Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Collaborative Arrangements on Quality Perception in Ambulatory Care. Recent Experiences in Italy and Implications for Future Research

The Italian primary care had placed particular emphasis on promoting new organizational arrangements. Few re- search studies have analyzed their impact on quality perception. With the aim to examine clients' and physicians' satisfaction in ambulatory care within the different organizational models, we studied 96 patients (aged between 18 - 80 years) and 22 physi- cians (M = 50.33 years). Subjects answered (6 point Likert-type scale) to a 17 items questionnaire (PAT-MED). Factor analyses found four factors accounting for 64.56% of the common variance. PAT-MED dimensions were compared with the EUROPEP administered only to the clients. We found moderately high level of perceived quality with care. Results showed that GP col- laborative arrangements do not affects satisfaction. Gender resulted significantly associated to the privacy protection guaranted by the GP. Marital status and education were not associated with any of the satisfaction measures. Moreover a significant as- sociation between age and a number of satisfaction variables was noted. Findings indicated empathic and professional abilities of physicians more important than organizational arrangements.
Integrating farmers' knowledge, attitude and practice in the development of sustainable Striga control interventions in southern Mali

Technologies for Striga control have not been widely adopted because of the mismatch between technologies and farmers' socio-economic conditions. This study used a participatory rural appraisal technique at the village, household and plot levels to diagnose the extent of the Striga problem in two agro-ecological zones in southern Mali. This has resulted in an understanding of farmers' attitudes and constraints to Striga control, and opportunities for the development of sustainable technologies suitable for a wide range of farming conditions. Results show that the degree of Striga infestation, levels of farmer knowledge and control practices vary substantially across village territories and fields, and that the severity of the infestation is clearly linked with soil fertility condition and farming practices. It was concluded that in general, the Striga control interventions that would most likely appeal to farmers would be those that will simultaneously improve soil fertility and suppress the development of Striga.
Transformation Capability And Employee Performance In Selected Aluminium Manu Facturing Firms In Anambra State

The objective of this study was to determine the type of relationship existing between Transformational Capability and Employees Performance of selected aluminium manufacturing companies in Anambra State. The study was anchored on the Theory of Structural Empowerment. The study employed a correlation research design. The population of the study was 132 consisting of employees of the three selected companies used in the study, the sample size was 123 which was arrived at using Taro Yamani Formula. Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient which seeks to establish the relationship between the dependent and independent variable was used in analysing the data. The findings revealed that Autonomy in Decision making has a significant positive relationship with Employee Commitment; hence the researcher recommended among other things that Management should empower the employees with autonomy to make
Environmental Kuznets curve in Indonesia, the role of energy consumption and foreign trade

This study examines the dynamic relationship among carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, economic growth, energy consumption and foreign trade based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for Indonesia during the period 1971–2007. The Auto regressive distributed lag (ARDL) methodology is used as an estimation technique. The results do not support the EKC hypothesis, which assumes an inverted U-shaped relationship between income and environmental degradation. The long-run results indicate that foreign trade is the most significant variable in explaining CO2 emissions in Indonesia followed by Energy consumption and economic growth. The stability of the variables in estimated models is also examined. The result suggests that the estimated models are stable over the sample period.
Using Remote Control Aerial Vehicles to Study Variability of Airborne Particulates

Airborne particulates play a significant role in the atmospheric radiative balance and impact human health. To characterize this impact, global-scale observations and data products are needed. Satellite products allow for this global coverage but require in situ validations. This study used a remote-controlled aerial vehicle to look at the horizontal, vertical, and temporal variability of airborne particulates within the first 150 m of the atmosphere. Four flights were conducted on December 4, 2014, between 12:00 pm and 5:00 pm local time. The first three flights flew a pattern of increasing altitude up to 140 m. The fourth flight was conducted at a near-constant altitude of 60 m. The mean PM2.5 concentration for the three flights with varying altitude was 36.3 μg/m3, with the highest concentration occurring below 10 m altitude. The overall vertical variation was very small with a standard deviation of only 3.6 μg/m3. PM2.5 concentration also did not change much throughout the day with mean concentrations for the altitude-varying flights of 35.1, 37.2, and 36.8 μg/m3. The fourth flight, flown at a near-constant altitude, had a lower concentration of 23.5 μg/m3.
Classification using ensemble learning under weighted misclassification loss

Binary classification rules based on covariates typically depend on simple loss functions such as zero‐one misclassification. Some cases may require more complex loss functions. For example, individual‐level monitoring of HIV‐infected individuals on antiretroviral therapy requires periodic assessment of treatment failure, defined as having a viral load (VL) value above a certain threshold. In some resource limited settings, VL tests may be limited by cost or technology, and diagnoses are based on other clinical markers. Depending on scenario, higher premium may be placed on avoiding false‐positives, which brings greater cost and reduced treatment options. Here, the optimal rule is determined by minimizing a weighted misclassification loss/risk. We propose a method for finding and cross‐validating optimal binary classification rules under weighted misclassification loss. We focus on rules comprising a prediction score and an associated threshold, where the score is derived using an ensemble learner. Simulations and examples show that our method, which derives the score and threshold jointly, more accurately estimates overall risk and has better operating characteristics compared with methods that derive the score first and the cutoff conditionally on the score especially for finite samples.
Passive Smoking, Endothelial Dysfunction and Related Markers in Healthy Individuals: An Update

By the analysis of previous studies, functional and biochemical markers related to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure are discussed. 18 healthy never smokers, 12 men (67%) and 6 women (33%) aged from 21 to 55 years (mean: 34+/-9 ys.) underwent experimental procedures twice. in a smoking free environment and in the same environment polluted by 35 ppm carbon monoxide derived from smoked cigarettes. Brachial artery ultrasonography, exercise stress testing, heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) monitoring, and carboxyhaemoglobin (COHb) concentrations were examined. Five markers related to ETS exposure of healthy individuals could be demonstrated: l. Impaired FMD as an effect of endothelial dysfunction, 2. Transient increase in systolic BP; 3. HR increase; 4. Diminished tolerance to exercise; 5. Increased COHb blood concentrations. Some of these feel the effects of sympathetic stimulation induced by both nicotine and carbon monoxide. Since both active and passive smoking are believed to be a chemical toxicosis, avoiding ETS exposure of healthy nonsmokers must be a categorical imperative.
Activation of Themes During Narrative Reading

The theme of a narrative text is its main point or moral that is often implied between lines. A rapid serial visual presentation procedure (RSVP) was used to examine the online status of generation of thematic inference during narrative text comprehension. In Experiment 1, the target words were presented in different contexts with different time courses. The results showed that the facilitative effects of inferential contexts were significant for target words at the RSVP rate of 400 ms and stimulus onset asynchrony of 600 ms. There were no facilitative effects below this threshold. In Experiment 2, the location of target words was manipulated while maintaining the same presentation times. Further observed were facilitative effects of inferential contexts on target words appearing at the end of all the texts and at the middle of the texts when the reader had the correct expectation of the outcome in a text. These results suggested that thematic inference is normally generated online during comprehension. These findings indicate that the global theme of a narrative text is a fundamental component of text representation in reading. The result provides support for the constructionist theory of inference generation and the importance of theme information in constructing a coherent text representation.
Determination of the Industrial Robot Positioning Performance

Position performance is one of most important parameters in terms industrial robotics and CNC machine tools. These performance criteria are changed during machine operation and therefore it is necessary to measure device parameters in regular intervals. This measurement should be as fast and easy as possible. In the case of CNC machine tools, the Renishaw Ballbar device is commonly used for such purposes. This device fits both requirements regardless it does not offer same amount of useful information for CNC machine tools and industrial robots that require special approach to measurement and data analysis which is main topic of presented article.
Local and regional richness and rarity of leaf-litter ants: An overview from spacial scale in neotropical region

An unusual approach about richness and rarity of leaf-litter ant species is presented here from a dry forest reminiscent in Pantanal province (Chacoan subregion) suggesting the boundaries that defining local and regional scales for this particular ant community. We analysed the frequency of distribution of 170 ant species collected on 262 Winkler’s samples along Serra da Bodoquena National Park, Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil and described some ecological mechanisms that made the species richness estimates be highly influenced by species with low frequencies of records in an extent regional of a pristine dry forest. Bayesian inference was conducted to provide if the probability of latitudinal gradient was correlated with the species richness to define alpha diversity.
Trading anonymity and predatory behaviour

We investigate the eect of imposing post-trade anonymity on a pre-trade anonymous market where, previously, identities had been bilaterally revealed post-trade. Introducing anonymity greatly improves liquidity, reduces the price impacts of trades and the execution costs of worked orders. Control samples where anonymity did not change show no liquidity improvement. To identify the source of the liquidity improvements, we compare the implications of an asymmetric information model with a mechanism based on predatory trading (Brunnermier and Pedersen, 2005). We nd that the evidence supports predatory trading, whereby identities noisily reveal broker market shares and likely future order ow, allowing strategic players to prot from the price pressure caused by large brokers: liquidity improvements are greatest in stocks where trading is heavily concentrated among few brokers and in stocks more susceptible to temporary price pressure. Using trader identiers, we show that the key beneciaries of anonymity are the largest traders.
Geochemical Tracer in Coral as a Sea Surface Temperature Proxy: Records from Jukung Coral

Sr/Ca has been analyzed from coral core from the Seribu Islands reef complex i.e Jukung Island. SST from ERSST dataset and air temperature measured at Jakarta is used for Sr/Ca calibration. The results show that Jukung Island coral Sr/Ca correlates better with SST than with air temperature. A comparison between the Sr/Ca records with the Nino 3.4 index shows that Jukung coral sites indicate warming sea surface temperatures during the beginning of El Nino events followed by cooling temperatures at the end of El Nino years.
A Survey on Traditional Bug Triage and Software Data Reduction Techniques

Software bugs are the major areas where most of the IT companies spend its 45% of efforts. Bug triage is a most dynamic way for reducing bugs in the software, which is appropriately assigning the new bug to a developer. Automatic Bug triage is conducted by using text classification methods to minimize the manual work. In this section paper, the problem of large data for bug triage is addressed i.e. reducing the amount of data in assigning the bugs to developers. This technique combines feature selection and instance selection for simultaneously minimizing the bug dimension and word dimension. To identify the application order of instance selection and then feature selection, extraction of various attributes from previous bug track record is carried out to build new bug track or dataset. The proposed system tests its performance on the sample dataset of the open source software i.e. Eclipse software. The proposed system works on novel data processing techniques to generate small amount of but highly informative bug report data in software maintenance and development.
CULTIVATION OF Rosmarinus officinalis IN HYDROPONIC SYSTEM

This research was conducted to establish the relationship between population density to total dry biomass production and estimate the nutrient absorption curve in a hydroponics system for Rosmarinus officinalis L. Study was carried out at the Center for Research and Development of Hydroponics in Faculty of Agronomy at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon. Three population densities viz., 8, 16 and 24 plants per square meter were evaluated in a hydroponic system, using volcanic rock with grain diameter of 20-40 mm as an inert substrate and a standard hydroponic nutrient solution. Among tested three plant densities, population density of 8 plants m -2 , total dry biomass production produced highest, total dry biomass and it shows superiority over the plant density with 16 to 24 plants m -2 populations. There were no significant differences in plant height. The data obtained were fitted to linear growth models, which were used to estimate nutrient absorption curves.
Mechanical properties of hydraulic lime mortars

The effect of dewatering, time dependent deformation under load and wetting and drying of NHL3.5 natural hydraulic lime mortar has been investigated. Both dewatering and wetting and drying cycles were found to increase mortar strength by enhanced carbonation. An apparatus was constructed to measure the dimensional changes over a period of 180 days. The rate of deformation during the first two weeks of sample monitoring was proportional to the applied load. A logarithmic creep expression of the form e = A ln (t) + B gave the best fit to the data where, e is strain, t is time and A and B are constants. A linear relationship was found between the coefficient A and applied load.
Influence of blocking on Northern European and Western Russian heatwaves in large climate model ensembles

Better preparedness for summer heatwaves could mitigate their adverse effects on society. This can potentially be attained through an increased understanding of the relationship between heatwaves and one of their main dynamical drivers, atmospheric blocking. In the 1979–2015 period, we find that there is a significant correlation between summer heatwave magnitudes and the number of days influenced by atmospheric blocking in Northern Europe and Western Russia. Using three large global climate model ensembles, we find similar correlations, indicating that these three models are able to represent the relationship between extreme temperature and atmospheric blocking, despite having biases in their simulation of individual climate variables such as temperature or geopotential height. Our results emphasize the need to use large ensembles of different global climate models as single realizations do not always capture this relationship. The three large ensembles further suggest that the relationship between summer heatwaves and atmospheric blocking will not change in the future. This could be used to statistically model heatwaves with atmospheric blocking as a covariate and aid decision-makers in planning disaster risk reduction and adaptation to climate change.
Structural Modelling of Female Labour Participation and Occupation Decisions

The objective of this paper is to estimate the parameters defining female labour participation and occupation decisions. Departing from a theoretical framework, we use micro data to estimate the wage-participation elasticity in Mexico. Consistency between the selectivity-adjusted wages and the multinomial participation equations is achieved via a two-step estimation procedure following Lee (1984). We use the results of our model to test and quantify three hypotheses explaining recent increases in female labour participation in Mexico. Our results show that the observed 12 per cent increase in female labour participation in Mexico between 1994 and 2000 is explained by the combination of a negative income shock caused by the 1994-95 Peso crisis, the increase in expected wages taking place in the manufacturing sector during the post-NAFTA period and a reduction in the female reservation wage.
A modelling study of drying shrinkage damage in concrete repair systems

Differential shrinkage between repair material and concrete substrate is considered to be the main cause of premature failure of repair systems (Martinola, Sadouki et al. 2001, Beushausen and Alexander 2007). Magnitude of induced stresses depends on many factors, for example the amount of restraint, moisture gradients caused by different curing and drying conditions, type of repair material, etc. Once stresses exceed the strength, two damage mechanisms may take place: debonding (curling) of the repair material or/and cracking inside the repair material or concrete substrate. Numerical simulations combined with experimental observations can be of great use when determining the influence of governing parameters and predicting the performance of a repair system. In this work, a lattice type model is used first to simulate moisture distribution inside a repair system in time, and then to model cracking caused by resulting shrinkage. The influence of substrate surface preparation, bond strength between the two materials, thickness of the repair material, and different types of repair materials is investigated. One of the promising materials which was developed recently and showed to have promising properties for application in a concrete repair is a strain hardening cementitious composite - SHCC. Benefits of applying either SHCC or concrete as a repair material over non-reinforced repair mortar are discussed.
Intrinsic Motivation, Discrimination and the Child Labor-Schooling Trade-Off: Empirical Evidence∗

By explicitly taking the interdependence of the decisions over children’s labor and school attendance into account, we jointly estimate a two-equation system applying a bivariate probit model to data from Uganda. We argue that the correlation coefficient of the equations’ error terms can be interpreted as the decision trade-off between child labor and schooling, and through a novel methodological approach we obtain evidence for substantial differences across a number of comparison groups; in particular, we detect a gender, age and relationship bias. We add proxies to control for parental preferences based on self-reported answers from the survey data and find that intrinsic motivation can neither explain the gender nor the age bias implying that parents do not discriminate against their daughters or older children other than for mere economic reasons. The age bias seems mainly driven by cost-related factors and parents’ cost-sensitivity. We do, however, find conclusive evidence for discrimination against children who are not related to the household head, since the observed relationship bias is to some extent driven by parents’ intrinsic motivation. JEL classification: C35, J22, O15.
Strategic Alliance Management Performance - Coordination / Cooperation cycle: action-research study

The aim of this article is to understand alliances in order to reduce the risks of their fail. Thus, understanding the governance of alliances can provide critical insights into how such ties can be better managed: we focus on the coordination-cooperation relationship. The first part of this article, we will give a theoretical back ground about cooperation and coordination. A conceptual framework of the coordination/cooperation process is developed. Then, based on action research of alliances projects, we explain a part of strategic alliance management thanks to our management of an alliance project of 14 partners from 7 countries. In order to maximize our comprehension, we realize surveys and interviews. This study high lightens the existence of a process coordination-cooperation which is sequenced and cycled that allows achieving objectives of strategic alliance and also partners objectives. For improving the performance and the success of the alliance project, it is necessary that the coordination-cooperation process go through different strategic level of different partners engaged in the alliance project.
Comparative policy analysis under innovation-driven change: assessment of the university industry linkage in Japan and the United States

This paper is the third in a series addressing Japanese university-industry linkage policy reforms. The first paper analyzed the linkage using bibliometric techniques, demonstrating links to be prevalent and growing. The finding opposes the widespread belief that Japanese industry and universities have little research interaction, a major justification for reforms. The second paper presented empirical support for this finding, demonstrating the linkage to be substantive. The current paper reconciles the finding of a strong university-industry linkage in Japan with the taken-for-granted assumption of weakness in the linkage, by considering the process of comparative innovation system assessment in the context of innovation-driven change.