Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of the balanced scorecard in the formulation and control of strategic processes

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to confront the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) with Simons’ levers of control model and to discuss its role in the various phases of the strategic process. The authors examine the role of the BSC as a tool of interactive and diagnostic control by making a distinction between its design phase and its phase of use.Design/methodology/approach – An action research approach, based on two cases, was used to investigate the role of the balanced scorecard in strategic processes.Findings – The results show that the BSC generates a process of collective elucidation favouring the forming of emergent strategies and a process of control of the change favouring the collective representations on the strategy. The BSC thus seems to be a relevant tool for interactive control during its implementation stage. On the other hand, the authors’ observations also show the failure of the BSC as a system of diagnostic control and of interactive control during its using stage. Ultimately, it is shown th.
A population assessment of mercury exposure from two cities of Pakistan with respect to freshwater and marine fish consumption

In this study, we aimed to estimate the level of mercury (Hg) in scalp hair samples of human subjects and its association with consumption of sea- and freshwater fish species. The scalp hairs were collected from both genders (male and female) aged between 15 and 50 years (n = 200), living in coastal areas of Karachi, who mostly consumed sea fish species, referred to as exposed subjects. For comparison purposes, scalp hair samples of both genders (n = 160) were collected from the inhabitants of Karachi and Hyderabad cities who consumed freshwater fish species termed as referent subjects. The frequently consumed fresh and marine fish species were also collected. The level of Hg was determined in fish and scalp hair samples by cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry, prior to ultrasonic-assisted acid digestion in a mixture of nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide. The validity of methodology was checked by certified reference material (CRM) BCR 397 (human hair) and DORM-2. The concentrations of Hg in sea- and freshwater fish were found in the range of 1.47–2.09 and 0.402–0.676 μg/g, respectively. The exposed subjects had significantly elevated levels of Hg in scalp hair samples (1.8–4.3 μg/g) as compared to referent subjects (0.87–1.95 μg/g) (p < 0.001). A significant positive correlation was obtained between the concentration of Hg in hair and age of study population. Exposed and referent female subjects had higher levels of Hg in scalp hair than that in males of both study groups (p = 0.02–0.031).
Relationship between Neurocardiogenic Syncope and Ventricular Repolarization

We aimed to analyze ventricular repolarization in neurocardiogenic syncope (NCS) patients by using T‐peak‐T‐end interval, T‐peak‐T‐end/QT ratio, T‐peak‐T‐end/QTc ratio and corrected QT interval (QTc), QT dispersion (QTd), QT index (QTI) and corrected QT interval index (QTcI) comparing with the corrected JT dispersion (JTcd), and corrected JT (JTc) and the corrected JT interval index (JTcI), by inspecting ventricular activation until termination of repolarization. These parameters are used as an index of potential ventricular arrhythmogenesis.
ASEM and the construction of the New Triad

Abstract Since the mid‐1990s, the idea of a trilateral or tripolar world order based on the economically most advanced macro‐regions North America, Western Europe and East Asia ‐ the new Triad ‐ has gained much acceptance in Asian and European policy‐making circles. Though the triangle imagery is still quite far from what seems to be reality, it provided the major rationale for the creation of the Asia‐Europe Meeting (ASEM) process which was designed to strengthen the ‘weak leg’ in the triadic interregional relationship. The paper analyses the role of ASEM in the construction of the new Triad and identifies five functions of ASEM in this context. It concludes that the recent Asian economic crisis tends to undermine the rationale on which ASEM was built, at least temporarily, whereas ASEM itself may not lose its importance for the countries involved.
Public Resistance to Indexation: A Puzzle

THE INDEXATION OF payments makes excellent sense for all sorts of long-term contracts. Future payments should not be expressed in currency units, but instead tied to an index of consumer prices or an index of wholesale prices, of wages, of incomes, or of components of income. History shows that the real value of currency units has been so unstable that it is better to use practically any one of these indexes to specify future payments in contracts than to specify payments in terms of fixed currency. And yet there has been relatively little use of indexation, except in situations of extremely variable inflation. People seem to have a preference for specifying their obligations and opportunities, long-term as well as short-term, in local currency units. That the public should generally want to denominate contracts in currency units-despite all the evidence that it is not wise to do so and despite the obvious examples from nominal contracts of redistributions caused by unexpected inflation-should be regarded as one of the great economic puzzles of all
Evolutionary Resilience and Strategies for Climate Adaptation

The aim of this study is to develop a framework by drawing on three broad perspectives on resilience, engineering, ecological and evolutionary, and to use this framework to critically examine the approach adopted by the draft London climate change adaptation strategy. The central argument of the study is that the Strategy's emergency planning-centred approach to climate adaptation veers between a standard ecological understanding of resilience and the more rigid engineering model. Its emphasis is on identifying ‘exposure’ and ‘vulnerability’ to risk from climate events and on bouncing back from the consequences of such exposures to a normal state, rather than on the dynamic process of transformation to a more desirable trajectory. The study concludes that fostering resilience involves planning for not only recovery from shocks but also cultivating preparedness, and seeking potential transformative opportunities which emerge from change.
Changing local weather and adaptation in two coastal villages in Bangladesh

Coastal Bangladesh is experiencing the effects of weather and climate-related stressors. The paper reports on the ways in which members of nine occupational groups in two coastal villages in South-west Bangladesh understand and respond differentially to recent changes in local weather and weather-related events and processes. Their understanding is grounded in local experiences and varied livelihood options, which are a complex interaction between people's social and spatial locations and local weather and non-weather events and processes. Their priorities are to protect livelihoods through resilience-building actions, which address proximate causes of vulnerability (improving coastal embankments, rehabilitating and strengthening homesteads, protecting agricultural land). Government support is limited to traditional development interventions that assist some more than others and often disconnected from local people's priorities. Most adaptation actions are practical measures within the prevailing politico-legal order. There is some evidence of more rights-based cooperative action between a national non-governmental organisation and local farmers that challenged aspects of that order.
Rituximab modulates the expression of IL-22 in the salivary glands of patients with primary Sjogren's syndrome

We have recently demonstrated that interleukin (IL)-22, mainly produced by T-helper 17 effector cells, natural killer (NK)p44+NK cells and epithelial cells, may be potentially involved in the pathogenesis of primary Sjogren's syndrome (pSS). 1 The IL-22/IL-22R pathway is known to play a role in the emergence of T and B-cell lymphoma2 ,3 and pSS is considered a risk factor for the development of lymphoma.4 Rituximab, which has historically been used for the treatment of B-cell lymphoma,5 has also been considered to be effective in the therapy of pSS.6 Ten consecutive patients with pSS (eight women and two men, with a mean duration of disease of 48±18 months), diagnosed according to the American–European Consensus Group criteria for pSS,7 who were treated with two courses of intravenous infusions of 1000 mg rituximab (Roche, Woerden, The Netherlands) at days 1 and 15, at baseline and then after 6 months, were considered for this study. After 48 weeks the patients again underwent salivary gland biopsy. The demographic, clinical and histological characteristics of …
The edges detection in images using the clustering algorithm

The article suggests an algorithm of boundary extraction based on image clustering. In the process of clustering, the image is decomposed into simply connected regions based on pixel color. Edges of the regions are considered as the boundaries. The proposed approach allows obtaining well-defined boundaries without blurring. The algorithm is highly resistant to impulse noise.
Clinical–Pathological Characterization of Diabetic Foot Infections

The present study has 3 aims: (a) to characterize the clinical and pathological features of diabetic foot infections, (b) to show the range of clinical presentations of moderate infections, and (c) to analyze the different behavior of diabetic foot osteomyelitis regarding to its clinical presentation. A definitive diagnosis of the type of infection was made based on intraoperative findings and histopathology. Diabetic foot infections were classified into 2 types: soft tissue and bone infections. Mild infections were always superficial. Severe infections included 75% of necrotizing soft tissue infections. Moderate infections showed ample range of clinical presentations. Eighty-one patients presented osteomyelitis. Osteomyelitis was further classified as follows: osteomyelitis without ischemia and without soft tissue involvement (class 1), osteomyelitis with ischemia without soft tissue involvement (class 2), osteomyelitis with soft tissue involvement (class 3), and osteomyelitis with ischemia and soft tissue involvement (class 4). Forty-eight patients (59.3%) with osteomyelitis underwent conservative surgery, 32 (39.5%) had minor amputations including 9 open transmetatarsal amputations, and there was 1 (1.2%) major amputation. The characterization of osteomyelitis into 4 classes showed a statistically significant trend toward increased severity and increased amputation rate and mortality. In conclusion, the clinical presentation of foot infections in diabetic patients is very heterogeneous and can be classified into soft tissue infections (cellulitis, superficial and deep abscesses, and necrotizing soft tissue infections) and osteomyelitis, which was the most frequent type of infection found in the author’s series. Their division into 4 classes showed a statistically significant trend toward increased severity, amputation rate, and mortality. The diagnosis of deep soft tissue infections associated with osteomyelitis may be difficult to achieve before surgery.
Benchmarking national public policies to exploit international science and industrial research: a synopsis of current developments

Governments act on the increasing internationalisation of science and technology, albeit slowly. This paper is based on a study of strategies and initiatives set in motion by key actors in science and technology policy in eight countries. These activities could be directed at attracting or absorbing foreign knowledge or carriers of knowledge. The study found that, although there is awareness of a general problem (for instance, brain drain, lack of attractiveness of domestic science and technology system, insufficient access to world class knowledge), few countries develop an integrated policy strategy to address these issues. Nevertheless, the study identified a number of interesting initiatives that can serve as ‘benchmarks’ for policy-makers elsewhere. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.
Efficiency of multinational banks: an empirical investigation

This paper conducts a comparative analysis of the productive efficiency of foreign-owned and US-owned multinational commercial banks operating in the US. A multiproduct translog stochastic-cost frontier model approach is used to estimate cost inefficiency scores. Ordinary Least Squares and Tobit regressions are used to identify the key factors associated with inefficiency. The results indicate that foreign-owned multinational banks operating in the US are significantly less efficient than their US-owned counterparts and that large multinational banks in holding company networks carrying fewer foreign assets tend to be more efficient.
Performance Evaluation of Wideband Microwave Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Using Luneburg Lens

In this letter, a wideband passive direction-finding (DF) system utilizing Luneburg lens is investigated. A number of detectors are placed uniformly on the surface of the equatorial plane of the Luneburg lens. Based on the received signal amplitude distribution at the detectors, the direction of arrival (DoA) is estimated using the correlation method. The root mean square errors (RMSEs) of the DoA estimation are calculated for various lens sizes, signal-to-noise ratios, and number of detectors within the frequency band from 9 to 11 GHz. To examine the proposed DF system performance, the Cramér–Rao bound on the RMSEs of the DoA estimation is derived and compared to the simulated RMSEs using the correlation method.
Did Australia's Fiscal Stimulus Counter Recession?: Evidence from the National Accounts

A close scrutiny of the pattern of aggregate expenditure recorded in the Australian national accounts reveals it was the behaviour of exports and imports, and not increased fiscal activity, that was primarily responsible for offsetting the fall in private investment due to the Global Financial Crisis. The examination of a broad set of national income and employment indicators suggests that the Australian economy most likely did not avoid a recession, even though it was a relatively mild one by past standards.
Variant colony surface antigenic phenotypes within mycoplasma strain populations: implications for species identification and strain standardization

Immunobinding assays with mycoplasma colonies on agar plates (immunofluorescence and immunoperoxidase techniques) or with imprints of colonies transferred to solid supports (colony immunoblotting) are widely used as standard diagnostic tests for serological species identification of mycoplasma isolates. However, in light of the high rate of variability of surface antigens in many mycoplasmas, diagnostic data obtained with these techniques require a more critical evaluation. In this report, we demonstrate with some examples that mycoplasma surface variability based on alterations in expression, in size, and in surface presentation of integral and peripheral membrane proteins may lead to misinterpretation of colony immunostaining reactions obtained by using specific monoclonal antibodies as well as conventional diagnostic hyperimmune sera. To more easily identify phenotypically mixed isolates or samples which contain more than one species, we have introduced some minor modifications of the colony immunoblot technique which provide sharp signals of positive as well as negative reactions and enable identification of cryptic epitopes. It is further demonstrated that because of the variability in colony surface antigenic phenotype, mycoplasma strains, including well-established reference and other prototype strains which are used under the same designation in many laboratories, can differ markedly in their antigen profiles and their potentially virulence-related surface properties, since they are usually purified by filter cloning and often propagated by subcultivation of randomly selected agar-grown subpopulations. We conclude from this study that because of this surface variability, the establishment of criteria for standardization of mycoplasma strains and diagnostic antisera is urgently required in order to obtain reproducible results in different laboratories.
Mannose receptor-targeted vaccines

Targeting antigens to endocytic receptors on professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs) represents an attractive strategy to enhance the efficacy of vaccines. Such APC-targeted vaccines have an exceptional ability to guide exogenous protein antigens into vesicles that efficiently process the antigen for major histocompatibility complex class I and class II presentation. Efficient targeting not only requires high specificity for the receptor that is abundantly expressed on the surface of APCs, but also the ability to be rapidly internalised and loaded into compartments that contain elements of the antigen-processing machinery. The mannose receptor (MR) and related C-type lectin receptors are particularly designed to sample antigens (self and non-self), much like pattern recognition receptors, to integrate the innate with adaptive immune responses. In fact, a variety of approaches involving delivery of antigens to the MR have demonstrated effective induction of potent cellular and humoral immune responses. Yet, although several lines of evidence in diverse experimental systems attest to the efficacy of targeted vaccine strategies, it is becoming increasingly clear that additional signals, such as those afforded by adjuvants, may be critical to elicit sustained immunity. Therefore, MR-targeted vaccines are likely to be most efficacious in vivo when combined with agents that elicit complementary activation signals. Certainly, a better understanding of the mechanism associated with the induction of immune responses as a result of targeting antigens to the MR, will be important in exploiting MR-targeted vaccines not only for mounting immune defenses against cancer and infectious disease, but also for specific induction of tolerance in the treatment of autoimmune disease.
A dynamic view of knowledge and information: a stock and flow based methodology

Traditional accounting systems focus on the evaluation on tangible assets, neglecting the value addition contributed to business performance by intangibles. This paper explores the intangible evaluation concept and suggests a stock and flow based analysis to assess a methodology that could highlight static and dynamic aspects and their mutual impact on business performance. A general sketch, clarifying the numerous cause-effect relations among intangible assets, is provided to support the management in decision making. The aim of this methodology coincides with the main target pursued by firms: to get a competitive advantage or to maintain the already acquired leadership.
Volume of Ambulatory Care Visits and Patterns of Care for Patients Diagnosed with Plantar Fasciitis: A National Study of Medical Doctors

Background: Plantar fasciitis is a relatively common disorder of the foot, yet little is known about its prevalence, what types of physicians see patients with the disorder, or how, on a national scale, patients are typically managed. The purpose of this study was to generate national estimates of the volume of patient visits and characteristics of care given to patients diagnosed with plantar fasciitis by medical doctors. Methods: Data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) for the years 1995–2000 were studied. These are multistage probability sample surveys of visits to office-based physicians (NAMCS) and visits to nonfederal, short-stay, and general hospitals (NHAMCS) to consult doctors of medicine and doctors of osteopathy. Sample data have been weighted to produce national estimates. Data describing the number of patient visits for plantar fasciitis and the characteristics of the care given during those visits were summarized using univariate analyses. Data were combined for the 6-year period to increase the reliability of the estimates, and figures are presented as annual averages. Results: Approximately 1 million patient visits per year were made to office-based physicians and hospital outpatient departments for the diagnosis and treatment of plantar fasciitis during 1995–2000. Approximately 62% of all visits were made to primary care practitioners, and 31% were made to orthopaedic surgeons. Patient visits for plantar fasciitis accounted for approximately 1% of all patient visits to orthopedic surgeons. Pain medication, including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), was the most frequently used intervention (47% of visits). Exercise counseling was cited at 26% of visits, and physical therapy was ordered or provided at 19% of visits. Conclusions: This research suggests that plantar fasciitis is a relatively common disorder that is seen by several physician specialties. The disorder is not managed in a consistent way. Rather, there appears to be a large amount of variation in the way that these patients are managed. These findings support the argument that additional research is needed to identify effective interventions for plantar fasciitis and to determine if physician specialty influences treatment outcome.
Exploiting Electrocorticographic Spectral Characteristics for Optimized Signal Chain Design: A 1.08 W Analog Front End With Reduced ADC Resolution Requirements

Electrocorticography (ECoG) is an important area of research for Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) development. ECoG, along with some other biopotentials, has spectral characteristics that can be exploited for more optimal front-end performance than is achievable with conventional techniques. This paper optimizes noise performance of such a system and discusses an equalization technique that reduces the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) dynamic range requirements and eliminates the need for a variable gain amplifier (VGA). We demonstrate a fabricated prototype in 1p9m 65 nm CMOS that takes advantage of the presented findings to achieve high-fidelity, full-spectrum ECoG recording. It requires 1.08 μW over a 150 Hz bandwidth for the entire analog front end and only 7 bits of ADC resolution.
Exome Analysis of a Family With Pleiotropic Congenital Heart Disease

Background— A number of single gene defects have been identified in patients with isolated or nonsyndromic congenital heart defects (CHDs). However, due to significant genetic heterogeneity, candidate gene approaches have had limited success in finding high-risk alleles in most cases. The purpose of this study was to use exome sequencing to identify high-risk gene variants in a family with highly penetrant pleiotropic CHD. Methods and Results— DNA samples from 2 members of a family with diverse CHD were analyzed by exome sequencing. Variants were filtered to eliminate common variants and sequencing artifacts and then prioritized based on the predicted effect of the variant and on gene function. The remainder of the family was screened using polymerase chain reaction, high-resolution melting analysis, and DNA sequencing to evaluate variant segregation. After filtering, >2000 rare variants (including single nucleotide substitutions and indels) were shared by the 2 individuals. Of these, 46 were nonsynonymous, 3 were predicted to alter splicing, and 6 resulted in a frameshift. Prioritization reduced the number of variants potentially involved in CHD to 18. None of the variants completely segregated with CHD in the kindred. However, 1 variant, Myh6 Ala290Pro, was identified in all but 1 affected individual. This variant was previously identified in a patient with tricuspid atresia and large secundum atrial septal defect. Conclusions— It is likely that next-generation sequencing will become the method of choice for unraveling the complex genetics of CHD, but information gained by analysis of transmission through families will be crucial.