Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship Value Management: Exploring the Integration of Employee, Customer and Shareholder Value and Enterprise Performance Models

Value as a theme in the relationship marketing literature is gaining increasing attention. In particular, the synthesis of value concepts with a multi-stakeholder approach to relationship marketing has been the subject of recent interest. Building on earlier work, this article explores how key elements of relationship value can be integrated through a focus on three key stakeholder groups: employees, customers and shareholders. The linkages between employee value, customer value and shareholder value, including the research on the service-profit chain, are explored. The paper also explores the extent to which linkage models or enterprise performance models, which integrate these components of value, have been adopted by organisations. Two case studies are used to illustrate the practical application by organisations seeking to develop enterprise performance models.
Development of cryogenic prototyping for tissue engineering

A major challenge in tissue engineering has been the creation of scaffolds with controlled complex geometries. Rapid prototyping (RP) has the ability to produce complex three-dimensional structures with precise control of pore size, geometry and connectivity. In this paper, a novel technique utilising RP technology for the fabrication of tissue engineering scaffolds is presented. The main advantage of this cryogenic prototyping (CP) technique is the low operating temperatures which will allow the processing of temperature sensitive and bioactive components. Microstructure of CP Chitosan scaffolds fabricated can be controlled by processing parameters, such as the processing temperature. The macrostructure of the scaffolds is controlled by 3D computer aided design (CAD). In addition, in vitro studies with Chitosan CP scaffolds have shown that the scaffold designs are useful in promoting cell infiltration and alignment. Preliminary in vivo studies show encouraging results of cellular infiltration as well as vascularisation.
Formation Potential Field for Trajectory Tracking Control of Multi-Agents in Constrained Space

ABSTRACT In this paper, a novel Formation Potential Field method is proposed for the multi-agent formation control. The objective is to control a group of agents to automatically generate and maintain a specific formation while avoiding internal collisions and collisions with spatial constraints. A Formation Potential Field is designed combining multiple local attractive potential fields with multiple local repulsive potential fields. To further relax requirements of agents' initial positions and enhance the robustness, a global attractive potential field is added outside the influence range of the local Formation Potential Field. The optimality of the proposed scheme in formation time is analysed as well as illustrated by contrast simulation results. Following the design of the Formation Potential Field, two controllers are proposed accordingly to achieve a stable dynamic formation during the process of trajectory tracking, while the saturation effect of input is taken into account. Furthermore, a collision avoidance strategy based on artificial potential field and Dirac delta function is applied to locally modify the original trajectory of the virtual leader such that agents can avoid collisions with unexpected spatial constraints while maintaining the given formation. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of proposed approaches.
Rapid Detection of Mycoplasma synoviae and Avian Reovirus in Clinical Samples of Poultry Using Multiplex PCR

SUMMARY Mycoplasma synoviae and avian reovirus (ARV) are associated with several disease syndromes in poultry and cause notable global economic losses in the poultry industry. Rapid and efficient diagnostics for these avian pathogens are important not only for disease control but also for prevention of clinical disease progression. However, current diagnostic methods used for surveillance of these diseases in poultry flocks are laborious and time-consuming, and they have low sensitivity. The multiplex PCR (mPCR) developed in this study has been proven to be both sensitive and specific for simultaneous M. synoviae and ARV detection and identification in clinical samples. To evaluate the mPCR assay, the diagnostic test was applied to different clinical samples from natural and experimental M. synoviae and ARV-infected poultry. Results were compared with serologic, single PCR, and immunofluorescence analyses. Tibiotarsal articulation could be the best target for simultaneous detection of M. synoviae and ARV infection. The detection limit by visualization of mPCR-amplified products was 100 pg for both pathogens. Overall, the mPCR developed and standardized in this research is a useful tool for diagnosis and screening and for surveillance and control of M. synoviae and ARV infection in poultry flocks. RESUMEN Detección rápida de Mycoplasma synoviae y reovirus aviar mediante PCR múltiple en muestras clínicas avícolas. Mycoplasma synoviae y el reovirus aviar (ARV) están asociados con varios síndromes de enfermedades en las aves y causan importantes pérdidas económicas mundiales en la industria avícola. El diagnóstico rápido y eficaz para estos patógenos aviares es importante no sólo para el control de las enfermedades, sino también para la prevención de la progresión de la enfermedad clínica. Sin embargo, los métodos actuales de diagnóstico utilizados para la vigilancia de estas enfermedades avícolas son laboriosos, consumen mucho tiempo, y tienen baja sensibilidad. El PCR múltiple (mPCR) desarrollado en este estudio ha demostrado ser más sensible y específico para la detección e identificación simultánea de M. synoviae y reovirus en muestras clínicas. Para evaluar el ensayo de PCR múltiple, la prueba de diagnóstico se aplicó en diferentes muestras clínicas de aves comerciales infectadas de manera natural y experimental con M. synoviae y con reovirus. Los resultados se compararon con análisis serológicos, con PCR simples, y con análisis de inmunofluorescencia. La articulación tibiotarsal podría ser la mejor muestra para la detección simultánea de la infección por M. synoviae y reovirus. El límite de detección por visualización de los productos amplificados por PCR múltiple fue de 100 pg para ambos patógenos. En general, el método de PCR múltiple desarrollado y estandarizado en esta investigación es una herramienta útil para el diagnóstico, la detección, la vigilancia y el control de la infección por M. synoviae y reovirus en las aves comerciales.
Delayed induction and long-term effects of mild hypothermia in a focal model of transient cerebral ischemia: neurological outcome and infarct size.

OBJECT The goals of this study were to determine the effects of delaying induction of mild hypothermia (33 degrees C) after transient focal cerebral ischemia and to ascertain whether the neuroprotective effects of mild hypothermia induced during the ischemic period are sustained over time. METHODS In the first study, rats underwent 2 hours of middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion. Animals in one group were maintained under normothermic conditions (N group, 23 rats) throughout the period of ischemia and reperfusion. Rats in four additional groups were exposed to 2 hours of hypothermia, which commenced at ischemia onset (H0 group, 11 rats) or with delays of 90 (H90 group, 10 rats), 120 (H120 group, 10 rats), or 180 (H180 group, five rats) minutes, and allowed to survive for 3 days. In the second study, animals underwent 1.5 hours of MCA occlusion and were maintained under normothermic (48 rats) or hypothermic (44 rats) conditions during the ischemia period, after which they survived for 3 days, 1 week, or 2 months. All animals were evaluated for neurological findings at 24 hours and 48 hours postischemia and before they were killed. Regions of infarct were determined by examining hematoxylin and eosinstained brain slices obtained at six coronal levels. CONCLUSIONS Mild hypothermia conferred significant degrees of neuroprotection in terms of survival, behavioral deficits, and histopathological changes, even when its induction was delayed by 120 minutes after onset of MCA occlusion (p < 0.05) compared with normothermic conditions. Furthermore, the neuroprotective effect of mild hypothermia (2-hour duration) that was induced during the ischemia period was sustained over 2 months. These studies lend further support to the use of mild hypothermia in the treatment of stroke.
Executable Trading-Partner Agreements in Electronic Commerce 1

In business to business electronic commerce, the terms and conditions describing the electronic interaction between businesses can be expressed as an electronic contract or trading-partner agreement (TPA) from which configuration information and code which embodies the terms and conditions can be generated automatically. This paper first discusses issues related to contracts and more generally to inter-business electronic interactions. Next, we describe the basic principles of electronic TPAs. The TPA expresses the rules of interaction between the parties to the TPA while maintaining complete independence of the internal processes at each party from the other parties. It represents a long-running conversation that comprises a single unit of business. Next, we describe our TPA language. We then describe tools for authoring TPAs and generating code from them. Finally, we describe an example of an application which can benefit from TPAs.
Frequency of Helicobacter Pylori Infection in Patients with Lichen Planus (A Hospital Based Cross Sectional Descriptive Study)

To determine the frequency of Helicobacter pylori infection in patients with lichen planus presented to tertiary care hospital Hyderabad. Patiehts and Methods This cross sectional descriptive study of six months was carried at Liaquat University Hospital Hyderabad Sindh, Pakistan from February 2008 to July 2008. All patients above 12 years of age, of either gender, were known / already diagnosed and newly diagnosed cases of lichen planus (LP) were came through outdoor patient department (OPD), indoor patient and causality outdoor department (COD) were evaluated and enrolled in the study. All such patients were screened for Helicobacter pylori infection by Helicobacter pylori stool antigen (HpSA). For getting result the data was saved and analyzed in SPSS version 10.00. RESULT: One hundred and five patients (105) were identified as lichen planus and screened for Helicobacter pylori infection. The Helicobacter pylori stool antigen (HpSA) was positive in 81 (77%) subjects with mean age 42.89 ± ±13.32 (SD). Majority of the patient were presented in the department of dermatology; were females and belonged to the rural areas of Sindh province. Other features and presentation identified in such patients were epigastric pain (69%), retrosternal pain (17%) and haemetemesis in 07 patients.CONCLUSION: The patients with lichen planus are more prone to acquire the Helicobacter pylori infection.
Evolving Business Excellence Framework for Organization agility

An excellent organization demands agility and versatility, associated with change, innovation and coupled with robustness and resilience, implying stability, sustainable advantage and capabilities that may evolve over time. In the past decade, most companies adopted restructuring and re-engineering in response to environment challenges and demands, but nowadays the old approaches and solutions have lost their competency to deal with the organizational challenges and they are better to get replaced with new methods. The best and newest way of survival and success of the organizations is focusing on their organizational agility. The organizational agility is a wisely and complete response to the rapidly changing requirements in competitive markets and succeeding by the opportunities the organization gets.
Social Network in Marketing (Social Media Marketing) Opportunities and Risks

The most well-known social software applications are weblogs, wikis, social networking sites and instant messaging. Social networking at a high level is described as the convergence of technologies that make it possible for individuals to easily communicate, share information, and form new communities online. But the big question today is not what social networking is, but rather what it means for businesses. During the fast growth of social media and software, social networks are forcing companies to increase activities in their traditional CRM systems. These popular websites could be a great approach for companies and customers to improve their communications by applying them in computers and mobile devices. Through the social networks the way, which the company uses in its marketing, is changed. Business can take benefit through applying Social network marketing in order to cooperate with companies to achieve their goals. One of the most important advantages of Internet based application is creating an interactive contact between stakeholders that enable businesses to get feedback directly from their customers. In parallel companies can gain benefits through social marketing: they can achieve a better understanding of the customer needs and then they can build effective relationships with customers. Although social marketing is a common concept in business, there is a few numbers of people aware of its effective role in marketing. Social Marketing is a known term but not all the people know what it is exactly and what are the opportunities and risks from it. Social network marketing can be very advantageous for businesses. This paper intends to find how social software can be used to improve the marketing and to survey how social software can be used effectively in enterprises. The main focus would be on opportunities and risks in companies used social network in their marketing.
Identity Theft Issues for Financial Services Firms

Financial services firms are the targets of 30% of phishing email attacks intended to steal customers’ identities and the assets in their accounts. Last year, 285 million records were compromised in data breaches in the US; many of these were linked to organized crime. On the Internet, websites operated expressly for criminals buying and selling stolen credit cards details, bank account credentials, and stolen identities are operated by organized crime. Consequences of this identity theft phenomenon can be severe for both financial institutions and their customers – monetary losses in lawsuits, card reissue costs, and making debit/credit cardholders whole, as well as customers’ out-of-pocket costs, the hours spent resolving it, and the customer churn and brand devaluation that usually follow. This paper discusses the threats posed to the payment system, the Internet mechanism used to sell stolen digital assets, and new work that identifies the top banks’ incidents of identity theft as reported to the Federal Trade Commission. It includes explanation of how such events are carried out, and provides suggestions to help reduce the risks to financial firms.
Mechanisms of acute carotid stroke

In a three‐year study, the clinical course and results of intracranial angiography were compared in patients having an acute stroke in the carotid artery territory combined with angiographic abnormalities indicating severe were delineated. In one group, the angiographic intracranial abnormalities strongly suggested the presence of embolism in the cerebral vessels supplied were delineated. In one group, the angiographic intracranial abnormalities by the stenotic or occluded carotid artery; many of these patients had no obvious transient ischemic attacks prior to their stroke and experienced a moderate to severe clinical deficit. In the other group, evidence of embolism was absent; many showed a widespread delay in cerebral arterial perfusion, experienced a greater frequency of transient ischemic attacks before their stroke, and had a milder stroke than did those with embolism.
Spectrin‐actin interaction is required for neurite extension in NB 2a/dl neuroblastoma cells

Spectrin is an actin‐binding membrane skeleton protein involved in the maintenance of cell shape and generation of distinct membrane protein domains. Actin binds to the N‐terminal domain of β‐spectrin. To examine the function of spectrin‐actin interaction in neurons, we sought to disrupt this interaction in differentiating NB 2a neuroblastoma cells by microinjecting an N‐terminal domain‐specific anti‐β‐spectrin antibody. We found that microinjection of the affinity‐purified N‐terminal domain‐specific anti‐β‐spectrin inhibited the extension of the neurites in NB 2a/dl cells. The microinjected cells remained flat, and put out many filopodia‐like processes; but these processes failed to extend when the cells were induced to differentiate in the presence of dbc AMP or in serum‐free medium. The N‐terminal domain‐specific anti‐β‐spectrin also inhibited the binding of spectrin to actin. By contrast, the microinjection of monospecific anti‐α‐spectrinG did not inhibit neurite extension. These results suggest that β‐spectrin‐actin interaction may be required for neurite extension, which is critical for development of polarity in nerve cells. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Creating an Innovative Social Assistential Performance Management System: Beyond the Economic-Financial Perspective: Empirical Research Findings

In recent years the theme of performance measurement throughout Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has increased its importance finding application in different sectors. Despite this, there is a certain delay of the social/assistential sector in the knowledge of BSC. In order to bridge this gap, the purpose of this paper is to build a descriptive and prescriptive model of performance measures of the Piedmont system aiming at: monitoring offered services and needs, defining a qualitative-quantitative evaluation system of performances and proposing paths of action. The paper contributes to the literature on “performance measure” offering a basis for interpreting different stakeholder measures able to draw a guideline for investors. The research findings show how Piedmont social/assistential system is characterised by numerous small structures capillary distributed on the territory but also by users’ economic problems, lack of beds, specialized labours and structures, and policies favouring home-care service offer. This is an exploratory study due to the application of our methodology only to Piedmont experience but also a starting point to identify possible areas of investment for investors.
The Making of an Entrepreneurial Global Manager

The context, scale, and intensity of global competition demands that firms, in order to gain sustainable competitive advantages, adopt proactive, innovative strategies. Impact-making and pioneering innovations require a global perspective, a scientific temper, and teamwork. Such path-breaking entrepreneurship is possible through high potential individuals who would need to have not only an ability to think through logically but also be innovative. In this article, Arun Kumar Jain emphasizes the need for making such globally-relevant, professional entrepreneurial managers, outlines some important characteristics, and identifies key opportunity areas.
PCA-based Neural Network Modeling of MBE-grown HfO2Thin Film Characteristics

In this paper, the neural network based modeling for the HfO2thin film characteristics, such as the accumulation capacitance and the hysteresis index, grown by metal organic molecular beam epitaxy was investigated. In order to build the process model, the error back-propagation neural network was carried out and the X-ray diffraction data were used to analyze the characteristic variation for the different process conditions and predict the response models for the electrical characteristics. Principal component analysis was selected to reduce the dimension of the data sets. The compressed data were then used in the neural network. Those initial weights and biases are selected by Latin Hypercube Sampling method. This modeling methodology can allow us to optimize the process recipes and improve the manufacturability.
Performance on Image Segmentation Resulting In Canny and MoG

Images are analyzed with edge and color values. Pixel information is used in the color property extraction. Texture and contrast are pixel based features. Shape or edge features are used to represent images. The images are assigned with their category values. The image features are used in the classification process. Classification techniques are used to assign labels to the images. Color constancy methods are largely dependent on the distribution of colors and color edges in an image. Natural image statistics and scene semantics are used in the color consistency methods. Color contrast and texture values are used in natural image statistics model. The scene semantics model uses the edge parameter values. Classification techniques are used to learn color consistency in images. The mixture of Gaussians (MoG) classifier is enhanced with feature integration model The proposed system is designed to improve the classification accuracy. The natural image statistics and scene semantic features are combined in the classification process. Integrated feature weight is assigned for the images to perform the learning process. The MoG algorithm is enhanced with combined feature weight model. The combined feature weight is used I segmentation the class assignment process. The image similarity is estimated with the feature weight values.
Service Quality vs. Customer Satisfaction: Perspectives of Visitors to a Public University Library

This study proposes a conceptual model and empirically tests the relationships between customers and librarians (i.e. tangibles, responsiveness, assurance, reliability and empathy) with a dependent variable (customer satisfaction) regarding library services. The SERVQUAL instrument was administered to 100 respondents which comprises of staff and students at a public higher learning institution in the Federal Territory of Labuan, Malaysia. They were public university library users. Results revealed that all service quality dimensions tested were significant and influenced customer satisfaction of visitors to a public university library. Assurance is the most important factor that influences customer satisfaction with the services rendered by the librarian. It is imperative for the library management to take note that the top five service attributes that gained greatest attention from library visitorsâ€™ perspective includes employee willingness to help customers, availability of customer representatives online for response to queries, library staff actively and promptly provide services, signs in the building are clear and library staff are friendly and courteous. This study provides valuable results concerning the determinants of the service quality and customer satisfaction of public university library services from the users' perspective