Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Economic growth, leadership and capital flows: the leapfrogging effect

The leapfrogging effect has been analysed in a model without capital. However, history has shown numerous cases in which countries lost economic leadership at the same time as they were exporting capital. This work focuses on the interaction between international capital flows, economic growth and the transmission of leadership. We show that capital mobility is at the heart of the adoption of new technologies. Malfunctioning international capital markets that prevent capital imports may delay adoption of the new technology by the lagging country and may postpone or even prevent leapfrogging that would have occurred in the case of free flows of capital. The model shows that capital mobility smooths passing the baton in the relay race for economic leadership.
How Information Quality and Market Turbulence Impact Convention and Visitors Bureaus’ Use of Marketing Information: Insights for Destination and Event Marketing

Information is an essential component of convention and visitors bureaus for their marketing purposes in order to make their destinations and events more attractive to visitors. During the information gathering process, tourism and event marketing directors must select relevant and credible data for successful decision-making. Based on the lack of academic research in the area of online marketing information use by convention and visitors bureaus, this study investigates what factors influence convention and visitors bureaus’ online information use for their market research. In particular, this study examines the relationships among technology change, customer change, information quality, and marketing information use with convention and visitors bureaus in the United States. Utilizing an online survey to convention and visitors bureau managers, findings from this study identify the use of Internet-based information as positively associated with the quality of Internet-based information followed by customer change and technology change. Implications for destination marketers and event marketers are included.
Coordinated Dynamic Behaviors for Multirobot Systems With Collision Avoidance

In this paper, we propose a novel methodology for achieving complex dynamic behaviors in multirobot systems. In particular, we consider a multirobot system partitioned into two subgroups: 1) dependent and 2) independent robots. Independent robots are utilized as a control input, and their motion is controlled in such a way that the dependent robots solve a tracking problem, that is following arbitrarily defined setpoint trajectories, in a coordinated manner. The control strategy proposed in this paper explicitly addresses the collision avoidance problem, utilizing a null space-based behavioral approach: this leads to combining, in a non conflicting manner, the tracking control law with a collision avoidance strategy. The combination of these control actions allows the robots to execute their task in a safe way. Avoidance of collisions is formally proven in this paper, and the proposed methodology is validated by means of simulations and experiments on real robots.
The Case for User-Oriented Innovation: Comments on the National Technology Strategy (Discussion Draft)

This paper examines the National Technology Strategy (Discussion Draft) recently released by the erstwhile Department of Science and Technology from the perspective of existing knowledge and research in the Diffusion of Innovations and New Product Development fields. We argue that there are three elements essential to a major change in structural emphasis; a supportive environment, a sound technological base, and a thorough appreciation of the needs and values of end users. The draft strategy contains valuable suggestions in the first two areas, but incorporating end user values into product development is almost totally neglected in spite of a substantial body of literature suggesting the dangers of this approach. The focus of this paper is to establish the need for market factors and user considerations to be given more prominence in the National Technology Strategy. A number of government activities to promote the incorporation of end-user values are suggested.
The Law and Employee Participation—Evidence From the Federal Enterprise Agreements Process

In 1993 the Industrial Relations Reform Act amended the Industrial Relations Act 1988 (Cwlth) by, among other things, introducing certain enterprise bargaining provisions into Australian labour law. These provisions required that a process of 'consultation' with employees should take place in the negotiation of an agreement. They also appeared to require that an agreement contain a process enabling ongoing consultation over work-related matters at the workplace. The research undertaken for this article attempted to assess the impact of these provisions on schemes for employee involvement in workplace decision making. All certified agreements approved by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission between 1 April 1994 and 30 March 1995, and all enterprise flexibility agreements approved by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission between 1 April 1994 and 6 September 1995 were examined for evidence of compliance with the new consultation provisions introduced into the Act. The conclusion drawn is that while many agreements complied with the Act, there was a general failure on the part of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to implement both the letter and the spirit of the law on 'consultation' pertaining to the certification of agreements. On the whole we feel that the legislation failed to produce results that would have strengthened the spread of employee involvement practices in industry.
An Optimal Decision Making Model for Supplier and Buyer's Win-Win Strategy  in a Two Echelon Supply Chain

Supply chain management (SCM) is becoming extremely important to achieve competitiveness in the current business environment. Moreover, supply chain partnership between suppliers and buyers in SCM have had a significant impact on supply chain performance. In this study, we develop a quantitative model based on the supply chain partnership under several assumptions. For this purpose, we first prove several basic theorems which verify the relationship between supplier and buyer's total profit for two cases, with and without supply chain partnership. We then prove that there exists the supplier's selling price per unit which makes the maximum total profits for both supplier and buyer with supply chain partnership greater than those for any given supplier's selling price per unit without supply chain partnership.
Breath-hold black blood quantitative T1rho imaging of liver using single shot fast spin echo acquisition.

BACKGROUND Liver fibrosis is a key feature in most chronic liver diseases. T1rho magnetic resonance imaging is a potentially important technique for noninvasive diagnosis, severity grading, and therapy monitoring of liver fibrosis. However, it remains challenging to perform robust T1rho quantification of liver on human subjects. One major reason is that the presence of rich blood signal in liver can cause artificially high T1rho measurement and makes T1rho quantification susceptible to motion. METHODS A pulse sequence based on single shot fast/turbo spin echo (SSFSE/SSTSE) acquisition, with theoretical analysis and simulation based on the extended phase graph (EPG) algorithm, was presented for breath-hold single slice quantitative T1rho imaging of liver with suppression of blood signal. The pulse sequence was evaluated in human subjects at 3.0 T with 500 Hz spinlock frequency and time-of-spinlock (TSL) 0, 10, 30 and 50 ms. RESULTS Human scan demonstrated that the entire T1rho data sets with four spinlock time can be acquired within a single breath-hold of 10 seconds with black blood effect. T1rho quantification with suppression of blood signal results in significantly reduced T1rho value of liver compared to the results without blood suppression. CONCLUSIONS A signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) efficient pulse sequence was reported for T1rho quantification of liver. The black blood effect, together with a short breath-hold, mitigates the risk of quantification errors as would occur in the conventional methods.
Modeling and Identifying Central Banks' Preferences

We propose an approach to identify independently the parameters describing the structure of the economy from those describing central bank preferences. We first estimate a parsimonious structural model for US inflation, US output-gap and the world commodity price index. We then proceed to the identification of central bank preferences by estimating by GMM the Euler equations for the solution of the intertemporal optimization problem relevant to the central bank. The empirical analysis of the structural model shows that the persistency of real interest rates effects on aggregate demand is sufficient to generate an autoregressive structure in any interest rate rule. From estimation of the Euler equations, we infer that strict inflation targeting together with real interest rate smoothing delivers an optimal policy rule capable of replicating the observed path of real interest rates over the sample 1983:1 - 1998:3. Our empirical findings imply that the output gap enters into the optimal interest rate rule only as a leading indicator of future inflation, and we reject the hypothesis that output stabilization is an independent argument in the loss of function of the Fed.
Tourist Activity and Low Cost Airlines in the Mediterranean Spanish Arch

The emergence of the low cost airlines (LCA) in Spain has meant a revolution in air transportation since it has allowed fare reductions, and a growing evolution in the number of passengers and companies in many airports of the country. Nevertheless, this revolution isn´t limited exclusively to air transport; there´s a new urban order, more decentralized and articulated, as a consequence of the renaissance of obsolete airports tied to these airlines located in intermediate cities. One of the best regions in which this incip ient situation is most clearly seen is the Mediterranean Spanish arch, where several cities have scaled to new positions in the new urban Spanish hierarchy from the birth of these airlines. This paper will attempt to quantify the tourist growth of this region from the emergence of these LCAs until the onset of the current economic and political crisis through comparative study of different socioeconomic variables.
From conics to NURBS: A tutorial and survey

The main geometric features of the nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS) curve and surface representations are described. It is shown that most of these features are already exhibited by conics, which are a special case of NURBS. The properties typical of NURBS are discussed without dwelling on properties already present in polynomial curves. Conic sections and their representations using rational Bezier curves are reviewed. Cubic NURB curves, geometrical rational splines, rational and B-spline surfaces, and rational Bezier triangles are discussed. <<ETX>>
The Divergence between Book Income and Tax Income

This paper examines the evolution of the corporate profit base and the relationship between book income and tax income for U.S. corporations over the last two decades. The paper demonstrates that this relationship has broken down over the 1990s, and it has broken down in a manner consistent with increased tax-sheltering activity. The paper traces the growing discrepancy between book income and tax income associated with differential treatments of depreciation, the reporting of foreign source income, and in particular the changing nature of employee compensation. For the largest public companies, proceeds from option exercises equaled 27 percent of operating cash flow from 1996 to 2000. These deductions appear to be fully utilized, thereby creating the largest distinction between book income and tax income. While the differential treatment of these items has historically accounted fully for the discrepancy between book income and tax income, this paper demonstrates that book and tax income have diverged markedly for reasons not associated with these items during the late 1990s. In 1998, more than half the difference between tax and book income--approximately $154.4 billion, or 33.7 percent of tax income--cannot be accounted for by these factors. This paper proceeds to develop and test a model of costly tax sheltering and demonstrates that the breakdown in the relationship between tax income and book income is consistent with increasing levels of sheltering during the late 1990s. These tests also explore an alternative explanation of these results--coincident increased levels of earnings management--and find that the nature of the breakdown between book and tax income cannot be explained fully by this alternative explanation.
Early Numeracy Assessment: The Development of the Preschool Numeracy Scales.

RESEARCH FINDINGS The focus of this study was to construct and validate twelve brief early numeracy assessment tasks that measure the skills and concepts identified as key to early mathematics development by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2006) and the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008)-as well as critical developmental precursors to later mathematics skill by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; 2010). Participants were 393 preschool children ages 3 to 5 years old. Measure development and validation occurred through three analytic phases designed to ensure that the measures were brief, reliable, and valid. These measures included: one-to-one counting, cardinality, counting subsets, subitizing, number comparison, set comparison, number order, numeral identification, set-to-numerals, story problems, number combinations, and verbal counting. PRACTICE OR POLICY Teachers have extensive demands on their time, yet, they are tasked with ensuring that all students' academic needs are met. To identify individual instructional needs and measure progress, they need to be able to efficiently assess children's numeracy skills. The measures developed in this study are not only reliable and valid, but also easy to use and can be utilized for measuring the effects of targeted instruction on individual numeracy skills.
Age Related Changes in Intracranial Volume in Rabbits with Craniosynostosis

&NA; Neurocapsular growth is highly heritable and determines neurocranial form. Although craniosynostosis alters brain growth direction, resulting in compensatory changes in the neurocranium, it is believed that such compensations occur without reduction in intracranial volume. This hypothesis was tested in a rabbit model with nonsyndromic, familial coronal suture synostosis. Skulls of 56 rabbits (20 normals, 20 with delayed onset synostosis, and 16 with complete synostosis) were scanned using three‐dimensional computed tomography at 6 and 18 weeks of age. Intracranial contents were reconstructed, and indirect intracranial volume was calculated. Qualitatively, re‐formations of intracranial contents from completely synostosed rabbit skulls exhibited the typical “copper beaten” morphology. Quantitatively, intracranial volume was significantly (p < 0.05) reduced in rabbit skulls with complete synostosis compared with both control rabbit skulls and rabbit skulls with delayed onset synostosis at 6 weeks by 11 percent and 14 percent, respectively). By 18 weeks, intracranial volume in rabbit skulls with synostosis was significantly (p < 0.05) reduced (by 12 percent in complete synostosis and 8 percent in delayed onset synostosis) compared with normal rabbits. Results suggest that in rabbits with uncorrected craniosynostosis, compensatory changes in the neurocranium were not adequate to allow normal expansion of the neurocapsular matrix. Further research is needed to determine whether reduction in intracranial volume was a result of neural tissue deficiency or cerebrospinal fluid (i.e., ventricular or subarachnoid) space compression in this model. (Plast. Reconstr. Surg. 100: 1121, 1997.)
Pricing and hedging American fixed-income derivatives with implied volatility structures in the two-factor Heath–Jarrow–Morton model

Most previous empirical studies using the Heath–Jarrow–Morton model (hereafter referred to as the HJM model) have focused on the one‐factor model. In contrast, this study implements the Das ( 1999 ) two‐factor Poisson–Gaussian version of the HJM model that incorporates a jump component as the second‐state variable. This study aims at examining the performance of the two‐factor model through comparing it with the one‐factor model in pricing and hedging the Eurodollar futures option. The degree of impact arising from the jump factor also is examined. In addition, three new volatility specifications are constructed to enhance further the pricing performance of the model. Their performances are compared according to three performance yardsticks—in‐sample fitting, out‐of‐sample pricing, and the hedging test. The result indicates that the two‐factor model outperforms the one‐factor model in both the in‐sample and out‐sample price fitting, but the one‐factor model performs better in the hedging test. In addition, the HJM model, coupled with the proposed volatility specification, leads to good fitting results that will be of considerable use to practitioners and academics in guiding model choice for interest‐rate derivatives. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22:839–875, 2002
Her Place at the Table: A Woman's Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success

Introduction: Taking Your Place at the Leadership Table-Questions Will Be Asked. 1. DRILL DEEP. Negotiating the Intelligence for Informed Decisions. 2. MOBILIZE BACKERS. Negotiating for Critical Support. 3. GARNER RESOURCES. Negotiating Key Allocations. 4. BRING PEOPLE ON BOARD. Negotiating Buy-In. 5. MAKE A DIFFERENCE. The Big Challenge. APPENDIX A A Road Map to Negotiating the Five Challenges. APPENDIX B What Organizations Can Learn from How Women Leaders Negotiate the Five Challenges. Notes. Bibliography. Acknowledgments. About the Authors. Index.
A Mutation at Tyrosine 1062 in MEN2A-Ret and MEN2B-Ret Impairs Their Transforming Activity and Association with Shc Adaptor Proteins*

Germ line mutations of the ret proto-oncogene are associated with the development of three dominantly inherited neoplastic disorders, multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN) 2A, MEN 2B, and familial medullary thyroid carcinoma. It has been demonstrated that the mutations result in constitutive activation of the Ret protein, leading to transformation of NIH 3T3 cells. In the present study we investigated the role of tyrosine residues present in the carboxyl-terminal sequence for the transforming activity of Ret with the MEN 2A or MEN 2B mutation (MEN2A-Ret or MEN2B-Ret). Substitution of phenylalanine for tyrosine 1062 (designated Y1062F) markedly impaired the transforming activity of both MEN2A-Ret and MEN2B-Ret, whereas substitution or deletion for four other tyrosines (codons 981, 1015, 1090, and 1096) did not affect their activity. The Shc adaptor proteins bound to the MEN2A-Ret and MEN2B-Ret proteins and were phosphorylated on tyrosine in the transfectants. The binding of Shc to the Y1062F mutant proteins was reduced by approximately 80%, indicating that tyrosine 1062 is a major binding site for Shc. In addition, phosphopeptide analysis of MEN2A-Ret demonstrated that tyrosine 1062 represents an autophosphorylation site of the mutant Ret proteins.
General Properties of Option Prices

When the underlying price process is a one-dimensional diffusion, as well as in certain restricted stochastic volatility settings, a contingent claim's delta is bounded by the infimum and supremum of its delta at maturity. Further, if the claim's payoff is convex (concave), the claim's price is a convex (concave) function of the underlying asset's value. However, when volatility is less specialized, or when the underlying process is discontinuous or non-Markovian, a call's price can be a decreasing, concave function of the underlying price over some range, increasing with the passage of time, and decreasing in the level of interest rates. Copyright 1996 by American Finance Association.
Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan

The method used has been that of a comparative presentation of the cases of China and Japan. This has been done because I have felt that the presentation of those features of China that were similar to those of Japan or offered China even greater advantages in the process would highlight and clarify those factors strategic in the case of Japan. The material presented in both cases has been deliberately oversimplified, particularly in the case of Japan. This has been done for three reasons. In the first place space does not permit of a full dress elaboration of the interrelationships touched upon with accurate qualifications of them even in so far as such material is already available. In the second place, such a presentation would require a fairly elaborate presentation of concepts developed for that purpose. That would be out of place here. In the third place, the very oversimplification of the hypotheses presented here should make it easier to prove them or to disprove them and go on to more adequate formulations. I do not think that the oversimplification used invalidates the hypotheses presented here, though more extended treatment would certainly replace with differences in degree some of the things that I have tended to present as differences of kind in order to communicate the point intended. Again for reasons of space in part, and in part because of the stage of my research in this field, documentation has not been presented nor have some ticklish interpretations presented been argued pro and con. What is presented here is intended as a set of hypotheses bearing on the problem concerned and stimulating more acciLrate and satisfactory propositions than they themselves.
Trust evaluation: an AHP and multi‐objective programming approach

Establishing trust within groups or teams of scientists and technicians working on large‐scale projects is considered an essential critical success factor when working in a virtual environment. To build trust among team members for any project requires a selection decision on which trust factors will best achieve the goals of the project. This paper presents application results of using two analytic methodologies used to evaluate trust survey information from the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), the USA’s largest science project. The two decision methodologies produced results that helped support SNS management’s judgment that uniquely selected trust categories should be emphasized to build trust on this project.