Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corporate Political Strategies and State Owned Enterprises (SOEs): An Alliance to Conquer International Markets

Management literature is replete with cases of companies that use competitive strategies in the markets in which they operate. However, organizational success often depends on other variables, such as political action, which has been neglected in more detailed studies in strategy literature in general. Researchers such as Epstein 1969, Mizruchi 1992, Schuler 1996, Hillman and Hitt 1999, Blumentritt 2003, Boddewyn 2003, Hadani 2007 and Tian, Hafsi & Wu 2009 have stressed the importance of political strategies, claiming that organizational decisions and actions are influenced in practice by them. In the competitive international markets corporations use political strategies to influence stakeholders in order to conquer segments of the market that they focus on and also to prevent from other adverse interests. In this context, home country governments also assist domestic MNC's international ventures using their state owned enterprises SOEs. This paper aims to examine the political strategies practiced by a Brazilian multinational engineering company in its international operations in its dealings with home country state owned enterprises. The methodology employed was the single case study, using a qualitative approach for data collection and analysis at a large Brazilian multinational engineering company. The findings revealed that political strategies directed at SOEs from home governments are critical to a company's internationalization process.
Probiotic therapy for the prevention and treatment of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea: a systematic review

Background: The recent increase in the number and severity of cases of nosocomial Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD) has prompted interest in the use of probiotics for the prevention and treatment of this disease. We performed a systematic review of randomized controlled trials to assess the effectiveness of probiotic therapy. Methods: We searched the PubMed, EMBASE, INAHTA, HEN and Cochrane Collaboration databases to identify trials in which the prevention or treatment of CDAD with probiotic therapy was the primary or secondary outcome. We extracted data on the number of patients randomly assigned to receive probiotic or placebo, the number of patients with CDAD, the type of probiotic, criteria for diagnosing CDAD, persistence of infection after treatment, compliance and adverse effects. Results: We identified 4 eligible studies in which prevention (n = 1) or treatment (n = 3) of CDAD was the primary outcome. The benefit of probiotic therapy seen in 2 of the studies was restricted to subgroups characterized by severe CDAD and increased use of vancomycin. The remaining 2 studies were too methodologically flawed for us to draw meaningful conclusions. We also identified 4 trials in which prevention of antibiotic-associated diarrhea with probiotics was the primary outcome and prevention of CDAD a secondary outcome. These studies were limited primarily by too few CDAD cases and provided no evidence of effective prophylaxis. Overall, heterogeneity in choice and dose of probiotic and in criteria for diagnosing CDAD makes it difficult to synthesize information from the 8 studies. Interpretation: Studies conducted to date provide insufficient evidence for the routine clinical use of probiotics to prevent or treat CDAD. Better designed and larger studies are needed.
Pain-relieving effects of pulsed magnetic fields in a rat model of carrageenan-induced hindpaw inflammation

Abstract Purpose: Many strategies have been investigated to exclude the several side-effects of pharmacological or invasive treatments. Non-invasive pulsed magnetic field (PMF) treatment with no toxicity or side-effects can be an alternative to pharmacologic treatments. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate the pain-relieving effects of PMF treatment in the inflammatory pain conditions. Materials and methods: Effects of PMF treatment on the hallmarks of the inflammatory pain indices such as hyperalgesia, allodynia, edema and several biochemical parameters that evaluate oxidative stress were investigated using a well established carrageenan (CAR)-induced hindpaw inflammation model in rats. Results: CAR injection lowered the paw withdrawal thermal latencies (hyperalgesia) and mechanical thresholds (allodynia). CAR also decreased the superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) levels and increased malondialdehyde (MDA) levels compared with healthy rat paw tissues. PMF treatment produced significant increases in the thermal latencies and mechanical thresholds in CAR-injected paws. In the inflamed paw tissues, PMF increased the activities of SOD, CAT and GPx and decreased MDA level. We also demonstrated that PMF decreased paw mass indicating that it has an anti-edematous potential. Conclusions: The present results reveal that PMF treatment can ameliorate the CAR-induced inflammatory pain indices such as mechanical allodynia, thermal hyperalgesia and edema, and attenuate the oxidative stress. The action mechanisms of PMF in CAR-induced inflammation might be related to the increases in the levels of antioxidant enzymes in inflamed tissues. The findings suggest that PMF treatment might be beneficial in inflammatory pain conditions.
THE ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN SINGAPORE'S NEW-VENTURE DEVELOPMENT

ABSTRACT New-venture development is usually constrained by the availability of resources. Effective and efficient mobilization of resources hence becomes a prerogative for new-venture development. In recent years, information technology (IT) has emerged as an “enabler” for business growth and development. Thus, there is clear evidence that IT is penetrating into businesses of all categories, including new ventures. In Singapore, a biannual IT survey is conducted to study the patterns and rate of IT penetration into Singaporean firms operating in different industries. The study enables the government agencies involved in the promotion of IT usage in Singapore to evaluate the impacts of IT penetration and so provides useful information for policy formulation and for designing various incentive schemes for industries, including incentive schemes for computerization of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). In this paper, a conceptual framework for studying the role of IT in new-venture development is prese.
Active photometric stereo

An active vision technique for determining the absolute depth of surfaces is described. The algorithm assumes a very general model for the reflectance properties of the surface, and is valid for most of the shading models commonly used in computer vision work. The algorithm relies on the controlled motion of a point light source, which is not at infinity but relatively close to the surface and to the camera. The sensitivity of the computed depth values to errors in the measured quantities is derived, allowing a confidence measure for the depth to be determined. The confidence measure can aid in the estimation of accurate depth values from multiple image measurements taken over time. A method based on robust estimation that permits an unbiased estimate of the depth values to be obtained is presented. The results of experiments on synthetic and real-world imagery are reported, illustrating the efficacy of the active photometric stereo algorithm. <<ETX>>
Measuring information flow in networks of stochastic processes

This paper deals with the study of interacting systems networks. More precisely, we consider the problem of inferring the circulation of information between network nodes. To take into account feedback between signals, as well as instantaneous interaction, we show that the adequate measures of information flow are the directed information and the causal conditional directed information. We relate the framework based on directed information theory to the theory of Granger causality in multivariate time series. An important result of the paper is the proof that linear implementation of Granger causality and directed information theory are equivalent in the Gaussian case. This is proved for the bivariate analysis as well as for the multivariate analysis, for which we extend some of Geweke’s results. The relations between directed information and transfer entropy are provided. A simulation illustrates the main results obtained in the paper through the problem of inferring effective connectivity in a network.
Undergraduate Involvement in Extracurricular Activities and Leadership Development in College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Students.

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe experiences of undergraduate extracurricular involvement that result in increased leadership development. in the College and Life at completed an online questionnaire about their extracurricular experiences. Leadership development was conceptualized using the social change model. The Socially Responsible Leadership Scale (SRLS–R2) group scale was used to access leadership group values, and the Omnibus SRLS–R2 was used to measure the overall leadership construct. Ninety–six percent of respondents indicated they were involved in an extracurricular activity, including 21% in the Greek system, 95% in clubs and organizations, and 29% in competitive teams. Students who reported serving as an officer of a club or organization and students who reported spending more hours per week in extracurricular clubs and organizations scored significantly higher on both the SRLS–R2 group and an Omnibus SRLS score.
Financial Crisis and a Transmission Mechanism of External Shocks: The Signaling Role of the Korean Monetary Stabilization Bond

This paper explores a transmission mechanism of an exogenous shock to domestic financial markets by investigating the potential signaling role of the Monetary Stabilization Bond (MSB) spread together with several financial variables in Korea. The MSB spread widened and became more volatile during the crisis period after the variance change point at the end of 2007, when the causality relationships between the key variables became apparent. The empirical results illustrate that a foreign shock, which directly leads to rapid short-term capital flow and foreign exchange rate fluctuation, is likely to have a significant contagion effect on domestic financial markets in the case where it has a sizable negative impact on national foreign reserve holdings. The MSB is a monetary policy instrument for foreign exchange reserve management, and the daily observable MSB spread is a timelier signal in this transmission channel.
Exchange Rate Volatility, Pricing to Market and Trade Smoothing

This paper investigates the consequences of exchange rate volatility on the variability of export prices and quantities in the presence of market segmentation and pricing to market. Firms stabilize destination prices through systematic price discrimination, limiting the degree of exchange rate pass-through. Consequently, the variability of exchange rates is not fully translated into prices and quantities at the point of destination. Empirical estimates using aggregate price data for the G-7 industrial countries show incomplete pass-through in variances, with considerable variation among these countries. U.S. industry specific data also indicate incomplete pass-through in most cases, with considerable variation across industries.
Modes of Foreign Direct Investment and Patterns of Trade: An Alternative Empirical Approach

Modes of FDI can be clarified by analysing the changing patterns of trade among host, home and third countries. However, most empirical experiments of foreign direct investment (FDI) determinants have been confined to general characteristics of host countries and multinational enterprises' outward investment activities. This may not clearly characterise the specific characteristics of inward FDI in regard to the host country. Thus, we introduce an alternative approach to clarify modes of FDI by investigating the link between patterns of trade and inward FDI. To empirically test whether our approach is applicable, we choose China during the period 1998–2007. We construct a modified gravity equation of bilateral trade while considering spatially lagged interdependence between host, home and third countries. The problem of endogeneity is controlled by applying the system generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation technique. Our findings are consistent with results in existing studies on modes of outward FDI to China and prove that our approach in dealing with the link between patterns of trade and inward FDI has wide applicability to all modes of FDI. We discover there is strong evidence for statistically significant complementarity between bilateral trade and inward FDI within the aggregate trade data. As we decompose the aggregate trade data into final and intermediate goods, we find the motivation concerning export‐platform and complex vertical FDI is very significant. In addition, as we separate the bilateral partners into developing partners and developed partners, we find both bilateral and multilateral linkages are much stronger with developing partners.
An Improved Frequent Pattern-growth Approach to Discover Rare Association Rules

In this paper we have proposed an improved approach to extract rare association rules. The association rules which involve rare items are called rare association rules. Mining rare association rules is difficult with single minimum support (minsup) based approaches like Apriori and FP-growth as they suffer from “rare item problem” dilemma. At high minsup, frequent patterns involving rare items will be missed and at low minsup, the number of frequent patterns explodes. To address “rare item problem”, efforts have been made in the literature by extending the “multiple minimum support” framework to both Apriori and FP-growth approaches. The approaches proposed by extending “multiple minimum support” framework to Apriori require multiple scans on the dataset and generate huge number of candidate patterns. The approach proposed by extending the “multiple minimum support” framework to FP-growth is relatively efficient than Apriori based approaches, but suffers from performance problems. In this paper, we have proposed an improved multiple minimum support based FP-growth approach by exploiting the notions such as “least minimum support” and “infrequent leaf node pruning”. Experimental results on both synthetic and real world datasets show that the proposed approach improves the performance over existing approaches.
Searching for a Model of Multiple-Site Recreation Demand that Admits Interior and Boundary Solutions

For most recreation demand data sets, different individuals visit different subsets of the available sites. Interior solutions (i.e, individuals who visit all recreational sites) are not the norm. Boundary solutions (i.e., individuals who do not participate, or who visit some, but not all, of the sites) predominate. We critique eight demand models in terms of their ability to accommodate boundary solutions. Three models are recommended for consideration when there are multiple sites and the data set includes a significant number of boundary solutions: a repeated nested-logit model, a multinomial share model, and a Kuhn-Tucker model.
Domain shuffling as a tool for investigation of protein function: substitution of the cysteine-rich region of Raf kinase and PKC eta for that of yeast Pkc1p.

With the completion of the sequences of entire genomes, the need for functional characterisation of proteins and their domains is becoming acute. Conserved regions within proteins often share overlapping functions but despite this conservation may fulfil quite different tasks in different species. In this work, we investigated the cysteine-rich motif (C1 domain) of yeast protein kinase C (Pkc1p) as a model to establish a test system for domain function. C1 domains activate kinases through binding of either diacylglycerol and/or phosphatidylserine, as in many members of the protein kinase C (PKC) family, or by binding small GTPases, as in Raf kinase. In contrast to other members of the protein kinase C superfamily, Pkc1p of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is activated via binding of the small G-protein Rho1p to its C1 domain. We developed a system for domain shuffling to establish the function of C1 domains from human Raf kinase and rat PKC eta in yeast. Only the C1 domain from Raf kinase enabled the chimeric enzyme to bind Rho1p when substituted for the native yeast domain. Accordingly, a chimeric Pkc1p carrying the C1 from Raf kinase, but not that from PKC eta, was able to partially complement the phenotypes of a yeast pkc1 deletion mutant. We interpret these data as further evidence that interaction with a small GTPase is the main regulatory function of the C1 domain in yeast.
Managing Water Stress: The Logic of Demand Side Infrastructure Planning

Management of water supply in Britain is increasingly facing up to the problems posed by supply-led strategies. Although the eradication of water stress has traditionally been viewed as a techno-managerial problem, with supply being increased to meet rising demand, this is no longer possible as a general solution. Pressures both from government and from voluntary bodies are leading to approaches which manage the level of demand, and which recognize that water may, for various reasons, be in relatively short supply. The issues are illustrated by a case study of a recent tourist development, in which demand side management measures were extensively utilized.
Bacterial and archaeal diversities in Yunnan and Tibetan hot springs, China.

Thousands of hot springs are located in the north-eastern part of the Yunnan-Tibet geothermal zone, which is one of the most active geothermal areas in the world. However, a comprehensive and detailed understanding of microbial diversity in these hot springs is still lacking. In this study, bacterial and archaeal diversities were investigated in 16 hot springs (pH 3.2-8.6; temperature 47-96°C) in Yunnan Province and Tibet, China by using a barcoded 16S rRNA gene-pyrosequencing approach. Aquificae, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Deinococcus-Thermus and Bacteroidetes comprised the large portion of the bacterial communities in acidic hot springs. Non-acidic hot springs harboured more and variable bacterial phyla than acidic springs. Desulfurococcales and unclassified Crenarchaeota were the dominated groups in archaeal populations from most of the non-acidic hot springs; whereas, the archaeal community structure in acidic hot springs was simpler and characterized by Sulfolobales and Thermoplasmata. The phylogenetic analyses showed that Aquificae and Crenarchaeota were predominant in the investigated springs and possessed many phylogenetic lineages that have never been detected in other hot springs in the world. Thus findings from this study significantly improve our understanding of microbial diversity in terrestrial hot springs.
China's Approach to Rebalancing: A Conceptual and Policy Framework

This article seeks to develop a conceptual and policy framework for understanding China’s role in the global economic imbalances. China’s contribution to these imbalances via recurrent trade and financial surpluses corresponds with a phase of deepening structural risks to China’s economic growth and development. These structural challenges include: the composition of growth resulting from China’s dynamic internal transformation, China’s trade orientation, the trajectory of resource use and CO 2 emissions, welfare problems relating to distribution and international constraints. This article develops a conceptual framework for examining the relationship between the processes of long-run structural transformation in China, its economic imbalances, and the role of institutional reform in dealing with these structural challenges. As such, economic policy should extend beyond short-term macro management to pursue an institutional reform agenda to facilitate broader structural change to mitigate constraints to future growth and to improve economic welfare.
Public Entrepreneurs: Who They are and How They Operate

Most studies of entrepreneurship look at private entrepreneurs. This article introduces the concept of "public entrepreneurs" and illustrates it with examples from public enterprises in the U.S. and abroad. This article explores the similarities and differences in the personal characteristics of public and private entrepreneurs as well as the public entrepreneur9s strategies for getting around well-known barriers to entrepreneurship in the public sector. Many of these methods can be used by the public manager to become more effective in his or her job. Finally, the article raises policy issues about how society can best harness the power of public entrepreneurs.
Local glucose utilization in acute focal cerebral ischemia

By means of an autoradiographic technique employing 14C-2-deoxyglucose, abnormalities of local brain glucose utilization were studied 90 minutes following occlusion of the left middle cerebral and common carotid arteries in a series of pentobarbital-anesthetized cats. Sham-insulted control animals exhibited a normal pattern of regional glucose utilization. In animals with vascular occlusion, a zone of greatly suppressed glucose utilization occupied the caudate nucleus of the ischemic hemisphere, with variable extension, and was surrounded by a narrow rim of increased local brain glucose utilization, suggesting the occurrence of enhanced anaerobic glycolysis in the latter zones. The cerebral cortex, which was less constantly affected, showed alternating regions of increased and decreased glucose utilization. Quantitation of local brain glucose utilization values from the contralateral nonischemic hemisphere revealed a mild suppression of cortical glucose utilization relative to the control animals. This may be the metabolic equivalent of diaschisis.
Compact Dual-Band Bandstop Filters Using Stepped-Impedance Resonators

This work presents a compact dual-band bandstop filter (DBBSF) that features two controllable stopbands at desired frequencies. Stepped-impedance resonators are utilized to realize the dual-stopband characteristics, and reduce size. The synthesis method is developed. An experimental circuit is fabricated and evaluated to validate the design concept. Measurements correlate well with the simulation results, and the size is 12.6% less than that of a standard DBBSF.
Enhancing CII firewall performance through hash based rule lookup

It is important to develop defense mechanisms to bolster the cyber-physical security of critical infocomm infrastructure (CII) systems. A basic method of defense for CII systems is a firewall. Since SCADA / ICS systems may be negatively impacted by latencies and delays introduced by firewalls, which will translate to real world impacts, any implemented firewall in the network should attempt to minimize the latency it introduces. The latency in typical firewalls stems from packet classification, i.e. matching network traffic to firewall rules. It is this lookup time that we aim to improve through the development of a hash-based packet classification algorithm.
The Linear Chromatic Number of Sperner Families

Let S be a set with m elements and S a complete Sperner family on S, i.e. a Sperner family such that every x ∈ S is contained in some member of S. The linear chromatic number of S, defined by Civan, is the smallest integer n with the property that there exists a function f : S → {1, . , n} such that if f(x) = f(y), then every set in S which contains x also contains y, or every set in S which contains y also contains x. We give an explicit formula for the number of complete Sperner families of linear chromatic number 2. We also prove tight bounds on the number of elements in a Sperner family of given chromatic number, and prove that complete Sperner families of maximum linear chromatic number far outnumber those of lesser linear chromatic number.