Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Piggy in the Middle: How Direct Customer Power Affects First-Tier Suppliers’ Adoption of Socially Responsible Procurement Practices and Performance

Companies are faced with a choice of which type of power to use in their efforts to persuade their first-tier suppliers to adopt socially responsible procurement practices with key second-tier suppliers. However, we know little about how first-tier suppliers will react to different types of power and which are most effective in encouraging the adoption of socially responsible procurement practices. We are also ignorant of the impact of these practices on first-tier suppliers’ performance. This paper uses bases of power theory to examine the impact of buyer companies’ power usage (non-mediated and mediated) on first-tier suppliers’ adoption of socially responsible procurement practices (process-based and market-based) with their own (second-tier) suppliers. We surveyed managers responsible for sustainable supply chain management in 156 firms and analyzed the results using structural equation modeling. Our findings show that non-mediated power use (expert and referent) influences the adoption of process-based and market-based practices, while mediated power use (coercion, legitimacy and reward) has no significant impact on the adoption of either type of practice. Additionally, we find that the adoption of market-based socially responsible procurement practices leads to enhanced performance for first-tier suppliers who adopt these practices with their second-tier suppliers.
The Evaluation of American Option Prices Under Stochastic Volatility and Jump-Diffusion Dynamics Using the Method of Lines

This paper considers the problem of numerically evaluating American option prices when the dynamics of the underlying are driven by both stochastic volatility following the square root process of Heston [18], and by a Poisson jump process of the type originally introduced by Merton [25]. We develop a method of lines algorithm to evaluate the price as well as the delta and gamma of the option, thereby extending the method developed by Meyer [26] for the case of jump-diffusion dynamics. The accuracy of the method is tested against two numerical methods that directly solve the integro-partial differential pricing equation. The first is an extension to the jump-diffusion situation of the componentwise splitting method of Ikonen and Toivanen [21]. The second method is a Crank-Nicolson scheme that is solved using projected successive over relaxation and which is taken as the benchmark for the price. The relative efficiency of these methods for computing the American call option price, delta, gamma and free boundary is analysed. If one seeks an algorithm that gives not only the price but also the delta and gamma to the same level of accuracy for a given computational effort then the method of lines seems to perform best amongst the methods considered.
Exchange Options Under Jump-Diffusion Dynamics

Abstract This article extends the exchange option model of Margrabe, where the distributions of both stock prices are log-normal with correlated Wiener components, to allow the underlying assets to be driven by jump-diffusion processes of the type originally introduced by Merton. We introduce the Radon–Nikodým derivative process that induces the change of measure from the market measure to an equivalent martingale measure. The choice of parameters in the Radon–Nikodým derivative allows us to price the option under different financial-economic scenarios. We also consider American style exchange options and provide a probabilistic interpretation of the early exercise premium.
Preliminary Geochemical and Petrographic Analysis of Lower Eocene Fluvial Sandstones in the Rocky Mountain Region

Abstract A geochemical and petrographic study of lower Eocene fluvial sandstones in the Rocky Mountain region was made to determine their average composition and geochemical history. From 19 basins of deposition, 228 samples were collected according to a random sampling plan. The 228 samples range from highly arkosic sandstones derived from the Pre-cambrian core terrain of the central Rocky Mountains to calcareous quartz sandstones derived from Paleozoic and Mesozoic thrust sheets in western Wyoming and Utah. The average major element composition is (in percent) SiO2 73.4, A12O3 8.0, Fe2O3 1.1, FeO 0.42, MgO 1.0, CaO 5.5, Na2O 1.1, K2O 1.9, H2 2.1, TiO2 0.27, P2O5 0.08, MnO 0.07, CO2 4.5. Minor elements detected include (in ppm) Ba 580, Co 5.5, Cr 22, Cu 11, Ga 11, Ni 12, Sr 390, V 32, Zr 140, Th 7.4, U 2.4. These values are relatively high for A12O3, K2O, CO2, Ga, Sr, V, Ni, Pb, Co, and U, but low for Fe2O3, MgO, Zr, B, and La compared with several estimates of the average composition of sandstones. Nearly all samples show distinct chemical and mineralogic changes resulting from diagenetic and, locally, hydrothermal alteration. Authigenic minerals include carbonates, zeolites, montmorillonite, kaolinite, mixed-layer clays, and locally epidote and amphibole. Many samples show corrosion of quartz and silicate minerals. Hornblende was probably present in the original arkosic sediments but has since been dissolved. Alkaline carbonate solutions capable of transporting uranium were probably responsible for the alteration observed in many basins. A possible source for such waters in some basins is the connate waters expelled from the intertonguing Green River Formation.
A comparative study of inguinal hernia repair by Shouldice method vs other methods

Background: Hernia is one of the most common surgical conditions encountered in day to day practice. It is a common problem, more in industrial workers who are doing strenuous work over a long period of time. Any method which reduces the recurrence rate as well as lowers the morbidity and post-operative complication rate, must however be considered superior. The common aim in treatment of hernia is to restore the anatomical integrity of the disrupted tissue, performing a strong repair and to prevent further recurrences. Material and methods: This review was based on the study of 80 selected cases of uncomplicated inguinal hernias treated in our institution by random sampling. All the patients were investigated preoperative check-up in out-patient clinic for planned surgery. All patients were admitted in our hospital and surgery done under anesthesia (spinal, general, local). All patients in our study received preoperative antibiotic. In operative technique, the difference lies in the repair of the posterior wall. In the present study comparison of inguinal hernia repair by Shouldice versus other three methods modified Bassini’s repair, pre-peritoneal mesh repair and Lichtenstein tension-free repair had been studied with a regular follow up. The selection of the patients for type of anaesthesia was done on the basis of associated cardiac and respiratory diseases. Results: Out of 80 patients, Shouldice repair was done in 20 patients and other three method of repair was also done in 20 patients each. In present study, wound haematoma occurred in three patients, which may be attributed to the extensive dissection. Seven patients developed wound infection, treated by antibiotics and dressing. Three patients developed scrotal oedema, which was treated by scrotal support and anti-inflammatory agents. Two patients developed urinary retention, relieved by Gohel J, Naik N, Parmar H, Solanki B. A comparative study of inguinal hernia repair by Shouldice method vs other methods. IAIM, 2016; 3(1): 13-17. Page 14 analgesics, hot water bag and ambulation. None of them required catheterization. In the present study we encountered two cases of recurrences (2.5%). Conclusion: In Shouldice repair, double breasting ensures the strong repair. In this method of repair minimal tension on the suture line, so relaxing incision are not necessary. Deep inguinal ring is narrowed in the lateral aspect of the repair. Recurrence rate is remarkably low. But the repair is difficult to perform and extensive dissection required and it takes longer operative time.
Competition for Retail Deposits between Commercial Banks and Non-Bank Operators: A Two-Sided Platform Analysis

Commercial banks’ mainstream business model, which is reliant on a stable supply of retail deposits, continues to be challenged by new and innovative sources of non-bank competition. This paper examines the implications of one such source: a substitute for commercial banks’ personal and saving accounts that provides a safer money storage option thanks to access to a central bank’s balance sheet. I model competition for retail deposits between a bank and a non-bank payment service operator by adopting the two-sided platform framework to capture the payment functionality between consumers and merchants under various configurations. I show that banks’ mainstream business model is most vulnerable when consumers perceive the two service providers as close substitutes; they have the option to sign up with both service providers; their distribution of deposit is skewed; and they are not allowed to make payments across platforms.
In Situ Studies of Limestone Dissolution in a Coastal Submarine Spring

v Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Materials And Methods 6 2.1 Site Description 6 2.2 Experimental Setup 6 2.3 Limestone Dissolution Experiment 9 2.3.1 Sample Collection 9 2.3.2 Sample Processing 9 2.4 Microbial Community Analysis 10 2.4.1 Sample Collection 10 2.4.2 Sample Preparation 11 2.4.3 Quantitative Polymerase Change Reaction 11 2.5 Length Heterogeneity Polymerase Change Reaction 12 2.6 Statistical Analysis 13 Chapter Three: Results 15 3.1 Limestone Dissolution Experiment 15 3.1. 1Water Chemistry 15 3.1. 2 Dissolution 17 3.2 Microbial Community Analysis 18 3.2.1 Estimated Abundance 18 3.2.2 Species Richness 18 3.2.3 Multi-Dimensional Scaling Plots 24 Chapter Four: Discussion 26 4.1 Limestone Dissolution 26 4.2 Estimated Abundance 30 4.3 Estimated Richness and Relative Abundance 32 4.4 Multi-Dimensional Scaling Plots 34 Chapter Five: Conclusions 37 Chapter Six: References 28
Landscape network congruency at the ecoregion scale: can we expect corridor ‘umbrellas’?

ABSTRACT Conservation planners are faced with numerous choices regarding ‘what to connect’ when modeling landscape networks on an ecoregion scale. A simplifying assumption is often that coarse-scale corridors may provide overlapping or ‘umbrella’ effects for multiple conservation scenarios. To examine this, we assessed differences in connectivity models arising from four different conservation scenarios for the transboundary Northern Appalachian/Acadian Ecoregion (330,000 km2). Models resulted in networks comprised of varying levels of connectedness, suggesting the presence of local connectivity at several sub-ecoregion scales, but diminished ecoregion-scale connectivity. Our results also indicate that selecting ‘what to connect’ at the ecoregion scale strongly influences the location and extent of modeled corridors. Further, our evidence suggests that landscape networks derived for one scenario are not likely to produce far-reaching corridor umbrellas or highly coincident landscape networks for alternative conservation scenarios with varying goals. As a result, alternative landscape networks should not be considered functionally equivalent.
Exploring the theoretical and empirical foundations of a 'radical normalisation' approach to psychosis

Normalising psychotic phenomena is considered to be a useful tool in psychological interventions for psychosis as it reduces stigmatisation, improves therapeutic alliance, combats distress, and entails greater hope for recovery. However, while the usefulness of normalisation is acknowledged, there still remains the mainstream clinical view that psychotic experiences are the manifestations of abnormal brain function. Recently, this view has come under scrutiny with growing evidence for psychotic-like experiences in the ‘normal’ (non-clinical) population. Following these findings, the current thesis explores the case for developing a radical normalisation approach to psychosis, which goes beyond just clinical usefulness, and instead places psychotic experience within the realm of normal brain function. This exploration is comprised of both a theoretical and empirical component. The theoretical paper reviews multi-level models of information processing, and applies a multi-level framework to formulating core psychotic phenomena. The suggestion is that by illustrating the actions of different levels of processing, this formulation draws attention to the genuine emotional meaning of psychotic experiences; i.e. those aspects which are functional, healthy, and equivalent to the experiences of the nonclinical population. The empirical study approaches these explorative questions from a different angle by directly comparing the psychotic-like experiences of clinical and non-clinical participants. Twelve participants, six in each group, are interviewed about their initial psychotic-like ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ experience (OOE), and their data are analysed using the qualitative method of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Inter-group comparisons of emergent themes reveal similarities in both contextual triggers and subjective nature of OOEs, but differences in the way these experiences are then incorporated in their personal and social contexts. This suggests that psychotic-like OOEs, themselves, do not determine the development of a clinical psychotic condition, and might therefore be recognised, both theoretically and clinically, as normal and meaningful aspects of psychological functioning.
Pose estimation of a VTOL UAV using IMU, Camera and GPS

When an autonomous vehicle has a mission to perform, it is of high importance that the robot has good knowledge about its position. Without good knowledge of the position, it will not be able to navigate properly and the data that it gathers, which could be of importance for the mission, might not be usable. A helicopter could for example be used to collect laser data from the terrain beneath it, which could be used to produce a 3D map of the terrain. If the knowledge about the position and orientation of the helicopter is poor then the collected laser data will be useless since it is unknown what the laser actually measures. A successful solution to position and orientation (pose) estimation of an autonomous helicopter, using an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a camera and a GPS, is proposed in this thesis. The problem is to estimate the unknown pose using sensors that measure different physical attributes and give readings containing noise. An extended Kalman filter solution to the simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) is used to fuse data from the different sensors and estimate the pose of the robot. The scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) is used for feature extraction and the unified inverse depth parametrisation (UIDP) model is used to parametrise the landmarks. The orientation of the robot is described by quaternions. To be able to evaluate the performance of the filter an ABB industrial robot has been used as reference. The pose of the end tool of the robot is known with high accuracy and gives a good ground truth so that the estimations can be evaluated. The results shows that the algorithm performs well and that the pose is estimated with good accuracy.
What People Feel to

This paper proposes an affective blog analyzer which can capture people’s emotional targets. The existing affective analysis has some problems. For instance, polarity analysis or positive/negative classification for documents are developed, but emotional targets can not be extracted. Some investigations can capture customer’s wanted/needed objects, but the knowledge is domain dependent. Therefore, it can not analyze people’s everyday life. Against these problems, this paper uses a sentence pattern dictionary to analyze emotions. The dictionary covers Japanese fundamental 6,000 verbs and contains 14,800 patterns with emotional information for everyday life. This dictionary is available for analyzing the downloaded blog articles. After analyzing blogs, many keywords can be extracted as emotional targets. In order to filter and sort them for supporting blog analysts, two parameters are applied. One is Z-score in terms of the frequency of the target appearance, and another is probability of emotions. In the experiments, trendy and emotional targets were successfully extracted from 6-month-blogs. Thus, the effects of the patterns and parameters are confirmed.
In Vivo Thrombus Formation in Murine Models

Platelets play a central role in hemostasis, but also in atherothrombosis, as they rapidly adhere to tissue and to one another as a response to any vascular injury. This process involves a large number of surface receptors, signaling pathways, and enzymatic cascades as well as their complex interplay. Although in vitro experiments proved successful in both identifying new receptors and pathways and developing potent and selective antithrombotic drugs, in vitro research cannot mimic the myriad hemodynamic and spatiotemporal cellular and molecular interactions that occur during the generation and propagation of thrombi in vivo. Animal models, and, with the availability of genetically modified mouse strains and of modern intravital imaging techniques, mouse models in particular, have opened new ways to identify both individual roles and the interplay of platelet proteins in complex in vivo settings. In vivo models revealed the important role of, eg, Gas6 or blood coagulation factor XII in thrombus formation, and results obtained in in vivo models raised the interesting possibility that (physiologic) hemostasis and (pathologic) thrombosis might represent 2 mechanistically different processes. This review summarizes in vivo findings that contributed significantly to our understanding of hemostatic and thrombotic processes and which may help to guide future research. (Circ Res. 2007;100:979-991.)
Closure of "Observed Performance of a Deep Multistrutted Excavation in Shanghai Soft Clays"

A 15.5 m deep multistrutted soft clay excavation of a metro station in Shanghai has been monitored. The deep excavation was supported by a concrete diaphragm wall. The monitoring included wall deflections, surface and subsurface ground settlements, total pressures, and pore-water pressures. Relatively small wall deflections and ground settlements were measured as compared with similar case histories worldwide. The small deflections and settlements observed probably occurred because of the use of a short excavation section, application of compaction grouting for improving ground conditions, and the use of active prestress steel struts. No significant “creep” deflection of the diaphragm wall could be identified over a 60 day concrete curing period. Continuous ground settlements accompanied by the dissipation of pore-water pressures were observed. By using Terzaghi’s one-dimensional consolidation theory, the observed settlements were found to be attributed to the primary consolidation rather than creep effects.
This message will self-destruct: Self-erasing covert communication*

The WWW increasingly allows people to create and update content for public access. Some of this information is collaboratively owned (created and maintained), while other information is privately owned and maintained (but still publicly accessible). Whereas it is unethical to modify the former for covert communication, it is quite legitimate to do so with the latter, and this paper gives a design for doing so while achieving both plausible deniability and automatic perishability of the covert message (the message disappears unless periodically refreshed by the encoder). Traditional information-hiding has looked at the problem of embedding a message in a static version of an online document, the problem of doing so for rapidly evolving document collections has not been considered in the past. This paper shows that it is possible to do so, and in a manner that actually makes use of the rapidly evolving nature of the documents to achieve the above-mentioned property of evanescence: That the message decays over time and eventually becomes completely erased unless it is refreshed. Therefore the mark needs to be continuously maintained as the document evolves, in a manner that prevents the adversary from knowing who is doing the refreshing yet that allows the intended reader of the mark to recover it without any form of explicit communication. One advantage of our scheme is that the mark's reach is now unbounded: It can be read by any authorized entity on the web (anyone with the secret key), and the reading of it is indistinguishable from normal web access patterns. Another advantage is the "hiding in the crowd" effect: Many people are updating the documents, thereby providing a cover for the one person surreptitiously injecting and refreshing the mark, or replacing it with another mark message. We have also demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed technique, and shown that remarkably little effort is required to implement our scheme over today's web. "Portions of this work were supported by Grants IIS0325345, IIS-0219560, IIS-0312357, and IIS-0242421 from the National Science Foundation, and by sponsors of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security.
Structure of the MED7/MED21 heterodimer and reconstitution of a recombinant Mediator middle module complex

The Mediator of transcriptional regulation is the central coactivator that enables a response of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) to activators and repressors. Yeast Mediator has a size of more than one MDa and consists of 25 different polypeptides. Biochemical studies defined three Mediator modules in yeast, the head (MED17) the middle (MED9/MED10) and the tail (MED15) modules. During this work, an E.coli coexpression-copurification system was developed, which allowed to study pairwise interactions of Mediator middle module subunits. With the help of this system I reconstituted a complex of two essential and conserved yeast Mediator middle module proteins, the MED7/MED21 heterodimer, and solved its crystal structure. The heterodimer forms an extended structure, which spans one third of the Mediator length, and almost the diameter of Pol II. It shows a four helix bundle and a coiled-coil protrusion connected by a flexible hinge. Multiple conserved patches can be identified on the surface, which allow for assembly of the middle module. A combination of the coexpression-copurification system and assembly of subcomplexes allowed the reconstitution of a five-subunit Mediator middle module subcomplex. The reconstituted subcomplex is able to bind Pol II in vitro. MED6 associates with the middle module and forms a bridge to the head module. The potential flexibility of this bridge and the MED7/MED21 hinge can account for changes in Mediator structure upon its binding to Pol II or to activators.
iNOS induction underlies lipid-induced hepatic insulin resistance in mice : Potential role of tyrosine nitration of insulin signaling proteins

Additional information for this article can be found in an online appendix at http://diabetes.diabetesjournals. org This is an uncopyedited electronic version of an article accepted for publication in Diabetes. The American Diabetes Association, publisher of Diabetes, is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it by third parties. The definitive publisher-authenticated version will be available in a future issue of Diabetes in print and online at http://diabetes.diabetesjournals. org. Diabetes Publish Ahead of Print, published online January 26, 2010