Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Person–Organization Fit and Public Service Motivation in the Context of Change

Abstract This study examines public sector change, motivation and person–organization (P–O) fit in a stress context. The results provide empirical evidence that change initiatives produce change-induced stressors. However, change processes, including participation in change decision-making and the provision of change information, increase public service motivation, reduce change-induced stressors and ultimately improve P–O fit and job satisfaction. The results also depict that, in the context of change, public service motivation positively influences job satisfaction, with this relationship partially mediated by P–O fit. Implications for New Public Management and the importance of change processes for reducing workplace stress are discussed.
A high-accuracy differential-capacitance-to-time converter for capacitive sensors

A high-accuracy switched-capacitor (SC) differential-capacitance-to-time converter (DCTC) for capacitive sensors is presented for high-accuracy ratiometric operation. This circuit does not require component matching. Performances of the proposed circuit are simulated by HSPICE using 0.18 μm CMOS process parameters. Simulated results have demonstrated that 0.2% resolution is achievable. The op-amp and comparator were integrated using 0.18 μm triple-well CMOS process. Measured results using prototype circuits indicate that the gain and offset errors are 0.16% and 0.095% of the full scale, respectively. The proposed circuit is suited for co-integration with MEMS-type sensors and microcontroller-based measurement system.
Customs modernization initiatives: case studies

This volume presents case studies of customs modernization initiatives in eight developing countries: Bolivia, Ghana, Morocco, Mozambique, Peru, the Philippines, Turkey, and Uganda. The purpose of these case studies was to obtain a firsthand view of how these countries undertook customs reforms and to assess their success. The overall lessons learned from these studies are presented in chapter 2 of the Customs Modernization Handbook (World Bank forthcoming), a companion volume that provides policymakers, practitioners, and project managers from development agencies with an overview of the key issues they need to address in preparing and implementing customs modernization initiatives. The audience for the Customs Modernization Handbook is customs officials who are called on to design and implement customs reform and modernization strategies, as well as staff members of the World Bank and of other multilateral and bilateral development agencies who support developing countries in implementing such strategies. All the case studies except for the one on Ghana were prepared using basically the same methodology, which aimed at identifying the origins of the reforms, the main drivers, and the outcomes. The Ghana case study is somewhat different, because it focuses on how the automation of trade and customs processes took the lead in the trade facilitation and customs reform.
Heckit modelling of tourist expenditure: evidence from Spain

Purpose – This study intends to decompose the tourist choice process into two stages (decision to take a holiday and tourist expenditure), and to propose and test various expectations on the dimensions which explain the above decisions.Design/methodology/approach – In order to simultaneously model the two decisions, we use a system of equations based on the Heckit model.Findings – The dimensions affecting the decision to go on holiday are income, household size, education, size of the city of origin and opinion of going on holiday. The determinant factors influencing the level of expenditure are distance between origin and destination, type of accommodation, income, household size, age, marital status and length of stay. An important finding of this analysis is the differentiated effect of a given dimension on each decision.Research limitations/implications – The lack of information on some explanatory dimensions. Joint modelling. The spending decision should be modelled jointly with the decision to go on.
Company specific determinants of greenhouse gases disclosures

Findings - The results indicate that company size, gearing, financial slack and two industries (consumer services and industrials) are significantly associated with GHG disclosures while profitability, liquidity and capital expenditure are not. When the authors disaggregate GHG disclosures into qualitative and quantitative, the results suggest that the effect of some company factors differ depending on the type of GHG disclosures.
Policy Rules and External Shocks

This essay discusses rules for monetary policy in open economies. If policymakers seek to stabilize output and inflation, optimal rules in open economies differ considerably from optimal rules in closed economies. In open economies, stability is best achieved by targeting long-run inflation' a measure of inflation adjusted to remove transitory effects of exchange-rate movements. Stability is also enhanced by adding an exchange-rate term to "Taylor rules" for setting interest rates. Finally, central banks must choose whether their policy instrument is an interest rate or a "monetary conditions index": an average of the interest rate and the exchange rate. The nature of shocks to the exchange rate determines which of these choices keeps output and inflation more stable.
Identifying loci for behavioral traits using genome‐tagged mice

Identification of behavioral loci through complex trait mapping remains a widely employed approach but suffers from poor gene localization and low replicability. Genome‐tagged mice (GTMs) are overlapping sets of congenic strains spanning the whole genome and offer the possibilities of superior mapping power and reproducibility. In this study, three GTM strains each consisting of an average ∼27 cM DBA/2J genomic intervals introgressed onto a C57BL/6J background were employed for localization of behavioral traits. These GTMs were chosen because the corresponding chromosomal regions had been previously identified as containing loci for learning and memory. Analysis of the GTMs allowed confirmation of the learning and memory loci, and one on chromosome 3 was in addition fine mapped to an 8.8‐cM region of overlap between two of the GTMs. Moreover, loci for prepulse inhibition of the startle response, acoustic startle response, and spontaneous locomotor activity were also mapped. These results suggest that the GTMs should be a valuable resource for mapping and confirmation of loci contributing to complex behavioral traits in the mouse. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Conflict and Stability in Anarchic International Systems

A considerable part of theory in international relations concerns the issue of whether cooperation and stability can emerge from the competition and self-interest of sovereign powers existing in a state of anarchy. Does anarchy, if ever, imply stability in the form of a balance-of-power, or does stability require restraints which arise from the complex nexus of interdependencies characterizing the contemporary world economy and its associated institutions? The analysis in this essay supposes that nation-states are each endowed with some infinitely divisible resource, which those states maximize and which also measures their ability to overcome adversaries in the event of conflict. In this context we reexamine and reformulate the realist view, by offering a noncooperative, extensive-form model of international conflict without exogenous mechanisms for the enforcement of agreements in order to uncover the conditions under which a balance-of-power as construed by our model ensures the sovereignty of all states in anarchic systems. Our primary conclusion is simple: there exists at least one world, albeit abstract and reminiscent of the frictionless planes with which we introduce the perspectives of physics, in which a balance-of-power ensures sovereignty.
Measuring Market Power and Welfare Losses in the Greek Food and Beverages Manufacturing Industry

This article tests for the degree of market power in the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry over the period 1983–2007 based on the Bresnahan’s conjectural variation model of competition. It also adopts the methodology of Dickson and Yu to estimate the net and the total welfare losses due to the possible existence of market power. The bootstrap method is applied to assign measures of accuracy to the statistical estimates. The empirical results indicate the presence of some degree of market power in the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry and the existence of welfare losses.
Globalization and the Future of Labour Law: The impact of globalization on labour standards

Introduction The impact of international economic integration on labour standards has occupied an important place in Canadian public debate over trade policy for at least fifteen years. This debate was first ignited by the negotiation of the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in the late 1980s. Canadian critics of the FTA argued that deeper economic integration with the United States would inevitably lead to a deterioration in working conditions in Canada, as Canadian enterprises faced more competition from less regulated southern states with lower wage rates and levels of unionization. Eventually, the critics argued, economic pressures would inevitably put political pressure on Canadian labour legislation. The conclusion in rapid succession of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations, and the emergence of globalization as a focus of public attention, vaulted such concerns to greater international prominence. Increased economic integration with low wage developing countries led to the prospect of a “race to the bottom” in labour standards, an issue which became a topic of debate and research throughout much of the industrialized world, and provided one of the key arguments for linking labour standards and international trade by including a set of binding labour standards alongside or within free trade agreements. That linkage is now firmly established in North America and concern about the potential impacts of globalization on labour standards remains significant among the package of policy arguments for the trade-labour linkage.
Driving Forces for M-Commerce Success

Abstract Is m-commerce just an extension or a subset of e-commerce? Will it turn out to be just more hype? In this paper we discuss the realities of m-commerce and the major differences between mobile commerce and Internet-based e-commerce. Based on this understanding, we identify key factors that must be taken into consideration in order to design valuable m-com-merce applications. We emphasize that the success of m-commerce relies on the synergy of three driving forces: technology innovation, evolution of a new value chain, and active customer demand.
Mutations in lipoprotein lipase that block binding to the endothelial cell transporter GPIHBP1

GPIHBP1, a glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored protein of capillary endothelial cells, shuttles lipoprotein lipase (LPL) from subendothelial spaces to the capillary lumen. An absence of GPIHBP1 prevents the entry of LPL into capillaries, blocking LPL-mediated triglyceride hydrolysis and leading to markedly elevated triglyceride levels in the plasma (i.e., chylomicronemia). Earlier studies have established that chylomicronemia can be caused by LPL mutations that interfere with catalytic activity. We hypothesized that some cases of chylomicronemia might be caused by LPL mutations that interfere with LPL's ability to bind to GPIHBP1. Any such mutation would provide insights into LPL sequences required for GPIHBP1 binding. Here, we report that two LPL missense mutations initially identified in patients with chylomicronemia, C418Y and E421K, abolish LPL's ability to bind to GPIHBP1 without interfering with LPL catalytic activity or binding to heparin. Both mutations abolish LPL transport across endothelial cells by GPIHBP1. These findings suggest that sequences downstream from LPL's principal heparin-binding domain (amino acids 403–407) are important for GPIHBP1 binding. In support of this idea, a chicken LPL (cLPL)–specific monoclonal antibody, xCAL 1–11 (epitope, cLPL amino acids 416–435), blocks cLPL binding to GPIHBP1 but not to heparin. Also, changing cLPL residues 421 to 425, 426 to 430, and 431 to 435 to alanine blocks cLPL binding to GPIHBP1 without inhibiting catalytic activity. Together, these data define a mechanism by which LPL mutations could elicit disease and provide insights into LPL sequences required for binding to GPIHBP1.
Role of Polymorphic Human Cytochrome P450 Enzymes in Estrone Oxidation

Estrogen and its metabolites are believed to play important roles in breast cancer. The influence of genetic polymorphisms in the enzymes responsible for formation and disposition of estrogen on breast cancer risk may shed light on the importance of estrogen metabolites in this disease. However, for such studies to be valid, it is important to correctly identify the enzymes involved in estrogen bioactivation. Therefore, we assessed the human cytochrome P450–dependent oxidation of estrone using substrate concentrations that more closely approximate the maximum expected concentrations in breast tissue. The in vitro metabolism of estrone by recombinant human cytochrome P450 enzymes and human liver microsomes was studied. The formation of estrone metabolites (2-hydroxyestrone, 4-hydroxyestrone, and 16α-hydroxyestrone) was monitored by high-performance liquid chromatography. 2-Hydroxyestrone formation was catalyzed predominantly by CYP1A2, CYP1A1, and CYP1B1 enzymes; 4-hydroxyestrone formation was catalyzed predominantly by CYP1B1, CYP1A2, and CYP1A1 enzymes; and 16α-hydroxyestrone formation was catalyzed predominantly by CYP2C19, CYP1A1, and CYP3A5. This study confirms the important role of members of the CYP1 family in the 2-hydroxylation and 4-hydroxylation of estrone, but the enzymes identified as responsible for the 16α-hydroxylation of estrone are different from those previously identified. The relative importance of these enzymes in vivo would depend on the specific tissue expression of the enzymes. These enzymes are all known to be genetically variant in the human population, and additional studies to assess the role CYP1A2, CYP2C19, and CYP3A5 in breast cancer risk are indicated. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(3):551–8)
Towards evidence-based clinical practice: an international survey of 18 clinical guideline programs.

OBJECTIVE To describe systematically the structures and working methods of guideline programs. DESIGN Descriptive survey using a questionnaire with 32 items based on a framework derived from the literature. Answers were tabulated and checked by participants. STUDY PARTICIPANTS Key informants of 18 prominent guideline organizations in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and nine European countries. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES History, aims, methodology, products and deliveries, implementation, evaluation, procedure for updating guidelines, and future plans. RESULTS Most guideline programs were established to improve the quality and effectiveness of health care. Most use electronic databases to collect evidence and systematic reviews to analyze the evidence. Consensus procedures are used when evidence is lacking. All guidelines are reviewed before publication. Authorization is commonly used to endorse guidelines. All guidelines are furnished with tools for application and the Internet is widely used for dissemination. Implementation strategies vary among different organizations, with larger organizations leaving this to local organizations. Almost all have a quality assurance system for their programs. Half of the programs do not have formal update procedures. CONCLUSIONS Principles of evidence-based medicine dominate current guideline programs. Recent programs are benefiting from the methodology created by long-standing programs. Differences are found in the emphasis on dissemination and implementation, probably due to differences in health care systems and political and cultural factors. International collaboration should be encouraged to improve guideline methodology and to globalize the collection and analysis of evidence needed for guideline development.
Party Competition and Coalition Formation

Formal theory has often been criticized for shying away from empirical testing, which brought some to wonder about its empirical relevance altogether. Theorists, on their side, often responded by accusing much of the empirical work in political science as being devoid of any theoretical guidance. This paper argues that part of the problem is due to the problematic fit between traditional quantitative research and abstract theoretical models. Here, we illustrate how one could bridge the gap by connecting the ever puzzling realities of Italian parliamentary politics with a theoretical model of multiparty parliamentary systems. The empirics of Italian politics raise more questions than answers and the theoretical model we apply seems awfully complex and frustratingly abstract. With the use of relatively simple visual tools, we believe that we help make some sense of the complex realities of Italian politics and, in the process, demonstrate the empirical relevance of the theoretical model we chose to apply.
Visibly Pushdown Automata and Transducers with Counters

We generalize the models of visibly pushdown automata (VPDAs) and visibly pushdown transducers (VPDTs) by equipping them with reversal-bounded counters. We show that some of the results for VPDAs and VPDTs (e.g., closure under intersection and decidability of emptiness for VPDA languages) carry over to the generalized models, but other results (e.g., determinization and closure under complementation) do not carry over, in general. We define a model that combines the desirable features of a VPDA and reversal-bounded counters, called 2phase VPCM, and show that the deterministic and nondeterministic versions are equivalent and that the family of languages they define is closed under Boolean operations and has decidable emptiness, infiniteness, disjointness, containment, and equivalence problems. We also investigate the finite-ambiguity and finite-valuedness problems concerning these devices.
The evaluation measure study in network traffic multi-class classification based on AUC

Internet traffic monitoring and traffic characterization are essential for managing and optimizing network infrastructures. In general, the traffic classifier based on Machine Learning (ML) might not perform well for some cases such as imbalanced data sets. To address this issue, we propose an evaluation measure aiming for the case of imbalance multi-class network traffic classification based on the multi-objective metric, the area under the ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curve, or simply AUC. The experiments show that our method is more sensitive in the case that the Minority classes being misclassified into the Majority classes than the otherwise. Hence, we could use this measure to evaluate the classifier performance in the distinguishing of misclassifying the Minority applications into the Majority applications.
PRE-curved PVDF/PI unimorph structures for biomimic soft crawling actuators

This work reports a pre-curved piezoelectric unimorph structure to have large curvature changes under a relatively low driving voltage as a soft inchworm actuator. Several unique accomplishments have been demonstrated: (1) polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)-based actuator using the lowest driving voltage in published reports of 200 Volts peak to peak; (2) electrically-driven biomimetic soft crawling actuation with a moving speed up to 1.9mm/s on a rough surface; and (3) operations under low power consumptions of 150μW/cm2. As such, this new class of soft crawling actuator could open up new opportunities for the actuation of soft robots.
The Optimal Management of Natural Recreational Resources: A Mathematical Model

A mathematical model of the dynamic behaviour of natural recreational resources in the presence of ‘disturbance’ elements is presented, with a park taken as the natural resource and its users as the element of ‘disturbance’. A thorough analysis of the park/users system makes it possible to establish its response to external stimuli as well as the conditions under which it admits equilibrium states. Several models for the optimal management of the system are considered, both from the standpoint of ecological conservation and from that of the enjoyment of the natural environment. It is thus hoped this paper will contribute to the building of a method for optimal control of recreational resources, in order to prevent the onset of environmental degradation processes.
A real options based traffic risk mitigation model for build-operate-transfer highway projects in India

Build-operate-transfer (BOT) has been one of the preferred models of public–private partnership (PPP) for attracting private capital in the Indian highway sector. In BOT projects the traffic demand is considered a critical risk. Through a concession agreement called the model concession agreement (MCA) a standardized risk allocation framework has been adopted for BOT highway projects in India. If the actual traffic volume deviates from the projected traffic, the MCA suggests varying the length of the concession period (by a pre-agreed formula) to mitigate the traffic demand risk. This arrangement has the limitation of guaranteeing the concessionaire against the shortfall in traffic demand while it bestows unlimited gain otherwise. Past researchers have also examined only the possibility of revenue guarantees to protect the concessionaire from downside risks due to variation in traffic. Therefore, a traffic band is proposed: a combination of traffic floor and traffic cap—which can ensure certainty as to the revenue streams of the private investor, while preventing him from appropriating windfall gains due to higher-than-expected traffic demand through an equitable risk and revenue sharing mechanism. A traffic band being quite analogous to financial options, the paper suggests use of a ‘put’ option held by the concessionaire to determine the traffic floor, while a ‘call’ option held by the government serves as the traffic ceiling. Application of the real options analogy to a real life case study using binomial lattice method indicates enhancement to the net present value of the project.