Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tourism on the Greek Islands: Issues of peripherality, competitiveness and development

The Aegean archipelago is the largest island complex in Europe, accommodating 500 000 Greek people, living on 95 inhabited islands. The region's economy depends heavily on tourism, as it is estimated that tourism's contribution varies between 50% and 90% of the Gross Regional Product. The Aegean has been an established destination since the 1960s, offering a great number of facilities. The traditionally built islands and the beautiful landscapes on the one hand, and the unspoiled sea on the other, make it a desirable destination. The major attractions are ‘sun, sand, sea, sex’ types of products, often augmented to take advantage of the cultural, heritage, natural, and historical resources, as well as the events and festivals taking place in the area. Both tourism enterprises and the destination as a whole experience an overdependence upon conventional distribution channels, and especially integrated tour operators, for delivering their products. As the majority of tour operators aim to reduce their prices in order to increase their competitiveness and market share, they constantly aim to minimise the profit margins of local principals. Consequently, despite the unparalleled environmental and heritage resources, the Aegean islands fail to attract the desired ‘high-quality, high-expenditure’ tourists. The deterioration of the tourism product and image leads to a lower willingness to pay by consumers, which consequently, leads to a further drop in quality, as the industry attempts to attract customers with lower prices. The concentration of bargaining power in European tour operators, in combination with the inability of the Greek tourism industry to promote itself effectively, inevitably reduce the profit margins of principals and their ability to yield decent returns on their investment. As a result, tourists' expenditure per capita deteriorates gradually, whereas their volume increases. Consequently, tourism enterprises find it difficult to operate and compete and the economic benefits for the destination deteriorate dramatically. Socio-cultural and environmental impacts also decay local resources and jeopardise the sustainability of the region in the long term. It is therefore proposed that scientific research, political debate and community action should be utilised in order to rationalise the strategy for tourism on the Aegean Islands. This will enable the tourism industry to deliver the benefits it owns to its main stakeholders in the new millennium. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A new breed of software tool for integrated electrical power system and market analysis-GridView

Restructuring is causing fundamental changes in the rules of the game for the electric power industry and posing many tough decision making challenges to all parties having stakes in the new power market place, including policy makers, market designers, consumers, merchant plant and transmission investors, transmission owners, system planners and power marketers. To address many of the tough issues, it is critical to have an objective and systematic approach to analyze the electrical power systems and markets in an integrated environment, capturing both the economic and the engineering aspects of the problems. This paper attempts to address some of the key issues involved in developing a new breed of software tool for integrated electrical power system and market analysis, using GridView as an example.
DISJOINT SEARCH FOR THE PRICES OF TWO GOODS CONSUMED JOINTLY

The extensive literature on searching for price information deals almost exclusively with the search for the price of a single good. Casual empiricism shows that consumers buy more than one good and search for the price of more than one good before any single purchase. More importantly, not all of these goods are sold at the same store. Search theory should therefore consider the problem of multiple search in order to determine the robustness of conclusions based on a theory developed from the problem of search for the price of a single good. This paper reveals a number of insights that emerge when decisions taken in other markets are made explicit. Consider the situation facing the builder and designer of a new house. Among other things, the builder must decide on the amount of insulation and the method of heating before construction starts. The decision depends on the prices offered; hence the builder will search for an acceptable offer when prices are not known with certainty. If a low price for heat is found, then little insulation is needed because the cost of lost heat is relatively low. When relatively little insulation is needed, the potential savings from a lower price of insulation are also small. Therefore the builder may be willing to accept a relatively high price for insulation in the event of costly search and having already found a low price for heat. More generally, the price that would be accepted in one market depends on what has been found in the other market. The influence of one market on another is not clear. Consider another example. When a low price for heating is known, the cost, in terms of lost heat, of windows may be low. Thus the builder can' install more windows at a lower opportunity cost
Outsourcing occupational safety and health: An analysis of the make or buy decision

This paper investigates the factors affecting the outsourcing decision of occupational safety and health (OSH) services. I posit several hypotheses following the three main approaches to the make or buy question: (1) the transaction cost theory, (2) the resource-based view of the firm, and (3) the behavioral decision-making framework. The empirical analysis draws on microdata from 3,047 Spanish firms that are legally obliged to provide organized OSH activities but free to choose the option to outsource. Results show that informational symmetries and increasing transaction costs mainly explain the decision to outsource the OSH activity. Organizational behavior variables, such as management commitment to safety and workers' representation, also relate to the outcome of the decision but not necessarily as hypothesized. Finally, I did not generally observe the strategic value of safety in informing the make or buy decision. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Corner Solutions, Crises, and Capital Controls: A Theory and an Empirical Analyas on the Optimal Exchane Rate Regime in Emerging Economies

In a regime of free foreign exchange markets and free capital movements the reserve (hard) currencies are likely to substitute for the local soft currency in agents’ portfolia that include currency as an asset. This argument implies a process of cumulative circular causation with currency substitution leading to devaluation of soft currencies which in turn induces further currency substitution. At the theoretical level, the “fundamentals model” of currency crisis is formally extended by incorporating currency substitution in an inter-temporally optimizing framework. Next the model is implemented empirically by constructing a currency-softness index as a causal proxy of currency substitution and it is tested in an international cross section sample of countries. Two empirical findings emerge. First, there is a negative relationship between the currency-softness index and the degree of nominal-exchange-rate devaluation. Second, there is a systematic negative relationship between the softness of a currency and the level of economic development. Hence, a unipolar corner solution of floating exchange rate would not be sustainable for low-income countries with soft currencies. Rather a unipolar regime with a hard fixed exchange rate or even a middle-ground solution of fixed but adjustable exchange rate becomes optimal as long as the mobility of financial capital is restricted. Moreover, the optimal choice of exchange rate regime should be systematically linked with the level of development.
Should Principals Reveal Their Private Information?

We analyze a principal agent model with hidden action, limited liability and truth-telling constraints under the assumption that the principal has private information. We focus on whether the principal should reveal his private information to the agent. On the one hand, revelation allows to adjust the agent's effort to the best information available. On the other hand, the agent's marginal information rent can be reduced if the principal conceals his private information, because the signal can be exploited as a statistic on the agent's behavior. We show that hiding the signal is superior whenever the good signal is relatively uninformative, or when the agent's effort cost function is sufficiently convex.
THE REABSORPTION OF GLUCOSE FROM THE RENAL TUBULE IN AMPHIBIA AND THE ACTION OF PHLORHIZIN UPON IT

The experiments reported in this paper concern the behavior of glucose in different parts of the tubule of the amphibian kidney and the influence of phlorhizin upon it. Previous work had shown that the reducing power of glomerular urine from frogs and Necturi is the same, within limits of experimental error, as that of the plasma from which it is derived (1). The same result was obtained in experiments with animals poisoned with phlorhizin. Firm basis was thus established for the inference that the absence of glucose from the urine of normal amphibia is the result of its selective reabsorption by the tubules and that phlorhizin glycosuria is the result of interference with this process. Direct evidence that the proximal convoluted tubule is the site of glucose reabsorption in the normal kidney was offered by White and Schmitt in 1926 (2). Fluid, collected from proximal tubules of 4 Necturi, gave no reduction of Benedict’s solution. Their experiments, however, were made in ignorance of certain technical pitfalls which the later work of White himself revealed (3); and since failure to avoid these pitfalls might well have led to the results they secured the soundness of their evidence is open to question. Our experiments, made with the advantages of that information, completely confirm the correctness of their conclusion. In addition they show that while the power of reabsorbing glucose is not restricted to any particular segment of the proximal tubule it is not possessed by the epithelium of the distal tubule. They also give direct information that the inference stated above concerning the action of phlorhizin is true. METHODS. Necturi were anesthetized with urethane; in frogs, the brain was destroyed by a hemostat. The technique for collecting fluid from the tubules and for perfusing the lumen of a single tubule has been separately described (4). Determinations of reducing power of tubule fluid, urine and blood plasma
MMCD: Max-throughput and min-delay cooperative downloading for Drive-thru Internet systems

Advances in low-power wireless communications and micro-electronics make a great impact on a transportation system and pervasive deployment of road-side units (RSU) is promising to provide drive-thru Internet to vehicular users anytime and anywhere. Downloading data packets from the RSU, however, is not always reliable because of high mobility of vehicles and high contention among vehicular users. Using inter-vehicle communication, cooperative downloading can maximize the amount of data packets downloaded per user request. In this paper, we focus on effective data downloading for realtime applications (e.g., video streaming, online game) where each user request is prioritized by the delivery deadline. We propose a cooperative downloading algorithm, namely MMCD, which maximizes the amount of data packets downloaded from the RSU while minimizing delivery delay of each user request. The performance of MMCD is evaluated by extensive simulations and results demonstrate that our algorithm can reduce mean delivery delay while gaining downloading throughput as high as that of a state-of-the-art method.
Receptive field expansion in adult visual cortex is linked to dynamic changes in strength of cortical connections.

1. Receptive field (RF) sizes of neurons in adult primary visual cortex are dynamic, expanding and contracting in response to alternate stimulation outside and within the RF over periods ranging from seconds to minutes. The substrate for this dynamic expansion was shown to lie in cortex, as opposed to subcortical parts of the visual pathway. The present study was designed to examine changes in cortical connection strengths that could underlie this observed plasticity by measuring the changes in cross-correlation histograms between pairs of primary visual cortex neurons that are induced to dynamically change their RF sizes. 2. Visually driven neural activity was recorded from single units in the superficial layers of primary visual cortex in adult cats, with two independent electrodes separated by 0.1-5 mm at their tips, and cross-correlated on-line. The neurons were then conditioned by stimulation with an "artificial scotoma," a field of flashing random dots filling the region of visual space around a blank rectangle enclosing the RFs of the recorded neurons. The neuronal RFs were tested for expansion and their visually driven output again cross-correlated. After this, the neurons were stimulated vigorously through their RF centers to induce the field to collapse, and the visually driven output from the collapsed RFs was again cross-correlated. Cross-correlograms obtained before and after conditioning, and after RF collapse, were normalized by their flanks to control for changes in peak size due solely to fluctuations in spike rate. 3. A total of 37 pairs of neurons that showed distinct cross-correlogram peaks, and whose RF borders were clearly discernible both before and after conditioning, were used in the final analysis. Of these neuron pairs, conditioning led to a clear expansion of RF boundaries in 28 pairs, whereas in 9 pairs the RFs did not expand. RFs that did expand showed no significant shifts in their orientation preference, orientation selectivity, or ocularity. 4. When the RFs of a pair of neurons expanded with conditioning, the area of the associated flank-normalized cross-correlogram peaks also increased (by a factor ranging from 0.84 up to 3.5). Correlograms returned to their preconditioning values when RFs collapsed. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Surface Expression of Fractalkine Receptor (CX3CR1) on CD4+/CD28− T Cells in RA Patients and Correlation with Atherosclerotic Damage

Abstract: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with accelerated atherosclerosis. Fractalkine, a CX3C/chemokine (CX3CL1), mediates monocytes–macrophage infiltration in activated endothelium, suggesting its specific role in atherosclerosis‐related inflammation. In this study, we evaluate the following in early RA patients: the expression of fractalkine receptor (CX3CR1) on CD4+/CD28− T cells, a subset involved in atherosclerotic infiltration; the correlation between this subset and validated markers of early atherosclerosis. CD4+ T cells were isolated by immunomagnetics beads in 50 early RA patients and 26 healthy controls (HC). After isolation, CD4+/CD28−/CX3CR1+ T lymphocytes were assessed by FACS analysis. Endothelial dysfunction was evaluated by both carotid intima‐media thickness (IMT) and flow‐mediated vasodilation (FMV). We observed: a higher expansion of CD4+/CD28− subset in RA patients when compared to HC (7.7%, 5.15–9.7 vs. 0.7%, 0.2–1.5, P < 0.01; respectively); this expansion directly correlated with increased IMT (0.91 mm, 0.5–1.3 vs. 0.7 mm, 0.2–1, P < 0.01; RA vs. C, respectively) and inversely correlated with FMV (3.5%, 1.7–7 vs. 9%, 3.5–11, P < 0.01; RA vs. C, respectively); the large majority of CD4+/CD28−, in RA, coexpressed CX3CR1 (93%, 67–99 vs. 30%, 10–48, P < 0.01; RA vs. C, respectively); this expansion significantly correlated with both the parameters of premature vascular damage and DAS 28. Our data suggest that CX3CL1/CX3CR1 axis might play a role in the induction and development of the endothelial dysfunction during RA.
Pengaruh Perubahan Dana Alokasi Umum Terhadap Perilaku Oportunistik Legislatif Dalam Penganggaran Daerah

This study aimed to examine: the effect of changes in the allocation of public funds to the opportunistic behavior of the legislature in the budgeting area. This study is classified as causative research. Population in this research is the districts/ cities government (executive) in West Sumatra that was taken through the budget document report in 2007 until 2011. The selection of samples is using the totaling sampling method. The data used in this study are secondary data. Data collection use engineering documentation techniques. The analysis that used is a simple regression and t-test statistics. The result of hypothesis testing shows that there are changes in the allocation of public funds a significant positive effect on opportunistic behavior in the legislative budgeting. It can be seen that the significance value of 0.049 < a 0.05. Based on these results, it is suggested some implications for subsequent researchers could add independent variables such as income sources of funding in addition to the general allocation fund (such as revenue, the substantial amount of the budget, the debt / loans, and other financing) and the magnitude of the legislature (Legislature size). In this case needs further exploration in how the aspect of perception plays a role in decision-making. Key words : Changes in the General Allocation Fund, the Legislature Opportunistic Behavior, Local Budgeting
An Investigation of Determinants of Food Security in Rural Areas of Faisalabad, Pakistan

Food security exist when all people, all the times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preference for an active and healthy life. Food security may be analyzed four units at different conceptual level: regions, countries, household and individual. Pakistani people have not enough access to food for their proper nutrition. This study was carried out to investigate the determinants of food security and key issues affecting food security in rural areas of Faisalabad. A sample of 120 household respondents was selected systematically from rural Faisalabad through multistage sampling technique. Study revealed that 63.3% respondents reported that they had faced the problems regarding the availability of all type of food products and 50.3% respondents were satisfied about the quality of food. Almost two third of the respondents i.e. 63.3% claimed that they had not access to access to all type of food products which they want to get. The value of Chi-Square and Gamma showed a significant and strong association between age, education and income of the respondents and their perception about food security. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014. v5n4p676
Auditing Stories about Discomfort: Becoming Comfortable with Comfort Theory

Abstract The sociological strand of auditing research has pointed to some difficulties of the American Accounting Association's (AAA) (and mainstream) definition asserting that auditing is about ‘objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions’ (AAA, The Accounting Review, Suppl., 1972, p. 18). Instead, auditing has been described as rituals of verification that produce comfort. In this paper we seek to widen the understanding of the production of comfort by investigating the processes that end up as an audit. The processes are investigated by addressing the research question: how do auditors perceive the production of comfort? Twenty seniors were interviewed on the subject of identified discomforts in the audit process. The interviews were designed to identify the main allies and foes in the processes that make up an audit. In the presentation of the interviews, comfort theory is employed as a device to interpret the seniors' statements in terms of comfort as state, comfort as relief and comfort as renewal. Our conclusion is that the state of comfort that is demanded to become comfortable with an audit changes in relation to which actors get involved in the comfort production. Attaining a state of comfort involves a decision that sufficient discomforts have been relieved. In addition, as the definition of what it means to attain a state of comfort changes, more or less comfort as relief is required, and the audit, understood as becoming comfortable, is renewed. Suggested by comfort theory, the paper in this way develops the idea of auditing as a comfort-producing activity by examining three dimensions of audit comfort.
Random transmission scheme approach for a FMCW TDMA coherent MIMO radar

In this paper the authors analyze the use of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) applied to coherent Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) radar systems. One of the main limitations in exploiting the orthogonal condition in the time domain for MIMO radars is the reduction of the unambiguous Doppler interval. With respect to frequency modulated continuous waveform (FMCW) systems, the authors present a possible solution which is based on the introduction of a random selection of the active transmitter. The analytical representation of the signal model is described and the simulated results of the proposed approach are shown.
Turning Open Innovation into Practice: Open Innovation Research through the Lens of Managers

Despite the fact that Open Innovation (OI) has rapidly become one of the hottest topics in innovation management, comprehensive reviews of the state of the research field and its managerial implications are scarce. This could be one of the reasons why OI still represents a big challenge for innovation managers. This paper, based on a literature review covering the period from 2003 up until June 2009, identifies managerial implications of OI under four major categories: namely organizing for openness, co-creating value, leadership for diversity and intellectual property (IP) management. The contribution of this paper is both practical and theoretical. On the one hand, innovation managers can find useful suggestions for dealing with the challenge of openness in their organization. On the other hand, gaps and omissions in the practical aspects of OI management are identified in order to guide further research on the field.
Molecular Basis for ADP-induced Platelet Activation

Acting through cell surface receptors, ADP activates platelets resulting in shape change, aggregation, thromboxane A2 production, and release of granule contents. ADP also causes a number of intracellular events including inhibition of adenylyl cyclase, mobilization of calcium from intracellular stores, and rapid calcium influx in platelets. However, the receptors that transduce these events remain unidentified and their molecular mechanisms of action have not been elucidated. The receptor responsible for the actions of ADP on platelets has been designated the P2T receptor. In this study we have used ARL 66096, a potent antagonist of ADP-induced platelet aggregation, and a P2X ionotropic receptor agonist, α,β-methylene adenosine 5′-triphosphate, to distinguish the ADP-induced intracellular events. ARL 66096 blocked ADP-induced inhibition of adenylyl cyclase, but did not affect ADP-mediated intracellular calcium increases or shape change. Both ADP and 2-methylthio-ADP caused a 3-fold increase in the level of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate over control levels which peaked in a similar fashion to the Ca2+ transient. The increase in inositol 1,3,4-trisphosphate was of similar magnitude to that of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate. α,β-Methylene adenosine 5′-triphosphate did not cause an increase in either of the inositol trisphosphates. These results clearly demonstrate the presence of two distinct platelet ADP receptors in addition to the P2X receptor: one coupled to adenylyl cyclase and the other coupled to mobilization of calcium from intracellular stores through inositol trisphosphates.