influence online shopping behaviour among young people in the Republic of Macedonia. This research represents pilot study in this field in the country and in the region. Hence it could be used as a good base for further research in this scientific area and as a guideline for e-commerce managers and marketers to improve shopping experience and customer service.
Predictive Analysis on Time Series

This paper gives an overview over di(cid:27)erent methods for predicting time series. General concepts regarding time series prediction are introduced. Then, both linear methods (with focus on ARIMA) and non-linear methods (with focus on Multi Layer Perceptrons) are presented. Approaches to combine di(cid:27)erent methods are discussed, including a hybridization of ARIMA and MLP and the more general approach of ensembles. Moreover, in addition to the widespread single-point prediction, the concept of prediction intervals is presented and practical approaches of estimating such prediction intervals (namely ensemble-based approaches and conformal predictors) are discussed.
PREPARATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF NIOSOMES CONTAINING METRONIDAZOLE

In the present study the preparation and the characterization of non-ionic surfactant vesicles (NSV, niosomes) containing metronidazole are described. NSV were prepared by lipid film hydration technique using non-ionic surfactants with cholesterol at 1:2 and 1:1 ratio. At the same time NSV were characterized by melting points, by IR spectroscopy, by TG/DTG (thermogravimetry/derived thermogravimetry) and entrapment efficiency of metronidazole (metronidazole percent concentration). The maximum metronidazole entrapment was observed in the case of non-ionic surfactant/cholesterol use at 1:1 ratio. Rezumat Acest studiu prezintă prepararea si caracterizarea veziculelor non-fosfolipidice (NSV, niozomi) ce conţin metronidazol. Niozomii au fost preparaţi prin tehnica hidratării filmelor lipidice utilizând tensioactivi neionici si colesterol in proporţie de 1:2 si 1:1. Niozomii (NSV) au fost caracterizaţi prin determinarea punctelor de topire, realizarea spectrelor IR, realizarea termogramelor TG/DTG si studiul eficienţei de incorporare a metronidazolului. Cantitatea maximă de metronidazol incorporată s-a observat la niozomii preparaţi cu tensioactivi neionici/colesterol (1:1).
Hydrogen isotope fractionation during H2/CO2 acetogenesis: hydrogen utilization efficiency and the origin of lipid‐bound hydrogen

Hydrogen metabolism was studied in the anaerobic bacterium, Sporomusa sp. strain DMG 58, by measuring natural abundance levels of deuterium in H2, H2O, and individual fatty acids during acetogenic growth on H2/CO2. Four cultures were grown, each in medium with a distinct hydrogen‐isotopic composition (δD‐H2O). The δD value of H2 was quantified in the residual gas exiting the growth chambers and found to decrease concurrently with net H2 consumption, indicating rapid isotope exchange between H2 and H2O. An isotopic mass balance was used to constrain the efficiency with which H2 was activated by the cell and the reducing equivalents catabolized, which we term the H2 utilization efficiency. Results indicate that H2 utilization efficiency in these cultures is less than 20% during the growth phase, and less than 2% after the growth phase. The gross rate of cellular H2 activation was similar in the growth phase and afterward. Biomass harvested at the end of each experiment was used to analyse the D/H of individual membrane lipids. Values of δD were highly correlated between lipids and water (δD‐lipids = 0.59 × δD‐water – 381‰; R2 = 0.995), indicating the source of lipid hydrogen is in isotopic equilibrium with water. Results are consistent with two possibilities: (i) water is the sole source of hydrogen to lipids, and the fractionation during biosynthesis is significantly larger than previously observed (α = 0.59), or (ii) hydrogen from H2 is incorporated into lipids, but only after reaching isotopic equilibrium with H2O. Fatty acids were strongly depleted in deuterium relative to all other organisms studied thus far, and such large depletions may prove useful as biomarkers for studying H2 cycling in anoxic environments as well as in the geological record.
WEEKLY EMOTIONAL CHANGES AMIDST COVID-19: TURKISH EXPERIENCE

COVID-19 is a highly infectious and detrimental illness and is accepted as one of the most pervasive health crises of the last decades. The pandemic maintains its full effect and has continued longer than initially expected. The pandemic has affected many people in Turkey as well, irritating and making them anxious. In this study, the reaction of the society to the epidemic has been examined in the period from March month, when the first case has been announced, to June, when the normalization process began (18 March28 May). In order to understand these reactions, a total of 567,018 texts using the hashtag #StayHome on the Twitter platform have been fetched and analyzed. In this period, when the pandemic first appeared, it has been tried to make sense of what society has talked about by using text mining. Sensitivity analysis has been used to see the weekly reactions of individuals that differentiate their positive/negative moods and hope levels. As a result, some differences have been observed in the emotions analyzed in two-week periods.
Components of Innovative Organization of Basic Education Institutions in Thailand

This research aims to study the components and to do confirmatory factor analysis, and to study the opinions of the directors, deputy directors and heads of ICT’s departments. The results show that eight components of an innovative organization in basic education institutions in Thailand. Confirmatory Factor Analysis suggests that the components of the innovative organization of basic education institutions in Thailand significantly correspond the empirical data as well as the opinions of the directors, deputy directors and heads of ICT’s departments in order to be used as recommendations for constructing the future school based on the concept of innovative organization.
Building Extraction from High-Resolution Remote-Sensing Images Based on Deep Learning

The efficient and accurate extraction of building feature information in remote-sensing images has become one of the most important elements of satellite remote-sensing image research. The paper proposes a convolutional neural network with a symmetric encoding-decoding structure. Alternating convolutional blocks and maximum pooled under-sampling at the encoder end are used to complete the relevant operations. The convolutional blocks are operated by linear residual blocks, and complementary zeros are added after 3 × 3 convolutional layers to ensure consistency in feature-map dimensions. A traditional ReLU activation function is replaced with a SELU activation function in order to retain more feature information during training and to solve the problem of dead neurons. A 1 × 1 convolutional layer and a Sigmoid function are finally introduced to complete the final building extraction. The experimental results show that the model is more effective in densely-populated urban areas than in Alpine towns, but the overcrowding of buildings also causes difficulties in accurate edge segmentation.