Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Endogenous Timing in a Mixed Duopoly with Capacity Choice

An endogenous order of moves is analyzed in a mixed duopoly where firms first strategically choose their capacity levels and then compete at price level. In equilibrium, firms are shown to set prices simultaneously while capacities are chosen sequentially. This result is in contrast to the assumption of simultaneous order of moves for capacities choice made by Barcena-Ruiz and Garzon (Economics Bulletin, Vol. 12 (2007), pp. 1–7) in a mixed duopoly. Besides, we find that there are two equilibria: in one of them the public firm is the leader in capacities and, in the other, the follower.
Why Do Organizational Change Programmes Fail?

Many organisations have found it difficult to implement organisational change successfully. This paper using a systematic and meta-analysis review of the literature published between 1980 and 2011 explored the major reasons for organisational change failure. Unsuccessful change programmes were attributed to insufficient education and training, employees’ apathy, inadequate management support, poor leadership, inappropriate organisational culture, inadequate resources, poor communication, inappropriate planning, insufficient customer focus, and lack of a monitoring and measurement system. Change-programme implementation and its impact depend on the ability of managers to adopt and adapt the change programme principles in their organisations. A well-designed, wisely adapted and well-implemented change programme helps managers achieve desired results. Identification of those factors that contribute to change success or failure enables change leaders to develop effective strategies for enhancing the chances of achieving desired outcomes.
Adoption of the Organising Model in British Trade Unions: Some Evidence from Manufacturing, Science and Finance (MSF)

There is increasing evidence of a widespread recognition within the British trade union movement of the need to change. Amongst the directions of change being considered is adoption of the `organising model' borrowed from the United States. MSF was probably the first major British union to go down this path, thereby promising to transform itself from an organisation that had pioneered the conservative `servicing model' to one in the forefront of promoting a radical alternative. This transformation is far from unproblematic and this article examines the tensions and difficulties encountered through a study of NHS membership organisation two regions. In the process of the examination, the article highlights the inadequacies of approaches to union decline that either regard it as an inevitable result of objective circumstances or believe that new policies to counter decline can be adopted by managerial fiat and without recourse to widespread discussion among members to build a consensus.
Combining Farrell Frontier and Hedonic Travel Cost Models for Valuing Estuarine Quality

This paper extends the Brown-Mendelsohn hedonic travel cost model by estimating the travel cost function for each recreationist as a technically efficient frontier. It also constrains the marginal prices for desirable characteristics to be nonnegative. The model is used to value improvements in the quality of sport fishing in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary in North Carolina. The application compares the performance of the frontier hedonic travel cost with ordinary least squares estimates, and finds the former to be free of problems identified in the literature and to provide more plausible and robust benefit estimates for quality improvements. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.
Simulation of Propagation of Action Potentials in Cardiac Tissue with anInhomogeneous Distribution of Extracellular Potassium

We report simulation of experimental data for heterogeneous distribution of extracellular potassium, by developing and applying a mathematical model formulated by incorporating a Luo-Rudy representation of the cell membrane current into the bidomain model of the cardiac tissue. Our model serves to examine propagation of extra cellular potassium from a region of low potassium (normal) to a region of high potassium (ischemic). Starting with computer simulation of unipolar stimulation of cardiac tissue, we reproduced results of the passive bidomain model, and also simulated the space-clamped Luo Rudy model. Finally, we combined the Luo-Rudy model with the bidomain model. The diastolic threshold for anodal stimulation first decreased and then increased with increasing potassium concentration ([K]0), reaching a minimum value at [K]0=12mM.
A Note on Ethics Educational Interventions in an Undergraduate Auditing Course: Is there an ‘Enron’ Effect?

In light of recent accounting scandals and the ensuing “crisis in confidence” facing the public accounting profession, there is a new challenge to accounting educators: how to effectively incorporate ethics into accounting courses, and increase the moral reasoning abilities of their students. Providing accounting students with the ability to reason effectively with respect to moral dilemmas may help to minimize future judgment errors in accounting and auditing settings. This article describes several different educational interventions that were adopted in an undergraduate auditing course. Students' moral reasoning was assessed both at the beginning and the end of the course to determine whether their moral reasoning scores improved based on the interventions. This was done over two semesters: one occurring in 2001 (“pre‐Enron”), and one occurring in 2002 (“post‐Enron”). Accounting context‐specific scores were collected in both semesters (using Thorne's [2000] Accounting Ethical Dilemma Instrument [AEDI]).
The Role of Transparency in Financial Regulation

Transparency is a prerequisite for good governance and sound financial regulation. The article expounds the different foundations and functions of transparency. The first dimension refers to institutional aspects, i.e. procedures and decision-making. By providing legal certainty, transparency serves as an anchor for financial regulation. It is the basis for establishing trust, which is the key element of any financial system. In its second dimension, transparency is understood as the substantive backbone of financial regulation. It lays open the values and goals of financial policy and regulation. The third dimension is accountability of actors as an essential element for rebuilding confidence in the financial system. Finally, the concept of transparency as suggested here cannot be isolated from international developments. The article proposes that turning to the principles applied under the General Agreement on Trade in Services for defining a set of applicable international standards for financial services may be an avenue to be pursued and explored in the future. Oxford University Press 2010, all rights reserved, Oxford University Press.
The Effects of New Goods and Substitution on the Korean CPI as a Measure of Cost of Living

Abstract This paper estimates upper-level substitution and new-goods bias in the Korean Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the early 1990s to the mid 2000s. It has been estimated that the upper-level substitution bias in the CPI alone increased the inflation rate by 0.51 percentage points per year over the 13-year period between 1990 and 2002. The new-goods bias further increased the inflation rate by 0.17 and 0.13 percentage points per year between 1990-1995 and 1995-2000 respectively. The Chained Laspeyres index series that is based on annually-updated weights has been found to correct less than half of the upper-level substitution bias.
Mapping the State of Financial Stability

The paper uses the Self-Organizing Map for mapping the state of financial stability and visualizing the sources of systemic risks on a two-dimensional plane as well as for predicting systemic financial crises. The Self-Organizing Financial Stability Map (SOFSM) enables a two-dimensional representation of a multidimensional financial stability space and thus allows disentangling the individual sources impacting on systemic risks. The SOFSM can be used to monitor macro-financial vulnerabilities by locating a country in the financial stability cycle: being it either in the pre-crisis, crisis, post-crisis or tranquil state. In addition, the SOFSM performs better than or equally well as a logit model in classifying in-sample data and predicting out-of-sample the global financial crisis that started in 2007. Model robustness is tested by varying the thresholds of the models, the policymaker’s preferences, and the forecasting horizon.
Firm characteristics and intellectual capital disclosure by Australian companies

Purpose – This study seeks to examine the presence of voluntary intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) in Australian company reports and the influence of company characteristics (industry type, ownership concentration, listing age, leverage and auditor type) on ICD.Design/methodology/approach – This is an empirical quantitative study that statistically tests a theoretically motivated explanatory model of ICD. ICD data were gathered from the annual reports of 70 Australian publicly listed firms using content analysis (CA). Findings – Presence of ICD was low, with external capital being the most frequently disclosed category. Correlation and regression analysis demonstrated that companies that operate in high technology‐based or knowledge‐intensive industries, and companies with large Big Four auditing firms show more extensive ICD than those in other industries and without Big Four auditors. A company's ownership concentration, leverage level and listing age did not influence the occurrence of ICD.Research l.
Public Policies, Private Strategies and Local Public Spending Bodies

Local Public Spending Bodies (LPSBs) occupy an important position in the contemporary structures of governance in the UK. As exemplars of many of the diverse characteristics of the New Public Management, LPSBs inhabit the fuzzy space between the public and private spheres, both in terms of organizational structure and service delivery. One finding from recent research into the internal governance of three kinds of LPSBs – Further Education Colleges, Housing Associations and Training and Enterprise Councils – was that the language of strategy predominated over that of policy on the boards of such organizations. In this article we assess the significance of this finding. We contend that the two terms are not interchangeable and that a vital distinction needs to be maintained between them. Specifically we argue that policy refers to collections of decisions grounded in public values whereas the concept of strategy, particularly as currently understood in the context of the New Public Management, refers to the positioning of an organization in its struggle to survive and grow. We conclude that LPSBs have been invited to behave strategically within a framework of increasingly centralized policy objectives and resource allocations.
The Long-term Effect of Autologous Endothelial Progenitor Cells from Peripheral Blood Implantation on Infarcted Myocardial Contractile Force

This study was designed to evaluate the long-term effect of endothelial progenitor cell (EPC) implantation in acute myocardial infarction in Sprague-Dawley rats after ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery. Autologous EPCs from peripheral blood were purified and implanted into an acute myocardial infarct site. Specimens and muscle strip were harvested at 3 and 6 weeks, and at 6, 8 and 12 months for contractile force assessment and, by immunohistology, for expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and factor VIII. Expression of VEGF and bFGF, and microvessel counts and contractile force in the cell implantation group were significantly higher than in the control group up to 8 months after implantation. Beyond 8 months following implantation, however, no further improvement occurred. The EPCs showed an ability to improve contractile performance in infarcted myocardium by means of angiogenesis and vasculogenesis, and the results seemed to persist long-term.
Ethnic Segregation in Cologne, Germany, 1984-94

The city of Cologne is, like Frankfurt/Main, Munich and Stuttgart, one of the German cities with high shares of ethnic minorities. In this paper, ethnic segregation in Cologne is analysed for three points in time: 1984, 1989 and 1994. One of the main conclusions is that segregation is declining for many groups, indicating a process of spatial dispersion across the city. 'New' immigrants, however, tend to be more segregated than 'older' groups. Economic conditions seem to be one of the crucial explaining elements. They influence the extent and development of segregation patterns directly, as well as indirectly.
Towards cost-effective and budget-balanced task allocation in crowdsourcing systems

Crowdsourcing has been considered as one of the most promising services in recent years. More and more crowdsourcing platforms allocate tasks over the social network due to its pervasiveness. Although most research focuses on direct contribution-based task allocation with some budget constraints, a robust task allocation scheme should also consider the task allocation in the word-of-mouth (WoM) mode, in which tasks are delivered from workers to workers. In this paper, we discuss an NP-Complete problem, cost-effective and budget-balanced task allocation (CBTA) problem, specially for the WoM mode crowdsourcing over social network, which aims to minimize the overall budget consumption as well as balance the budgets among target social groups. Furthermore, we propose two heuristic algorithms CB-greedy and CB-local based on greedy strategy and local search technique respectively to construct a spanning tree for task allocation. We prove that the running time of CB-greedy is O(m2 log m) while CB-local utilizing disjoint-set achieves O(mna(m, n)), where m is the number of edges indicating interactions of social groups, n is the number of social groups, and α is the inverse Ackerman function. Extensive simulations show that the proposed algorithms guarantee the criteria to a large extent. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first work jointly optimizing cost effectiveness and budget balance in the WoM mode crowdsourcing systems.
Is there a genuine under-utilization of skills amongst the over-qualified?

Two theories of over-qualification are considered, namely mismatch, whereby workers do not find the most appropriate jobs for their skills, because of imperfect information or labour market rigidities, and ‘heterogeneous workers’, whereby individuals with the same qualifications have different actual skill levels, so that they can be over-qualified in terms of formal qualifications, while their skills are actually appropriate for the jobs that they do. The evidence suggests that both theories are relevant in certain situations.
Education, openness and economic growth in India: evidence from cointegration analysis

The export-led growth hypothesis (ELGH) is an interesting field of research in applied economics. The paper investigates the role of education on the ELGH in India during 1951-2009. Using cointegration and error correction model technique, it finds the feedback effect between education and growth, and a unidirectional causality from economic growth to openness. However, it does not find any significant causality between education and openness. The findings of the paper suggest that education has a supportive role to ELGH.
Extracellular Amino Acid Concentrations in the Dorsal Spinal Cord of Freely Moving Rats Following Veratridine and Nociceptive Stimulation

In vivo microdialysis was used to sample extracellular concentrations of amino acids in the dorsal lumbar spinal cord of freely moving rats. Changes in the extracellular concentrations of amino acids were measured in response to infusion of veratridine (180 μM), a sodium channel activator, as well as during acute noxious stimulation by an injection of 5% formalin into the metatarsal region of the hindleg. Veratridine produced a tetrodotoxin (TTX)‐sensitive increase in the extracellular concentration of Glu. Concentrations of Asp, taurine, Ala, Asn, and Gly were not significantly elevated following veratridine stimulation. In‐tradermal injection of formalin produced a TTX‐sensitive increase in Asp concentration and a non‐TTX‐sensitive increase in Glu concentration. These data support the hypothesis that Glu and Asp are dorsal horn neurotransmitters involved in nociception.
A 0.8V, 43.5μW ECG signal acquisition IC with a referenceless time-to-digital converter

This paper presents a 0.8V analog front-end (AFE) with referenceless time-based digitalization architecture for electrocardiogram (ECG) signal acquisition. Compared to the conventional voltage-domain architecture, the proposed AFE achieves a smaller chip area, lower power consumption, and self-calibration without the high-accuracy clock as well as voltage reference. The chip is fabricated using 0. 18μm CMOS technology and occupies a chip area of 0.84 mm2. The design attains a variable gain from 35 dB to 47 dB within a bandwidth of 7 kHz and 10-bit time-to-digital conversion while consuming 43.5 μW at a supply voltage of 0.8V.
The Performance Effects of Modular Production in the Apparel Industry

This paper identifies and explains differences in performance between two widely used alternative work methods--module and bundle production--in the basics sector of the apparel industry. This research is based on interviews with managers and surveys of worker attitudes and perceptions. We find that a team production system in the apparel industry, called modules, performs better than the traditional bundle system on such measures as quality, costs, and responsiveness to retailers. Modules also perform better than bundles in reducing work in process inventory and throughput time. We argue that performance improvements are realized through coordination among the team members as a result of their ability to self regulate work, eliminate bottlenecks, resolve conflicts, help each other solve problems, and make improvements in the production process.
Cardiopulmonary reflex is attenuated in iron overload conscious rats

Abstract Increased iron intake can lead to iron accumulation in serum and tissues. Its has been described that serum and tissue iron overload increase reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and reduce the effectiveness of the cardiovascular neural mechanisms involved in the maintenance of the arterial blood pressure whithin a narrow range of variation, therefore, iron overload may disrupt cardiovascular homeostasis contributing to physiopathological status development. In the present study we evaluated whether iron accumulated in serum or tissue of awake animals affect the cardiovascular homeostasis through changes in the cardiopulmonary reflex (CPR). We observed that the CPR is reduced in both serum and tissue iron overloaded groups, but no changes were found in the left ventricular pressure measurements, suggesting that iron-related effects are restrict to the CPR neural pathways. We also observed that the serum overloaded group presented lower basal heart rate levels, suggesting an increased parasympathetic efferent activity directed to the heart in this group. Taken together, our data suggest an important role for the iron-generated ROS to the cardiovascular homeostasis, especially regarding the CPR in awake animals.
Benign Lesions of the Liver.

KRR Benign lesions of the liver are generally of three types: hemangioma, focal nodular hyperplasia (FNH), and hepatic adenoma. These are vascular hepatic lesions. Hemangiomas contain fibrous tissue and small blood vessels that eventually grow and range in size from less than 1 cm in diameter to over 10 cm, the so-called “giant” cavernous hemangiomas. FNH lesions are also solid with a typical “central scar” and nodule formation as seen on an imaging study or surgically excised lesion. Hepatic adenoma is an infrequently encountered, typically solitary lesion which carries a small risk of spontaneous rupture or malignant dedifferentiation, and even may have a focus of a malignancy.
Anticaries effect of compounds extracted from Galla chinensis in a multispecies biofilm model.

INTRODUCTION Galla Chinensis is a leaf gall known to have some antibacterial effects. Using an in vitro biofilm model of dental plaque, the present study aimed to evaluate the anticaries effects of Galla Chinensis and its chemical fractions. METHODS A four-organism bacterial consortium (Streptococcus sanguis, Streptococcus mutans, Actinomyces naeslundii, Lactobacillus rhamnosus) was grown on hydroxyapatite (HA) discs, bovine enamel blocks, and glass surfaces in a continuous culture system and exposed to repeated solution pulses. Galla Chinensis extracts, sucrose solutions, and sodium fluoride solutions were pulsed into different flow cells. The pH value of the planktonic phase in each flow cell was recorded and the bacteria colonizing the biofilm on the HA discs were counted. Enamel blocks were observed using a polarized microscope and lesion depth was evaluated. The biofilm morphology was examined with a fluorescence microscope and the images captured were analyzed on an image analysis system. RESULTS When Galla Chinensis extract, its chemical fraction, or fluoride was added to the sucrose solution, the planktonic phase pH remained higher than that in the sucrose alone. A lower level of colonization on the HA surface was also observed in the groups to which Galla Chinensis and fluoride were added compared with the control sucrose group, and this was reflected in both the total viable count and the biofilm imaging, which showed fewer cariogenic bacteria and a less compact biofilm, respectively. Enamel demineralization in both the fluoride group and the Galla Chinensis group was significantly less than that in the sucrose group. CONCLUSIONS Galla Chinensis and fluoride may inhibit the cariogenicity of the oral biofilm. Galla Chinensis appears to be a promising source of new agents that may prevent dental caries.
Comparison of Assays for Sensitive and Reproducible Detection of Cell Culture-Infectious Cryptosporidium parvum and Cryptosporidium hominis in Drinking Water

ABSTRACT This study compared the three most commonly used assays for detecting Cryptosporidium sp. infections in cell culture: immunofluorescent antibody and microscopy assay (IFA), PCR targeting Cryptosporidium sp. -specific DNA, and reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) targeting Cryptosporidium sp. -specific mRNA. Monolayers of HCT-8 cells, grown in 8-well chamber slides or 96-well plates, were inoculated with a variety of viable and inactivated oocysts to assess assay performance. All assays detected infection with low doses of flow cytometry-enumerated Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts, including infection with one oocyst and three oocysts. All methods also detected infection with Cryptosporidium hominis. The RT-PCR assay, IFA, and PCR assay detected infection in 23%, 25%, and 51% of monolayers inoculated with three C. parvum oocysts and 10%, 9%, and 16% of monolayers inoculated with one oocyst, respectively. The PCR assay was the most sensitive, but it had the highest frequency of false positives with mock-infected cells and inactivated oocysts. IFA was the only infection detection assay that did not produce false positives with mock-infected monolayers. IFA was also the only assay that detected infections in all experiments with spiked oocysts recovered from Envirochek capsules following filtration of 1,000 liters of treated water. Consequently, cell culture with IFA detection is the most appropriate method for routine and sensitive detection of infectious Cryptosporidium parvum and Cryptosporidium hominis in drinking water.