Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expatriate reduction and strategic control in American multinational corporations

The significant reduction in the use of home country expatriates abroad by American multinationals is generally taken positively, reflecting internationalization, the environmental competence of host country nationals, equity, and the cost of maintaining Americans abroad. In this article I dissent, arguing that the phase-out of expatriates has gone too far, much further in fact than European or Japanese competition and that the dominant reason for the cutback is the difficulty Americans have in adapting to overseas assignments and the high failure rate they have experienced. I conclude that expatriate reduction has significant consequences for the strategic management of multinational corporations: reduced identification with the worldwide organization and its objectives, difficulty exercising control through personnel, and a lack of opportunities for Americans to gain international expertise through assignments abroad. Although I do not advocate returning to the ineffective and inequitable over-reliance on home country nationals, I argue that a corps of expatriates performs a function valuable to the MNC and that a means must be found to develop a group of managers who identify with the organization as a whole and provide overseas experience to home country managers.
In Vitro Antifungal Activities of Antimicrobial Coated/Impregnated Central Venous Catheters Against Candida Albicans

Giriş: Antimikrobial ajanlarla kaplı kateterlerin değişik mikroorganizmalara karşı etkinlikleri farklıdır ve antifungal etkinlikleri pek bilinmemektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı gümüş sulfadiazine-klorheksidin, minosiklin-rifampin ve rifampisin-mikonazol kaplı kateterlerin Candida albicans’a karşı antifungal etkinliklerini belirlemek ve karşılaştırmakdır. Yöntemler: Çalışmada antiseptik kaplı olmayan Hickman kateterler kontrol grubu olarak kullanılmıştır. Tüm kateter parçaları bir santimetre uzunluğunda bölünmüş ve bu segmetler üçe ayrılmıştır. Kateter segmentleri fosfat tamponlu salin (0.01 mol/l) ve %0.25 dekstroz çözeltisinde 37 C’de inkübe edilmiştir. Çözelti günlük olarak değiştirilmiştir. Bir, 3, 14 ve 21. Günlerde 1 ml standart Candida albicans özeltisi 30 dakika süre ile eklenmiş ve ardından fosfat tamponlu salin (0.01 mol/l) ve %0.25 dekstroz ile tekrar inkübe edilmiştir. Örneklerin üçte birinden 30 dakika sonra sonikasyon işlemini takiben ekim yapılmış ve ilk fungal yapışma değerlendirilmiştir. Kalan kateter segmentlerden 4 ve 24 saat sonra fungal çoğalmayı değerlendirmek için sabora-dekstroz agar vasatına ekim yapılmıştır. Bulgular: Rifampisin-mikonazol kaplı kateterler tüm çalışma boyunca başlangıç ve 4. saat fungal yapışmayı anlamlı olarak azalttı. Yirmidördüncü saatte, bu kateterlerde kolonizasyon daha az olsa da istatistiksel olarak anlamlı değildi. Gümüş sulfadiazine ve minosiklin-rifampin kaplı kateterler başlangıç fungal yapışmayı ve sonra gelişen kolonizasyonu önlemedi. Sonuç: Rifampisin-mikonazol kaplı kateterler başlangıç fungal yapışmayı önlemede etkindirler. Bu kateterlerin Candida albicans kolonizasyonunu engellemede ise sınırlı bir süre etkinlikleri vardır. (Yoğun Bakım Derg 2010; 1: 10-3)
The Emergence of China and India as New Competitors in MNCs' Innovation Networks

The globalisation of business research and development (R&D) was initially confined to developed countries, primarily to the triad of North America, Western Europe and Japan. Around the turn of the millennium, multinational companies (MNCs) increasingly started to include developing countries in their R&D value chain, with a particular preference for China and India. Based on the scattered yet growing evidence, this paper argues that the shift of MNC R&D to China and India is still limited in sectoral and regional scope. The investment is initially more market-seeking in China and more resource-seeking in India, with a tendency to evolutionary learning-based upgrading in both countries. Despite the dynamism in these developments, it seems that knowledge integration and appropriation remains hierarchical and firmly rooted in the triad-based R&D centres. Although alarmist and techno-nationalist arguments, predominantly from the US, of an imminent loss of position in the global innovation contest are exaggerated, these developments may nevertheless herald a historic shift in the global loci of innovation and power.
Mutations in the rpoB and katG Genes Leading to Drug Resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Latvia

ABSTRACT To characterize the genetic basis of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Latvia, mutations involved in rifampin (rpoB gene) and isoniazid (katG gene) resistance in DNA from 19 drug-susceptible and 51 multidrug-resistant M. tuberculosis complex isolates were analyzed. The most frequent rpoB gene mutations found by the Line Probe assay were the S531L (14 of 34 isolates), D516V (7 of 34), H526D (4 of 34), and D516Y plus P535S (4 of 34) mutations. Direct sequencing of seven isolates with unclear results from Line Probe assay showed the presence of the L533P mutation and the Q510H plus H526Y (1 of 34) and D516V plus P535S (4 of 34) double mutations, neither of which has been described previously. Single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis showed strand mobility differences between the rifampin-susceptible and -resistant samples for the D516V, H526D, and D516Y plus P535S mutations but not for the S531L mutation. Nucleotide substitution at codon 315 (AGC→ACC) of the katG gene was found in 48 of 51 multidrug-resistant samples by sequencing. Furthermore, katG gene restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis with endonuclease AciI confirmed the nucleotide change in codon 315.
Futures Market Efficiency, the Unbiasedness Hypothesis and Variance-Bounds Tests: The Case of the FTSE-100 Futures Contract

The efficiency of futures markets is critical to their price discovery role. This paper investigates the joint hypothesis of market efficiency and unbiasedness of futures prices for the FTSE-100 stock index futures contract. Unlike previous studies, it tests for both long-run and short-run efficiency using cointegration and error correction models. Variance-bounds tests are developed and utilized for examining the question of efficiency. Results show that the market is efficient and provides an unbiased estimate of future spot prices for one and two months away from expiration. However, for three and more months away from expiration this is not the case, which has implications for the users of this market. Copyright 1996 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the Board of Trustees of the Bulletin of Economic Research
Anticipatory Tonal Coarticulation in Thai Noun Compounds after Unilateral Brain Damage

The time course and extent of anticipatory coarticulation between tones was investigated in normal and brain-damaged Thai-speaking subjects. Subjects were classified into five groups including 11 young normal, 9 old normal, 12 right hemisphere, 9 left hemisphere fluent, and 6 left hemisphere nonfluent. Stimuli consisted of five bisyllabic noun compounds with a falling tone on the initial syllable and each of the five Thai tones (mid, low, falling, high, rising) on the final syllable. Height and slope of F0 was measured at 10% intervals throughout the duration of the initial syllable. Results indicated anticipatory effects on both height and slope of the falling tone. Height effects extended throughout from the beginning. The falling tone was generally higher when occurring before the low/rising tones than when occurring before the mid/falling/high tones. Slope effects were restricted to the terminal portion. The falling tone before low/rising tones exhibited a steeper slope than before falling/high tones. In magnitude of effect, patients with left and right hemisphere lesions were statistically indistinguishable from those of normal subjects. No differences were noted in coarticulatory patterns as a function of aphasia type. All brain-damaged speakers were more variable in F0 production than normals. Findings are interpreted to highlight properties of nonfluent aphasic speech and neurological bases of speech production.
The integration of syntax and semantic plausibility in a wide-coverage model of human sentence processing

Models of human sentence processing have paid much attention to three key characteristics of the sentence processor: Its robust and accurate processing of unseen input (wide coverage), its immediate, incremental interpretation of partial input and its sensitivity to structural frequencies in previous language experience. In this thesis, we propose a model of human sentence processing that accounts for these three characteristics and also models a fourth key characteristic, namely the influence of semantic plausibility on sentence processing. The precondition for such a sentence processing model is a general model of human plausibility intuitions. We therefore begin by presenting a probabilistic model of the plausibility of verb-argument relations, which we estimate as the probability of encountering a verb-argument pair in the relation specified by a thematic role in a role-annotated training corpus. This model faces a significant sparse data problem, which we alleviate by combining two orthogonal smoothing methods. We show that the smoothed model’s predictions are significantly correlated to human plausibility judgements for a range of test sets. We also demonstrate that our semantic plausibility model outperforms selectional preference models and a standard role labeller, which solve tasks from computational linguistics that are related to the prediction of human judgements. We then integrate this semantic plausibility model with an incremental, widecoverage, probabilistic model of syntactic processing to form the Syntax/Semantics (SynSem) Integration model of sentence processing. The SynSem-Integration model combines preferences for candidate syntactic structures from two sources: Syntactic probability estimates from a probabilistic parser and our semantic plausibility model’s estimates of the verb-argument relations in each syntactic analysis. The model uses these preferences to determine a globally preferred structure and predicts difficulty in human sentence processing either if syntactic and semantic preferences conflict, or if the interpretation of the preferred analysis changes non-monotonically. In a thorough evaluation against the patterns of processing difficulty found for four ambiguity phenomena in eight reading-time studies, we demonstrate that the SynSem-Integration model reliably predicts human reading time behaviour.
The Spillover Effect of Education on Productivity: Evidence from China

Paper develops an endogenous model to analyze the impact of education on total factor productivity. The econometric model including education expenditure, education spillovers and productivity is established. Using Malmquist productivity index method, the total factor productivity can be decomposed into technological efficiency and technological progress. Paper employs the panel data set in China to examine the impact and the spillovers from education on the change of productivity, technological efficiency and technological progress over the period 1991–2007. We find that education is positive to the change of productivity and conducive to the technology efficiency improvements. But due to the irrational distribution of educational spending at all levels of education, the spillovers of education perform to deteriorate technological efficiency and contribute to technological progress.
Teamworking and performance: the extent and intensity of teamworking in the 1998 UK Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98)

This article uses the 1998 UK Workplace Employee Relations Survey to address two main issues: whether a relationship between teamworking and performance can be said to exist; and, if it can, how that relationship might be explained. For the first of these we construct a variable that measures the extent of teamworking within an establishment. This is found to be positively and significantly related to productivity and financial performance. To address our second main issue we examine the idea that the key factor in performance is the degree of teams' decision-making autonomy. We look at this by constructing a measure of teamworking intensity. This is found to be positively and significantly associated with productivity and quality levels. Taken alongside other studies, these results are used to suggest that, in looking at the teamworking-performance relationship, the focus of attention should be on the structural properties of teams rather than the individual team members' experiences of work.
Deletions of the Endocytic Components VPS28 and VPS32 in Candida albicans Lead to Echinocandin and Azole Hypersensitivity

ABSTRACT Vps28p and Vps32p act in both the endocytic and the pH signaling pathways in yeasts and are required for Candida albicans virulence. Here, we show that deletions of VPS28 and VPS32 increase the susceptibility of C. albicans to cell wall disruption agents, echinocandin and azole antifungal agents.
A Note on the Reduction of Complex Labour to Simple Labour

Critical analysis which aims to dispense with the Marxist theory of value and to deny the existence of exploitation generally concentrates on two points : the transformation of values into prices, and the reduction of complex to simple labour . ' On the first point, critics argue that the quantity of labour embodied in commodities during production cannot account for the rate at which they exchange . From this they conclude that the Marxist theory of value is useless a theory of prices of production is sufficient . On this basis, as Samuelson says, Marx is merely a "minor postRicardian" who has left unsolved the problem which Ricardo raised but did not resolve . (Samuelson, 1957, p . 95) . On the second point, critics argue that it is not possible to construct an independent standard out of the various concrete labours with which to measure, in homogenous terms, the amount of labour embodied in commodities in the course of production . These critiques have a different standing in the literature . While debate on the reduction problem appears to be a pre-condition for discussion of the transformation problem, in fact, most of the debate has been about the latter . (These debates are reviewed in Benetti, Berthomieu, and Cartelier, 1975, p . 71-136). Roncaglia, along with others, has recently reopened discussion on the reduction problem . However, Roncaglia's procedure for reduction, like all procedures of this type, involves certain difficulties which seem to me to make it unacceptable. If my criticisms of him are correct, we shall be lead to a reformulation of the terms in which the reduction debate has been hitherto conducted, and in particular to question the status of that peculiar commodity, labour power. 1. THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF THE REDUCTION OF COMPLEX TO SIMPLE LABOUR The most important criticism of Marx on this point, put forward by Bohm-Bawerk and Schumpeter, is that the reduction procedure Marx suggested DEBATE
An Updated Review on the Genetics of Primary Open Angle Glaucoma

Epidemiological studies suggest that by 2020 the prevalence of primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) is estimated to increase to 76.0 million, and to 111.8 million by 2040 globally due to the population aging. The prevalence of POAG is the highest among those of African descent, followed by Asians, and the lowest in Europeans. POAG is a genetically complex trait with a substantial fraction exhibiting a significant heritability. Less than 10% of POAG cases in the general population are caused by specific gene mutations and the remaining cases are polygenic. Quantitative traits related to POAG pathogenesis such as intra-ocular pressure (IOP), vertical cup/disc ratio (VCDR), optic disc area, and central corneal thickness (CCT) are highly heritable, and likely to be influenced at least in part by genes and show substantial variation in human populations. Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at different loci including CAV1/CAV2, TMCO1, CDKN2B-AS1, CDC7-TGFBR3, SIX1/SIX6, GAS7 and ATOH7 to be associated with POAG and its related quantitative traits (endophenotypes). The chapter provides a brief overview on the different GWAS and SNP association studies and their correlation with various clinical parameters important for POAG in the population worldwide, including the Middle East.
Hot Hands in Mutual Funds: Short‐Run Persistence of Relative Performance, 1974–1988

The relative performance of no-load, growth-oriented mutual funds persists in the near term, with the strongest evidence for a one-year evaluation horizon. Portfolios of recent poor performers do significantly worse than standard benchmarks; those of recent top performers do better, though not significantly so. The difference in risk-adjusted performance between the top and bottom octile portfoli os is six to eight percent per year. These results are not attributable to known anomalies or survivorship bias. Investigations with a differen t (previously used) data set and with some post-1988 data confirm the finding of persistence. Copyright 1993 by American Finance Association.
Human resource control in MNCs: a study of the factors influencing the use of formal and informal control mechanisms

This study tests the effects of different internal and external factors on Multinational Corporations' (MNCs) use of formal versus informal mechanisms to control their human resources. Responses to a survey of 74 General Managers (GMs) of US subsidiaries in Mexico were used to test the hypotheses. The use of formal and informal mechanisms of control was associated with the extent to which the MNC had a global strategy as well as with the strength of localization forces such as local dependence and local regulations. Level of employee education, a subsidiary characteristic, also predicted the extent to which MNCs used informal control mechanisms. Most importantly, the results suggest that, even though they share some antecedents, each type of control mechanism, namely formal and informal, has a different set of internal and external antecedents. Indeed, our data hint that informal and formal control mechanisms are not mutually exclusive and that, on the contrary, they can fruitfully co-exist because they satisfy different internal and external demands.
Understanding Social Interpersonal Interaction via Synchronization Templates of Facial Events

Automatic facial expression analysis in inter-personal communication is challenging. Not only because conversation partners' facial expressions mutually influence each other, but also because no correct interpretation of facial expressions is possible without taking social context into account. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic framework to model interactional synchronization between conversation partners based on their facial expressions. Interactional synchronization manifests temporal dynamics of conversation partners' mutual influence. In particular, the model allows us to discover a set of common and unique facial synchronization templates directly from natural interpersonal interaction without recourse to any predefined labeling schemes. The facial synchronization templates represent periodical facial event coordinations shared by multiple conversation pairs in a specific social context. We test our model on two different dyadic conversations of negotiation and job-interview. Based on the discovered facial event coordination, we are able to predict their conversation outcomes with higher accuracy than HMMs and GMMs.
The Effects of Exchange Rate, Income and Habit on Japanese Travel to Canada

Using three econometric models, this study examined the effects of habit, income, and exchange rate on the Canadian tourism industry. While the three variables were found to be significant in the explanation of tourist arrivals in earlier studies, the present study explored in greater details the extent and nature of their influences. The findings indicated that exchange rate was more powerful as an explanatory variable than income in both forecasting ability and stability. On the other hand, the habit variable was consistently important throughout all the estimation periods. The implications of the findings were discussed.
An outbreak of E. coli O157 associated with a swimming pool: an unusual vehicle of transmission

SUMMARY Escherichia coli O157 causes a range of illnesses from mild diarrhoea to haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) which carries a mortality rate of 3·7%. Infection is more common in the under-5s. Between 1995 and 2000, 106 outbreaks of E. coli O157 were reported in England and Wales. Recreational water is well documented as a transmission route for infectious diseases worldwide. In the United Kingdom there have been very few reported outbreaks associated with swimming pools due to the relative susceptibility of E. coli O157 to adequate levels of free chlorine. This report describes the investigation of an outbreak associated with a local leisure centre pool and makes recommendations about the safe management of such facilities.
The Better Practice Program Funding Formula: A Neo‐liberal Approach to Funding General Practice

A decade after the introduction of Medicare, various pressures had emerged in the financing of general practice. The National Health Strategy suggested these could be addressed by supplementing the Medicare benefits program with other payment systems. The Commonwealth government introduced the better practice program (BPP) in late 1994. Through the BPP, the Commonwealth makes payments to general practices calculated according to a formula. Using Medicare claims data, the formula takes into account practice size, patient loyalty to the practice and practice location. The BPP formula is oriented to the free choice of doctor by patients, and free choice of practice location by doctors. It is the exercise of these freedoms that, through the operation of the formula, determines the size of BPP payments. This arrangement is an example of a distinctively neo-liberal mode of government.
A type of sorting based on homomorphic encryption

To protect the confidential of data outsourced to the cloud, we should encrypt our data before we deliver it to the cloud, but the problem is we can't sort the data, because the order of ciphertext is not always agree with the plaintext. In this paper, we propose a method of sorting based on homomorphic encryption, and the algorithm complexity is n log n. With this method, we can reduce our retrieval algorithm to log n instead of n, and many other algorithm will be easy.
Understanding self‐perception accuracy: Implications for human resource management

A conceptual model of self-perception accuracy is developed, and its managerial and research implications for human resources management are discussed. The model is based on a series of studies designed to enhance understanding of self–other agreement and the accuracy of self-perception. Accuracy is defined as the degree of agreement between self-and other-evaluations/ratings. In this framework, “other-ratings” may be provided by subordinates, peers, superiors, or customers/clients, so that self–other agreement includes the entire 360-degree range of feedback sources available to a focal individual. The evaluations/ratings may concern any of the key areas in personnel and human resource management such as training needs assessment, performance appraisal, or leadership behaviors. The model posits enhanced individual and organizational outcomes when self-perception is accurate and diminished or mixed outcomes when self-perception is inflated or deflated, respectively. © 1993 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.