Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Symbols of Organization: Informal Ways of Negotiating the Global and the Local in MNCs

In this article I build on the growing number of anthropological studies of businesses and explore the role that symbols play in the development of globalizing business networks. Transnational business people employ symbols not only to define boundaries between groups and develop collective solidarity but also to construct continuously changing networks between different social spaces and even, in the final analysis, between the concepts of global and local. The case study presented here focuses on the use of the symbols defining ‘German business style’ by the employees of a branch of a German bank in London as they interact with colleagues in the office, staff at their Frankfurt head office, and their clients and competitors. I conclude that, first, the use of symbols in social interaction is key to the negotiation of global and local spaces, and second, that, as the concepts of ‘global’ and ‘local’ spaces are themselves symbolic constructs, the drawing of distinctions between the two may be misleading.
Aquaporin‐4 Antibodies (NMO‐IgG) as a Serological Marker of Neuromyelitis Optica: A Critical Review of the Literature

Antibodies to aquaporin‐4 (called NMO‐IgG or AQP4‐Ab) constitute a sensitive and highly specific serum marker of neuromyelitis optica (NMO) that can facilitate the differential diagnosis of NMO and classic multiple sclerosis. NMO‐IgG/AQP4‐Ab seropositive status has also important prognostic and therapeutic implications in patients with isolated longitudinally extensive myelitis (LETM) or optic neuritis (ON). In this article, we comprehensively review and critically appraise the existing literature on NMO‐IgG/AQP4‐Ab testing. All available immunoassays—including tissue‐based (IHC), cell‐based (ICC, FACS) and protein‐based (RIPA, FIPA, ELISA, Western blotting) assays—and their differential advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Estimates for sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative likelihood ratios are calculated for all published studies and accuracies of the various immunoassay techniques compared. Subgroup analyses are provided for NMO, LETM and ON, for relapsing vs. monophasic disease, and for various control groups (eg, MS vs. other controls). Numerous aspects of NMO‐IgG/AQP4‐Ab testing relevant for clinicians (eg, impact of antibody titers and longitudinal testing, indications for repeat testing, relevance of CSF testing and subclass analysis, NMO‐IgG/AQP4‐Ab in patients with rheumatic diseases) as well as technical aspects (eg, AQP4‐M1 vs. AQP4‐M23‐based assays, intact AQP4 vs. peptide substrates, effect of storage conditions and freeze/thaw cycles) and pitfalls are discussed. Finally, recommendations for the clinical application of NMO‐IgG/AQP4‐Ab serology are given.
The Effects of Managed Care and Competition on Community-Based Clinical Research

Background:The National Institutes of Health is developing practice-based clinical research networks (PBRNs) to expedite the pace of scientific discovery and improve care quality. Anecdotal evidence suggests managed care penetration and provider competition negatively affect PBRN clinical research. Objective:The objective of this study is to examine the effects of environmental factors on clinical research performance in the National Cancer Institute's Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP). Research Design:This study examined 49 CCOPs in 34 states using longitudinal (1991–2001) generalized least-squares regression including fixed effects, using secondary data from the National Cancer Institute, Group Health Association of America, InterStudy, American Hospital Association, Area Resource Files, and the Current Population Survey. Measures:Performance was measured as CCOP-level accrual in treatment trials, cancer prevention and control (CP/C) trials, and all trials combined. HMO penetration served as a proxy for managed care penetration. Competition measures included both hospital competition and physician competition. Results:Managed care penetration was positively associated with accrual in areas of low to moderate penetration and negative in the areas of high penetration. Compared with areas with 5% penetration, areas with 15% penetration had 21% more treatment accrual and 66% more CP/C accrual. Compared with areas with 40% penetration, areas with 50% penetration had 11% lower treatment accrual and 3% lower CP/C accrual. CP/C accrual was more positively affected than treatment accrual. Greater hospital competition was associated with a decline in trial enrollment. Conclusions:The healthcare environment appears to have a significant effect on accrual into community-based cancer treatment and CP/C clinical trials. Findings for treatment and CP/C accrual suggest each type of accrual is distinct and requires different strategies and administrative methods.
Collaborative Spectrum Sharing Through Non-Collaborative Gaming for Next-Generation Small Cells

Existing spectrum-sharing schemes either allow the secondary-network users (SUs) to utilize the spectrum when primary-network users (PUs) remain idle, or require the SUs to coordinate with the PUs, causing signaling overhead. In this paper, we propose a game-theoretic spectrum-sharing scheme, which enables the SUs and PUs to utilize the spectrum simultaneously, without compromising the quality of service (QoS) of the PUs and ensuring reduced signaling overhead. We formulate a multi-priority non-cooperative power-control game by considering a scenario where multiple small cell base stations belonging to either the primary network or secondary network utilize the available spectrum resources at the same time. The base stations are empowered to adjust their transmit powers in an automated manner based on measured interference, until their transmit powers are stabilized. As a key idea, a game parameter, dynamic price coefficient, is designed to give the primary network priority over the secondary network for accessing the spectrum. We determine appropriate bounds for the game parameters to ensure the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium of the proposed game. Furthermore, we propose a novel dual-mode solution to reduce the real-time signaling overhead between the networks, by minimizing the information exchange during the game required to reach an equilibrium point. Extensive simulation results are presented to prove the convergence of the game to a Nash equilibrium, along with a throughput performance analysis.
Portfolio Choices with Near Rational Agents: A Solution of Some International-Finance Puzzles

A dynamic model of consumption and portfolio decisions is analyzed in which agents seek robust choices against some misspecification of the model probability distribution. This near-rational environment can at the same time explain an imperfect international portfolio diversification and break the link between cross-country consumption correlation and real exchange rate as it is usually implied by standard preference specifications. Portfolio decisions imply moment restrictions on asset prices that are useful to extract information on the degree of near-rationality present in the data.
Substance Abuse, Employment, and Welfare Tenure

A random sample of 632 female head of household welfare recipients in two California counties was interviewed three times in the period between 1999 and 2001 to assess the correlates of substance abuse. Results suggest that a need for substance abuse services is associated with going on and off welfare more than once, leaving welfare for negative reasons, failing to find employment, and a low trajectory of earned income. These findings suggest that welfare administrators might usefully work with substance abuse providers to identify and serve welfare recipients with substance abuse problems.
Reduced insulin/IGF‐1 signalling and human longevity

Evidence is accumulating that aging is hormonally regulated by an evolutionarily conserved insulin/IGF‐1 signalling (IIS) pathway. Mutations in IIS components affect lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster and mice. Most long‐lived IIS mutants also show increased resistance to oxidative stress. In D. melanogaster and mice, the long‐lived phenotype of several IIS mutants is restricted to females. Here, we analysed the relationship between IIS signalling, body height and longevity in humans in a prospective follow‐up study. Based on the expected effects (increased or decreased signalling) of the selected variants in IIS pathway components (GHRHR, GH1, IGF1, INS, IRS1), we calculated composite IIS scores to estimate IIS pathway activity. In addition, we analysed the relative impact on lifespan and body size of the separate variants in multivariate models. In women, lower IIS scores are significantly associated with lower body height and improved old age survival. Multivariate analyses showed that these results were most pronounced for the GH1 SNP, IGF1 CA repeat and IRS1 SNP. In females, for variant allele carriers of the GH1 SNP, body height was 2 cm lower (P = 0.007) and mortality 0.80‐fold reduced (P = 0.019) when compared with wild‐type allele carriers. Thus, in females, genetic variation causing reduced IIS activation is beneficial for old age survival. This effect was stronger for the GH1 SNP than for variation in the conserved IIS genes that were found to affect longevity in model organisms.
Cloning and nucleotide sequence analysis of the serotype 2 fimbrial subunit gene of Bordetella pertussis

An oligonucleotide probe complementary to the beginning of the gene encoding the serotype 2 (ST2) fimbrlal subunit of Bordetella pertussis was synthesized and a cloned DNA fragment hybridizing with the probe identified and sequenced. Several lines of evidence indicate that an open reading frame with coding Information for a polypeptide of 207 amino acids, including a 26‐amino‐acid signal sequence, is the ST2 gene. The protein deduced from the nucleotide sequence shows good agreement with the NH2‐terminal amino acid sequence, amino acid composition and molecular weight of the purified fimbrial subunit. In addition, the proposed ST2 subunit is shown to have homology with other fimbrial subunits.
Hybrid FPGA approach for a B+ tree in a Semantic Web database system

In this paper we present a hybrid index structure which is allocated in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and a traditional CPU-based host system. The used index structure of this system is a B+-tree which is a common index used in disk based databases. The hybrid index is divided into two parts. The lower levels of the B+-tree, especially the leaves where the values are stored, are located on the host system while the root and the most upper levels with the interior nodes are stored on the FPGA. We speed up the search in the upper levels of our hybrid index by applying an FPGA accelerated parallel search. In the evaluation we show how the amount of keys inside the interior nodes on the FPGA and the order of the B+-tree take an impact on the whole hybrid system. The results show that the computation time of the software system can be halved.
Effect of risk orientation on cooperation and decision process in public goods dilemma

This paper investigates the effects of risk orientation (RO) and social value orientation (SVO) on cooperation and the process of making the decision in a public goods dilemma (PGD). We found in Study 1 that risk-seeking prosocials were more cooperative than risk-averse prosocials in a simultaneous PGD. In Study 2, we found the same effect of RO on cooperation in a real-time PGD. Moreover, we found that risk-seeking prosocials, compared with their risk-averse counterparts, took less time to make decisions and observed fewer preceding cooperation choices before making their decisions. Mediation analysis confirms our model based on the change of K’ index in real-time PGD: The number of preceding cooperation choices being observed by a player mediated the effect of RO on cooperation among prosocials that risk-seekers were more cooperative than risk-averse participants. Our studies illustrate that individual differences such as RO and SVO play an important role in decision processes in PGD that subsequently affects cooperation decisions.
Application of Evolutionary and Hybrid Algorithms to Optimize Investments Strategies in Large Power Plants

This article is an extension of the work presented earlier, which compared and analyzed the economics of alternative maintenance plans. The proposed model combines genetic algorithms with Monte Carlo simulation to arrive at the most economic investment timing. The approach described earlier was characterized by a very long computing time making it difficult to use. This paper addresses several issues related to the computational efficiency and introduces several innovative solutions that not only improve the accuracy of the analysis but also provide new opportunities in selecting optimal investment scenarios. The methodology based on stochastic-deterministic optimization algorithms and activation genes is described and illustrated by a numerical example involving analysis of the optimal number of new investments and their most economic timing for a refurbishment of a large steam generating unit.
Governor-based control for rack-wheel coordination in mechanically decoupled steering systems

A mechanically decoupled steering system enables autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicle steering by independently actuating the vehicle wheels and the steering wheel. In semi-autonomous operation the steering system should be controlled such that the vehicle wheels angle tracks a reference signal provided by the trajectory planner rapidly and safely, while guaranteeing that a certain alignment is maintained between the steering wheel and the vehicle wheels to avoid loss of drivability. We develop a controller for a mechanically decoupled steering system that can achieve this by coordinating the steering column and the steering rack actuators, while enforcing constraints on the motion of the vehicle wheels, on the interaction between the steering wheel with the driver, and on the relative motion between steering wheel and vehicle wheels. Our design is based on a particular command governor, for which convergence is proven. The control strategy is simulated in closed loop with a detailed simulation model.
The Taxation of Financial Capital Under Asymmetric Information and the Tax-Competition Paradox

Information sharing between governments is examined in an optimal-taxation framework. We introduce a taxonomy of alternative systems of international capital-income taxation and characterize the choice of tax rates and information exchange. The model reproduces the conclusion found in earlier literature that integration of international caopital markets may lead to the under-provision of publicly provided goods. However, in contrast to previous results in the literature, under-provision occurs due to inefficiently coordinated expectations. We show that there exists a second equilibrium with an efficient level of public-good provision as well as complete and voluntary information exchange between national tax authorities.
Evaluating the Meaning of Answers to Reading Comprehension Questions: A Semantics-Based Approach

There is a rise in interest in the evaluation of meaning in real-life applications, e.g., for assessing the content of short answers. The approaches typically use a combination of shallow and deep representations, but little use is made of the semantic formalisms created by theoretical linguists to represent meaning. In this paper, we explore the use of the underspecified semantic formalism LRS, which combines the capability of precisely representing semantic distinctions with the robustness and modularity needed to represent meaning in real-life applications. We show that a content-assessment approach built on LRS outperforms a previous approach on the CREG data set, a freely available corpus of answers to reading comprehension exercises by learners of German. The use of such a formalism also readily supports the integration of notions building on semantic distinctions, such as the information structuring in discourse, which we show to be useful for content assessment.
Hand preference in 4‐ to 7‐year‐old children: An analysis with the edinburgh inventory in Brazil

The hand preference of 761 Brazilian schoolchildren (349 boys and 412 girls) with ages ranging from 4 to 7 years was assessed with the Edinburgh Handed‐ness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971). We found significant effects due to sex, but not to age within the age range of this sample. Factor analysis of the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971) revealed a single factor. Comparison of the present results with data on hand preference of Brazilian adults that we reported previously confirmed an effect of sex on the distribution of handedness. Additionally, the distribution of handedness categories in children tends to be different than that found in adults, and removal of items with limited factorial validity (opening a box for children and broom for adults) accentuates these differences. Children are more mixed‐handed and less right‐handed than adults. Furthermore, we found that differences in hand preference between children and adults do not depend on the degree of novelty of the tasks included in the i.
Le traitement de faveur comme outil de recrutement de clientèle: le problème de la résistance du consommateur

De plus en plus d'entreprises accordent des traitements de faveur aux consommateurs lors de leur toute première interaction avec eux, dans une optique de recrutement. Prenant appui sur les concepts de légitimité, de réciprocité et d'inférence, nous montrons, à travers une étude quantitative (N=301) et une étude qualitative, que cette pratique peut être à l'origine d'un phénomène de résistance se traduisant par le rejet de la marque, ou au contraire l'adoption de comportements opportunistes. Nos résultats permettent de formuler des recommandations en vue d'une meilleure utilisation de cet outil de CRM.
Self-stabilizing and self-orgenizing mobile networks

Self-stabilization ([Dij74], [Dolev00] is an important property of any dynamic long-lived system. Self-stabilizing systems may start operating in any arbitrary state, and can therefore recover following a temporary violation of the assumption made by the system designer. Mobile ad-hoc networks are very dynamic in nature and must cope with unreliable and sometimes unpredictable environments. Thus the design of self-stabilizing mobile and ad-hoc networks is of great importance. Self-stabilizing networks are self-organizing if they start to operate as they should in sub-linear time. We overview several recent works demonstrating several directions for creating adaptive infrastructures and abstractions; namely self-stabilizing and self-organizing infrastructures. These infrastructures fit the mobile ad-hoc network characteristic.
Restricted teashirt expression confers eye-specific responsiveness to Dpp and Wg signals during eye specification in Drosophila

In Drosophila, the eye primordium is specified as a subdomain of the larval eye disc. Here, we show that the Zn-finger transcription factor teashirt (tsh) marks the region of the early eye disc where the eye primordium will form. Moreover, tsh misexpression directs eye primordium formation in disc regions normally destined to form head capsule, something the eye selector genes eyeless (ey) and twin of eyeless (toy) are unable to do on their own. We present evidence that tsh induces eye specification, at least in part, by allowing the activation of eye specification genes by the wingless (wg) and decapentaplegic (dpp) signaling pathways. Under these conditions, though, terminal eye differentiation proceeds only if tsh expression is transient.
Why people play

ABSTRACT The paper reviews critically a number of theories of play and suggests that they deal with different activities rather than different aspects of the same activity. Il is argued that play is not a unitary concept, but is commonly used as well as in scientific literature for at least five groups of activities. These have some superficial resemblance but may be motivated by different factors and may have different utilities or goals. It is argued that more than one variety of play can be performed at any session. A model is then presented in which a work-play continuum is proposed and activities are located at some point on the continuum. A questionnaire, the WHY Scale, was developed which can determine the location of any activity along the continuum. The scale has been used in a number of studies for both job and recreational activities and the results are presented. Recreational activities have also been subdivided into four categories: sports, hobbies, continuing education and relaxation, and th.
Genes associated with alcohol abuse and tobacco smoking in the human nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area.

BACKGROUND The incidence of alcohol and tobacco co-abuse is as high as 80%. The molecular mechanism underlying this comorbidity is virtually unknown, but interactions between these drugs have important implications for the development of and recovery from drug dependence. METHODS We investigated the effects of chronic tobacco and alcohol abuse and the interaction of the 2 behaviors on global gene expression in the human nucleus accumbens using cDNA microarrays and 20 alcoholic and control cases, with and without smoking comorbidity. Changes in gene expression were established by factorial ANOVA. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering was utilized to probe the strength of the data sets. Applying real-time PCR differential expression of candidate genes was confirmed in the nucleus accumbens and explored further in a second core region of the mesolimbic system, the ventral tegmental area. RESULTS Subjecting the data sets derived from microarray gene expression screening to unsupervised hierarchical clustering tied the cases into distinct groups. When considering all alcohol-responsive genes, alcoholics were separated from nonalcoholics with the exception of 1 control case. All smokers were distinguished from nonsmokers based on similarity in expression of smoking-sensitive genes. In the nucleus accumbens, alcohol-responsive genes were associated with transcription, lipid metabolism, and signaling. Smoking-sensitive genes were predominantly assigned to functional groups concerned with RNA processing and the endoplasmic reticulum. Both drugs influenced the expression of genes involved in matrix remodeling, proliferation, and cell morphogenesis. Additionally, a gene set encoding proteins involved in the canonical pathway "regulation of the actin cytoskeleton" was induced in response to alcohol and tobacco co-abuse and included. Alcohol abuse elevated the expression of candidate genes in this pathway in the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area, while smoking comorbidity blunted this induction in the ventral tegmental area. CONCLUSIONS The region-specific modulation of alcohol-sensitive gene expression by smoking may have important consequences for alcohol-induced aberrations within the mesolimbic dopaminergic system.
‘Different‘ just means ‘better’: Some obvious and some hidden pathways to in‐group favouritism

Within the framework of social identity theory (SIT) a field experiment was conducted to test the impact of comparison importance for in-group as well as for out-group favouritism. It was predicted that (a) in-group favouritism would be stronger on dimensions important for the in-group irrespective of out-group importance and that (b) out-group favouritism would be possible on those dimensions important for the out-group which at the same time are unimportant for the in-group. Results of a 2 (high vs. low in-group importance) x 2 (high vs. low out-group importance) x 2 (social group ‘GRUNE’/‘SPD’) ANOVA support the assumption in principle. The expected effect of in-group importance on in-group favouritism is mitigated by out-group importance. In addition, interaction effects of ‘social groups’ with each of the other two factors on in-group favouritism point to the relevance of type of intergroup relations underlying the intergroup comparisons.