Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cost-Benefit Analysis Case Study on Regulations to Lower the Level of Sulphur in Gasoline

The Canadian Cost-Benefit Analysis Guide: Regulatory Proposals, sets out the general methodology and analytical steps to perform a cost-benefit analysis of proposed regulatory changes. To make the Guide operational, this case study has been prepared following the analytical approach recommended by the Guide. In 1994 the sulphur content of Canadian gasoline was found to be high and varied widely across the country. Scientists and health experts have found evidence that emissions of pollutants from vehicles cause considerable harm to the health of Canadians and to the environment. In order to derive the net economic benefits, we integrate the economic benefits with the economic costs for each of the alternative scenarios. In the cost-benefit analysis, all private costs must be measured in terms of their economic opportunity costs. The results indicate that reducing the sulphur in gasoline for any scenario under consideration would generate substantial net health benefits or well-being for Canadians as a whole. Estimates of the net present value (at an eight percent discount rate) range from $1,809 million to $2,663 million.
Consumer Purchasing Behaviour for Fruits and Vegetables among Civil Servants in Essien Udim Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

Despite the increased awareness of the importance of fruits and vegetables to healthy living, low fruit and vegetable intake has been a widespread characteristic among Nigerians. The purpose of this study was to analyze the determinants of consumer purchasing behaviour for fruits and vegetables in Essien Udim Local Government Area in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Its objectives were to determine the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, assess the various factors responsible for consumption and preference, quantify the impact of determinants influencing the frequency of fruits and vegetables purchase, as well as make suggestions and recommendations based on the findings. To achieve the purpose of this study, a multi stage sampling was used. Purposive sampling technique was used to draw sixty-five respondents from an already stratified sample according to the grade level of civil servants. Primary data were collected using semi-structured questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed using simple statistical techniques such as frequency and percentages. Polychotomous ordered probit regression model was also employed. Results from the ordered probit regression indicated that frequency of monthly purchase of fruits and vegetables was significantly determined by the monthly income while other variables such as age, sex, marital status and educational level had no significant effect on the frequency of monthly purchase. Hence, government should lay more emphasis on increasing the per capita income of low income earners and also focus more on increasing local production of these food items in order to ensure their availablity at affordable prices. Keywords: Determinants, Consumer Behaviour, Fruits and Vegetables, Consumer Preference
From West to East: Adoption of Western Measurement Scales in Taiwan's Organizational Research

Adopting existing measures in their research is common for organizational researchers. However, this practice is questionable when proper validation procedures are lacking. This study surveyed the extent of this practice in Taiwan’s academic society to determine the severity of the situation. The target of this investigation was those articles that include latent constructs in an organizational research and that were published in major Taiwanese academic journals between 2004 and 2008. This effort uncovered 146 organizational studies containing 791 research constructs. Of the 791 constructs, 263 were translated from an existing foreign scale, and 352 were measured using an adaptation of an existing foreign scale. Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and performance were found to be the most frequently studied constructs in Taiwan during this period. Most studies applying existing Western scales to Taiwanese samples did not report proper scale validation procedures to ensure measurement equivalence. The implications of these research findings are discussed, and suggestions are provided to improve the rigor of organizational research.
Case study of potential production of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) from livestock wastes in Mediterranean islands

The aim of this work is to evaluate the potential production of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) from livestock wastes that are commonly found on Mediterranean islands, by using the island of Malta as a case study. Organic wastes in the form of livestock manure and slurry, as well as other by-products originating from the food transformation industry in the making of alcoholic beverages and the processing of olives, tomatoes and other streams, if mixed in such a way to achieve a correct C/N ratio, can be subjected to anaerobic co- digestion for the production of biogas and digestate. Biogas can be further transformed into biomethane, a fuel that can be used to power surface transportation and agricultural machines, producing heat through burners, or co-generating electric and thermal energy through Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants. Moreover, the digestate, if treated and transformed into a dry form, can be applied to soils as biofertiliser. Anaerobic co-digestion process can be compatible with the zero km / zero landfill concept. The statistical data on livestock populations and herd sizes published by the National Statistics office of Malta were evaluated so as to compute the Maltese potential production of biogas and, indirectly, biomethane or electric and thermal energy. The results indicate that the Maltese potential production of biogas is 17,942,115 m3, from which 10,092,230 m3 of biomethane could be extracted or 1974 MWh ca. of electric energy and 2072 MWh ca. of thermal energy could be generated. Instead, the application of the obtained digestate would be limited by: 1) Nitrates Directive (maximum rate of 170 kg ha-1); 2) fertiliser plans; 3) soil properties such as pH (in the calcareous soils, very common in Malta, differently from acid ones, the nutrients included in the digestate tend to generate insoluble compounds, instead of being absorbed by plant roots); 4) window for application (March-October); 5) local laws that deal with the application of fertilisers (this may be a restriction for the use of wet digestate in Malta, since fertilisers having dry matter less than 30% cannot be applied to Maltese soils). This work demonstrates that the production of RES, i.e. biomethane, electric and thermal energy, from organic wastes can also have a significant added value, because the potential additional income would include that derived from the sale of biomethane or electric and thermal energy. Furthermore, it should be quantified also the income from the savings obtained by replacing chemical fertilisers with digestate.
Can Human Assistance Improve a Computational Poet

Good computational poetry requires sufficiently interesting poetic phrases to be generated or chosen. Different metrics for determining what makes a sufficiently interesting phrase have rarely been directly compared. We directly compare of a number of metrics—topicality, sentiment, and concrete imagery—by collecting human judgments on each metric for the same data set of human-generated phrases, then having humans judge computationally generated poems chosen to include high-scoring phrases against each other. We find through a quantitative analysis that the output of at least some of these metrics is perceived as better than output using none of these metrics.
Complementarities and Information: An Introduction

The study of economies and markets with dispersed information has attracted much attention since the pioneering work of Radner (1979) and Grossman (1989). The importance of informational efficiency in markets is well understood (see Vives 2008). In a relatively recent development, the analysis of complementarities has been advanced by tools from the theory of supermodular games (Vives 1985, 1990; Milgrom and Roberts 1990a, 1990b; see also Vives 2005 for a survey that includes games of incomplete information). In many situations, strategic complementarity interacts in a rich way with information structures to provide deeper insights into the workings of the economy. The papers in this Symposium present the state of the art in the field—from theory to empirics and experiments and from the analysis of markets to the analysis of organizations. The contribution by George-Marios Angeletos and Alessandro Pavan analyzes economies with private information. The objective is to design taxation instruments, contingent on ex post public information on fundamentals and aggregate activity, that will improve market allocations when the government cannot observe the dispersed information that agents have on aggregate shocks. The idea of using Pigovian taxes to correct for inefficiencies in the use of information (in addition to correct for payoff externalities) is natural. The authors find that, when agents have private information about aggregate shocks, it is essential to condition on the level of aggregate activity in order to attain efficiency. This is in contrast to the cases of symmetric information or pure private values (with information on idiosyncratic shocks), where conditioning on the realized fundamentals is enough to attain efficiency. Indeed, the imposition of taxes based on ex post realizations
The Impact of Teaching Songs on Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety

Foreign language classroom anxiety has been the topic of many studies conducted in the past three decades, especially after Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) developed the foreign language anxiety scale (FLCAS) to measure the foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA). There is a general consensus among researchers that FLCA is linked with poor foreign language performance in the classroom (e.g. Gregersen, 2003). However, few papers (e.g. Young, 1991) tried to find a solution to this problem. The following paper presents the first among several empirical studies that we conducted in order to assess the relationship between music and foreign language anxiety. The experiment tries to answer the question: Can teaching songs diminish the level of foreign language classroom anxiety?
Physicians Behavioral Style Reshaping Mobile Banking Adoption

Mobile banking provides convenient access to the banking services and mobility to health care professionals. Still, it faces many challenges in limited adoption which makes the mass usage uncertain. Behavior or personal characteristics of the individual play a vital role in the adoption of mobile banking. This research extends the existing work by integrating the TAM model with the behavioral characteristics i.e., assertive, passive and aggressive to the attitude formation towards the mobile banking. Data was collected from 300 physicians and the research model was tested by using Partial Least Squares multivariate technique. Assertive behaviors, perceived ease of use, perceived useful ness were the main predictors of attitude formation towards the behavioral intention to use mobile banking. Our study contributes to the growth of understanding the acceptance of the mobile banking in health care industry and will assist bank managers in implementing different strategy for different mobile banking users for delivering their financial services. Our study also provides direction for future research on mobile banking adoption by health care professionals in the light of their personal characteristics.
Effects of Thaumatin-like proteins, chitinase and plant secondary metabolites on Botrytis cinerea development

In this work the ability of the necrotrophic plant pathogen Botrytis cinerea to counteract two plants antimicrobial proteins – a chitinase and a grape thaumatin-like protein (TLP) from grape– was characterized. These two proteins extracted from grape berries (cv. IM 6.0.13) were added to the B. cinerea culture. The growth of the fungus was not affected by these proteins which, as determined by RP-HPLC, were partially removed from the medium. It was observed that aspartic and serine protease produced by B. cinerea cleave chitinase only, while the B. cinerea mycelium absorbs passively both proteins. In fact, both chitinase and TLP were released from the fungal cell wall when the mycelium was treated with an alkaline buffer and a laminarinase (β-1,3 glucanase) preparation. In particular, a stronger interaction between chitinase, TLP and a β-1,3-1,6-glucan polymer (scleroglucan) was observed. Therefore, B. cinerea can entrap TLP and chitinase in its cell wall, and particularly by the layer of β-glucan that surrounds fungal hyphae. To investigate if TLP and chitinase can induce the synthesis of new fungal cell wall material, the expression of β glucan synthase, chitin synthase and chitin deacetylases was investigated. The expression of the β glucan synthase genes was not affected by both TLP and chitinase while the expression of genes encoding chitin synthase and chitin deacetylases, responsible for the synthesis of chitin and chitosan, respectively, was lowered following the treatment with the grape proteins. Localization experiments of the cell wall components in the mycelium of B. cinerea showed that chitin is mainly present in the vegetative hyphae, chitosan predominate in infection cushions and β-glucan is evenly distributed. A model describing the mechanisms by which B. cinerea could escape the action of plant TLP and chitinase is proposed.
The determinants of the choice of maturity and restrictive covenants in debt contracts: a panel data approach

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis for the choice of contract terms included in UK Eurobonds. Typically, the theory associates the choice of debt contract terms to firm and market characteristics, arguing that an adequate choice of debt contract terms allows for the reduction of debt-contracting costs. We use a panel-data approach to examine the validity of extant predictions concerning the choice of maturity, call options, convertible options and other covenants. The findings provide strong support to the agency prediction that debt contract terms function as alternative control mechanisms. The evidence that managers follow a maturity-matching rule and use restrictive covenants when firm’s credit quality is low further corroborates agency predictions. JEL Classification: G15, G24, G32.
Semi-analytical Method for Predicting Shaft Voltage in Field-excited Synchronous Generators

This study presents an electromagnetic model for predicting shaft voltages in a 2-pole field-excited synchronous generator. After the first observations on shaft voltages were made more than a century ago, extensive work has been conducted on eliminating, mitigating, and integrating the aforementioned phenomena. Given that emphasis has been placed on modeling shaft- and bearing-induced voltages in AC motors driven by variable frequency drives, similar efforts toward a model that is dedicated to generators are insubstantial. This work endeavors to improve current physical interpretation and prediction methods for shaft-induced voltages in generators through semi-analytical derivation. Aside from the experimental validation of the model, investigations regarding the behavior of shaft voltages under varying machine complexities and operating conditions clarify previous uncertainties regarding these phenomena. The performance of the numerical method is also assessed for application in eccentricity fault diagnosis.
Hysteresis in Regional Unemployment Rates in Turkey

It is important for policy-makers to understand the nature of unemployment, particularly in the regional level. As a developing country, Turkey suffers from severe unemployment, as well as major regional discrepancies, even in the periods of high-level economic growth. In this study, we analyze a possible hysteresis effect in regional unemployment rates in Turkey from 2004 to 2011. We apply heterogeneous or homogenous Panel-based Unit Root (PUR) tests that they can be arranged in groups by cross-section independence or cross-section dependence. Results of the PUR tests show that there is no mean-reversion in regional unemployment rates and natural-rate of unemployment hypothesis is strongly rejected. Thus, empirical results provide significant support for the existence of the hysteresis hypothesis in regional unemployment rates in Turkey.
THE PROBLEMS OF LARGE WORKS OF ART ON PAPER

Resume Cet article utilise les oeuvres de sept artistes vivants actuellement pour examiner les problemes d'exposition et d'entreposage causes par de grandes oeuvres d'art sur papier, ou I'artiste a elabore une image a partir d'une varlete de moyens d'expression instables II decrit la construction de divers supports, tels que de I'lsorel lattee garni de planches de preservation, panneaux Gatorfoam et plateaux Foamcor Parmi les adhesifs mentionnes, citons Resin W, Mowilith DM5, Primal CA12 et Araldite II examine certains des facteurs dont il faut tenir compte pour la conception des cadres, et decrit les cadres et boites du systeme d'entreposage des oeuvres d'art fragiles de la Tate Gallery.
My Life in Art

"This book is a necessity of every actor's life.one of the most remarkable books about the theatre that I have ever read" (Observer) No one has had a greater influence on acting as we know it than Stanislavski. His "method" - or interpretations of it - has become the central force determining almost every performance we see on stage or screen. In My Life in Art Stanislavski recalls his theatrical career, from his early experiences in Rubinstein's Russian Musical Society to his final triumphs with Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theatre. His vivid account of his own most famous productions is interspersed with his anecdotes of the famous - of Kommisarjevksy, Tolstoy, Gorky, and of the Moscow visit of Isadora Duncan and Gordon Craig. "The whole book is packed with entertainment, alternating with shrewd observation and a wealth of worldly wisdom.the most interesting and original work on the theatre that has been published for years" - Daily Telegraph"A wise and delightful book.it is packed with sage practical counsel to actors and actresses" - Times Literary Supplement
Health-Related Quality of Life , Subjective Health Complaints , Psychological Distress and Coping in Pakistani Immigrant Women With and Without the Metabolic Syndrome The InnvaDiab-DEPLAN Study on Pakistani Immigrant Women Living in Oslo , Norway

The increasingly high number of immigrants from South-East Asia with The Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) is an important challenge for the public health sector. Impaired glucose is essential in MetS. The blood glucose concentration is not only governed by diet and physical activity, but also by psychological distress which could contribute to the development of MetS. The aim of this study is to describe health-related quality of life, subjective health complaints (SHC), psychological distress, and coping in Pakistani immigrant women, with and without MetS. As a part of an randomized controlled intervention study in Oslo, Norway, female Pakistani immigrants (n = 198) answered questionnaires regarding health related quality of life, SHC, psychological distress, and coping. Blood variables were determined and a standardized oral glucose tolerance test was performed. The participants had a high score on SHC and psychological distress. About 40% of the participants had MetS, and this group showed significantly lower general health, lower physical function, and more bodily pain, than those without MetS. Those with MetS also had more SHC, depressive symptoms, higher levels of somatisation, and scored significantly lower on the coping strategy of active problem solving. Pakistani immigrant women seem to have a high prevalence of SHC and psychological distress, especially those with MetS.
Are country and cultural values interchangeable? : a case example using occupational stress and coping

Cross-cultural research in occupational stress and coping has produced a wealth of knowledge. Although advancement has been made, there are still problems to be solved. One of these problems is the confusion generated in the literature by researchers claiming nation or country as representing cultural values, and the use of the two terms interchangeably. It remains unclear whether this practice is correct. The present paper reported on this by using 511 full time employees from Australia, Singapore and Sri Lanka to study occupational stress and coping. Results revealed that cultural value paradigm (i.e., Individualism-Collectivism) was distributed across the three nations, such that over 60% of participants across the three nations were either high or low in both I-C paradigms. The findings also indicated that the relationship between cultural value paradigm and country impacted on stress and coping differently. The study shows that significant differences exist within country, as well as between countries, such that any attempt to equate ‘culture’ with ‘country’ becomes problematic. Therefore, these findings establish that country or nation was not the same as culture values and could not be used interchangeably.
INDUCTION HEATING ASSISTED INJECTION MOLDING OF MAGNETIC ALLOY MICROSTRUCTURES FOR DROPLET MANIPULATION

This paper presents a novel integration scheme that can readily embed magnetic alloy microstructures into microfluidic systems. Magnetically-responsive, carbon-coated iron nanoparticles are dispersed in a low-melting-temperature In52/Sn48 alloy. When energized in an AC magnetic field, the Fe-In52/Sn48 alloy is selectively melted at ~120°C by induction heating, and inject-molded to form structures with desired geometries. In the prototype demonstration, a droplet-based microfluidic system with integrated droplet manipulation and detection functions is fabricated and characterized. It is demonstrated that the embedded magnetic structures can be utilized to control and sense the local electric/magnetic/temperature fields, and therefore manipulate and detect droplets as desired.
Applying bottom-up listening strategies to eighth grade in a public high school

The current study is based on listening comprehension techniques applying bottomup listening strategies. In this study our first observations were addressed to eighth graders of a high school in Pereira where we found that the amount of listening practice was not sufficient to develop the learners’ listening skill. After observing this fact, we decided to implement bottom-up listening strategies to provide the learners with opportunities to receive listening input. Consequently, we formulated two questions that aimed to find answers to what learners’ perceptions were, and what the impact on learners’ listening skill was when applying bottom-up listening strategies. To answer these questions we applied qualitative research. The instruments that we used to collect data were field notes, video recordings, and questionnaires. The collected data was analyzed in order to obtain findings that gave answers to our research questions. Those findings were discussed based on what experts have written about the field to support and enlighten the results of our study