Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
STRATEGIC QUALITY MANAGEMENT INITIATIVES AND PERFORMANCE OF MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE PROVIDERS IN KENYA

Survival for companies in the corporate world is depended on many factors. Some of these factors can be categorized as internal to the companies others are external to the companies. The internal factors may constitute the strengths and weaknesses of the organizations while the external may constitute the opportunities and threats to the organizations. This is normally abbreviated as SWOT. SWOT analysis is used by firms to identify their strength, weakness, opportunity and threats. Strategic quality management is one of the management concerns in the modern corporate world that can have a great impact to an organization whether it the organization adopts it or not. Organizations need to evaluate adoption strategic quality management since this is one way of improving on their strength and reducing their weaknesses. Strategic quality management if successfully adopted can greatly improve the performance of a firm. This is study is about strategic quality management initiatives and organizational performance in mobile communications service providers in Kenya. Mobile telephony has been around for the last less than twenty years. In Kenya, mobile telephony was introduced in the year 2000. The industry has witnessed phenomenal growth since the introduction of mobile telephones. The phenomenal growth has come with it unprecedented challenges of ensuring continuous provision of quality services to the large and growing number of mobile telephone subscribers. Constant change in technology also presents a challenge to the mobile operators to keep up with the latest technologies in order to provide excellent service to end users. This is besides the competitive environment in which mobile operators play in. This study will therefore investigate and determine the strategic quality initiatives that mobile operators have adopted and establish how these initiatives affect the organizational performance of mobile communications services providers in Kenya. The organization performance will focus on financial performance, innovation performance and operational performance. The study will make use of structured questionnaire to collect data from management teams who work with the registered mobile operators in Kenya
The national asthma audit. Bridging the gap between guidelines and practice.

OBJECTIVE This pilot study was undertaken to assess the need and acceptability of a theoretically based audit model to assist GPs improve their asthma care. METHOD Seventeen GPs from two GP divisions conducted a chart audit and patient survey of asthma patients presenting during the 8 week audit period. Audit results were discussed at a workshop providing a forum for GP peer groups to review their asthma care against current guidelines. This workshop allowed the GPs to develop strategies to improve their asthma care in the context of the resources of their individual practice, GP division, local community and health services. RESULTS Of the 243 asthma patients audited 177 (72.8%) had a review of their asthma recorded in the past 12 months, 138 (56.8%) were prescribed regular preventive therapy and 118 (48.2%) had been given an asthma action plan. Despite the time commitment required to participate in the activity, 16 respondents who answered the audit evaluation questionnaire reported that the audit was a useful process and 15 (93.8%) stated that it had motivated them to change their practice. CONCLUSION The results confirmed the need for improved asthma care in general practice and demonstrated the feasibility of the GP-peer led, regionally coordinated, audit-workshop model.
Alternatives for Growth and Internationalization in Retailing

The paper deals with retail internatinoalization within the more general issue of growth strategies. Retailers cannot export their products through international trade and, since they cannot protect their know-how with patents, they have problems in using licensing as an alternative to direct investment. The implication is that, unlike most manufacturers, they cannot follow a step-by-step approach to internationlization. Thus, it is usually a major decision which is considered among other alternative to support growth, namely diversification into different store types. The aims of the paper are twofold: first, to offer a descriptive model of the set of choices retailers face to sustain growth and, among them, the option of internationalization. Second, to relate internationalization to the characteristics of the firm's core business, the ownership advantage it has with respect to rivals and the extent of the adaptation costs involved in implanting its type of stores abroad. The model is tested using a sam.
Metal (As, Cd, Hg, and CH3Hg) bioaccumulation from water and food by the benthic amphipod Leptocheirus plumulosus

Benthic invertebrates may be exposed to metals in pore water, overlying water, ingested sediments, and other food particles. Rates and routes of metal exposure have important implications for predicting toxicity and interpreting toxicity test results. For the standard test amphipod Leptocheirus plumulosus, radiotracer techniques were used to quantify rates of Cd, As, Hg(II), and CH3Hg bioaccumulation from water and from suspension feeding on labeled microalgae. Measured parameters were incorporated into a bioaccumulation model to predict steady‐state metal concentrations in L. plumulosus and to evaluate the relative importance of aqueous and dietary uptake pathways across a range of ingested particle types and ingestion rates. Results indicate that ingested particles contribute strongly to metal bioaccumulation and that feeding plasticity could strongly influence metal exposure. As L. plumulosus switches from suspension feeding to deposit feeding or selectively feeds on particles for which it has a high assimilation efficiency, metal exposure and body burden will increase. At ingestion rates previously reported for deposit feeding (3 g/g/d), dietary metal sources dominate metal bioaccumulation and can be responsible for greater than 90% of metal bioaccumulated, regardless of metal partitioning or ingested particle type. These results suggest that more research on L. plumulosus feeding behavior is needed to produce a more complete mechanistic understanding of metal bioaccumulation. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2010; 29:1755–1761. © 2010 SETAC
Corporate Social Responsibility and Good Governance

Though the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and governance (CG) have been evolving for decades, no single all-encompassing meaning has as yet been achieved. This paper seeks to explore the interrelationship between CSR and CG and its Indian context. The paper argues about the implication of these concepts in Indian businesses. The first part of the paper states the increased focus of CG in CSR, and its linkage with business practices. The second part states the recent transformation in the legal norms to be followed by corporate houses, highlighting the essential of good governance. The third part of the paper discusses the prospects and challenges drawn by the stakeholders outlining the success of CSR in 2014. The methodology used for the research is secondary and the main objective is to outline the overlapping of CSR and CG and the growing need of the developing nation to understand the core importance of moving beyond CG conformance towards voluntary CSR performance. This paper can provide an insight about the current CSR practices being carried out in this competitive era, especially in Indian corporate scenario.
Development of the Schwann cell lineage: From the neural crest to the myelinated nerve

The myelinating and nonmyelinating Schwann cells in peripheral nerves are derived from the neural crest, which is a transient and multipotent embryonic structure that also generates the other main glial subtypes of the peripheral nervous system (PNS). Schwann cell development occurs through a series of transitional embryonic and postnatal phases, which are tightly regulated by a number of signals. During the early embryonic phases, neural crest cells are specified to give rise to Schwann cell precursors, which represent the first transitional stage in the Schwann cell lineage, and these then generate the immature Schwann cells. At birth, the immature Schwann cells differentiate into either the myelinating or nonmyelinating Schwann cells that populate the mature nerve trunks. In this review, we will discuss the biology of the transitional stages in embryonic and early postnatal Schwann cell development, including the phenotypic differences between them and the recently identified signaling pathways, which control their differentiation and maintenance. In addition, the role and importance of the microenvironment in which glial differentiation takes place will be discussed. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Improving the Operational Efficiency of Humanitarian Logistics in the Aftermath of a Large-Scale Disaster

A poor logistics operation in support of relief efforts in the aftermath of a large-scale disaster may cause severe difficulties, which is often called the "second disaster". Based on the authors' interview surveys with government agencies, NGOs, logistics companies, and victims regarding the logistics issues during the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, this study discusses problems related to the logistics operations for handling donated goods from both domestic and international donors. Several problems occurred due to poor disaster logistics preparedness and a lack of understanding of logistics issues on the part of the actors involved. As a countermeasure, this study suggests an integrated logistics to standardize the relief goods, handling methods, and the logistics system to reduce response time and improve the efficiency of the operation.
Validation of the orthotics and prosthetics user survey upper extremity functional status module in people with unilateral upper limb amputation.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the measurement properties of the Upper Extremity Functional Status module of the Orthotics and Prosthetics User Survey (OPUS). DESIGN Methodological research on an outcome measure administered by clinical interview. PATIENTS A convenience sample of 61 adults who had unilateral upper limb amputations and completed rehabilitation at the Institute for Rehabilitation in Ljubljana, Slovenia, at least one year prior to interview. Thirty-four patients had undergone amputation of the dominant hand. Four patients did not use a prosthesis. METHODS Rating scale analysis (Rasch model) was used to evaluate functioning of the rating scale categories, the validity of the measure by examining fit of items to the latent trait, and the hierarchy of item difficulties compared with expectations of the construct. RESULTS Rasch analysis allowed us to improve the Upper Extremity Functional Status by rescoring to reduce the response categories from 5 to 4, and identifying 19 of 23 items that are useful to measure upper extremity function. The results allow us to have high confidence in the consistency of both person-ability and item-difficulty estimates. CONCLUSION This revised Upper Extremity Functional Status is a promising instrument to measure the degree of manual functioning after a unilateral upper limb amputation.
Clinical and molecular biological analysis of a nosocomial outbreak of vancomycin‐resistant enterococci in a neonatal intensive care unit

Lee HK, Lee WG, Cho SR. Clinical and molecular biological analysis of a nosocomial outbreak of vancomycin‐resistant enterococci in a neonatal intensive care unit. Acta Pædiatr 1999; 88: 651‐4. Stockholm. ISSN 0803‐5253
Effects of involvement on persuasion: a meta-analysis

Defines involvement as a motivational state induced by an association between an activated attitude and the self-concept. Integration of the available research su~ests that the effects of involvement on attitude change depended on the aspect of message recipients' self-concept that was activated to create involvement: (a) their enduring values (value-relevant involvement), (b) their ability to attain desirable outcomes (outcome-relevant involvement), or (e) the impression they make on others (impression-relevant involvement). Findings showed that (a) with value-relevant involvement, high-involvement subjects were less persuaded than low-involvement subjects; (b) with outcome-relevant involvement, high-involvement subjects were more persuaded than low-involvement subjects by strong arguments and (somewhat inconsistently) less persuaded by weak arguments; and (c) with impression-relevant involvement, high-involvement subjects were slightly less persuaded than lowinvolvement subjects. To understand the conditions under which people are persuaded by others, researchers have often invoked the concept of involvement. Although this construct was popular prior to M. Sherifand Cantril's (1947) work (see A. G. Greenwald's, 1982, review), their proposal that highly involving attitudes be regarded as components of the self-concept or ego was seminal to theory about involvement's impact on attitude change. According to M. Sherif and Cantril (1947), such attitudes "have the characteristic of belonging to me, as being part of me, as psychologically experienced" (p. 93). M. Sherif, C. W. Sherif, and their colleagues developed the implications of involvement (which they often called "ego involvement") for persuasion by giving it a major role in their social judgment-involvement approach, a theory of attitude change developed in the 1950s and early 1960s (Hovland, Harvey, & Sherif, 1957; C. W. Sherif, Sherif, & Nebergall, 1965; M. Sherif & Hovland, 1961). During this same period, Zimbardo (1960) introduced the concept of response involvement in order to predict attitude change in a social influence setting. In more
Regression models for estimating breast, thigh and fat weight and yield of broilers from non invasive body measurements.

The possibility of using non invasive body measurements for in vivo estimation of carcass components weight and yield was investigated. The study which was carried out at the University of Maiduguri Livestock Teaching and Research farm involved 192 six weeks finished broilers. Sexual dimorphism in favour of the male for most carcass trait and body measurements was observed. Breast, thigh and fat weights were significantly (P<0.05) affected by sex while their yields were not. The live weights of male and female broilers were 2040g and 1910g and the carcass yield 74.5% and 74.34% respectively. For the carcass traits, the values of males compared to females for weight and corresponding yield of breast were 416.12g (20.40%) vs 380.09g (19.88%), thigh; 233.3g (22.85%) vs 202.98g (21.13%) and fat; 17.62g (0.85%) and 21.66g (1.13%). The result showed that male broilers weighed more, yielded more meat and had less fat compared to their female counterparts. In the two sexes, the relationship between breast weight and all the body measurements were significant (P<0.01) and moderate to high. Similarly, in females, thigh weight, had a significant correlation (r=0.224 to 0.885) with all body measurements while in males, the relationship (r=0.259 to 0.745) was positive and significant (P<0.01) for live weight, chest girth and drum length. R values showed that body measurements described more variation in carcass component weights (55.2 to 88.6%) than in the yields (17.6 to 78.8%). Fat weight was predicted with slightly lower accuracy in females compared to males with F values (3.93* vs 21.06***), R (0.740 vs 0.917), R (0.548 vs 0.840) and adjusted R (0.462 vs 0.830). Finally, the slight differences observed between the actual and predicted values for absolute weight of the carcass traits demonstrates the ability of regression equations to predict these traits in the broiler industry.
INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS OF FINANCIAL CAPITAL MOBILIZATION IN MODERN RUSSIAN ECONOMY

This article views the mechanism and modern forms of financial capital mobilization in risky and uncertain conditions of the economic environment. From the perspective of the institutional approach, there is a group of problems typical for two different financial capital mobilization models: the bank loans market and the stock market. It reveals some contradictions of capital mobilization mechanism through bank lending by a critical assessment of subjective and purely subject-object relations; the major participant currently is the State. The features of the process of investing in a portfolio of securities in the current environment of high volatility of systematic and specific nature are defined, which ultimately determine the need to revise the prerequisites of classical portfolio theory and the development of new algorithms for redistribution of capital. Solving the problem of the role of the State in the financial capital mobilization will allow the mechanism to adjust itself in the direction of growth in bank lending instruments. Simultaneously, there is an increase in the growth rate in the real sector of the Russian economy. The proposed mathematical apparatus of fuzzy set theory, based on uncertainty factors variety of the economic system being considered, is capable of minimizing the portfolio investment risk.
Normal emmetropization in infants with spectacle correction for hyperopia.

PURPOSE The development of emmetropic refraction is known to be under visual control. Does partial spectacle correction of infants' refractive errors, which has been shown to have beneficial effects in reducing strabismus and amblyopia, impede emmetropization? The purpose of the present study was to perform the first longitudinal controlled trial to investigate this question in human subjects. METHODS Children identified as having significant hyperopia in a population screening program at age 8 to 9 months were assigned to treated (partial spectacle correction) or untreated groups. A control group of infants with no significant refractive errors at screening was also recruited. Measurements of retinoscopic refraction under cycloplegia were taken at 4- to 6-month intervals up to the age of 36 months, and changes in refraction of 148 subjects were analyzed longitudinally. RESULTS Refractive error decreased toward low hyperopic values between 9 and 36 months in both hyperopic groups. By 36 months, this reduction of hyperopia showed no overall difference between children who were treated with partial spectacle correction and those who were not. Despite the improvement, both hyperopic groups' mean refractive error at 36 months remained higher than that of the control group. When infants in all three groups were considered together, the rate of reduction of refractive error was, on average, a linear function of the initial level of hyperopia. CONCLUSIONS The benefits of spectacle correction for infants with hyperopia can be achieved without impairing the normal developmental regulation of refraction.
Replacement Investment Decisions under Jump Diffusion Processes

Abstract: Replacement investment decision under uncertain maintenance and operation cost is discussed in several recent papers, in which uncertainty is described using geometric Brownian motion. In order to take sudden increasing of maintenance and operation cost caused by unpredictable accidents and disasters into consideration, in this paper we concern to use jump diffusion process with n positive jumps. Occurrence of each jump is assumed driven by a Poisson process. Size of jumps are random variables, the probability distribution is assumed to be exponential distribution and Erlang distribution. We derive equations for solving the optimal level of maintenance and operation cost for replacement, and show explicit formulas for expected present value of total cost and expected replacement period. For the purpose of considering the situations that maintenance and operation cost increase discretely, we use a pure jump process that the geometric Brownian motion part is eliminated from the jump diffusion process. In this case, we find that the smooth pasting condition is not contained in the equations for solving the optimal level for replacement. Numerical results show that unpredictable events increase the optimal level for replacement and total cost, but decrease expected replacement period. We also examine the effects of probability distributions of jump size.
Les ressources annotées, un enjeu pour l'analyse de contenu : vers une méthodologie de l'annotation manuelle de corpus. (Annotated resources, a key issue in content analysis : towards a methodology for manual corpus annotation)

L'annotation manuelle de corpus est devenue un enjeu fondamental pour le Traitement Automatique des Langues (TAL). En effet, les corpus annotes sont utilises aussi bien pour creer que pour evaluer des outils de TAL. Or, le processus d'annotation manuelle est encore mal connu et les outils proposes pour supporter ce processus souvent mal utilises, ce qui ne permet pas de garantir le niveau de qualite de ces annotations. Nous proposons dans cette these une vision unifiee de l'annotation manuelle de corpus pour le TAL. Ce travail est le fruit de diverses experiences de gestion et de participation a des campagnes d'annotation, mais egalement de collaborations avec differents chercheur(e)s. Nous proposons dans un premier temps une methodologie globale pour la gestion de campagnes d'annotation manuelle de corpus qui repose sur deux piliers majeurs : une organisation des campagnes d'annotation qui met l'evaluation au cœur du processus et une grille d'analyse des dimensions de complexite d'une campagne d'annotation. Un second volet de notre travail a concerne les outils du gestionnaire de campagne. Nous avons pu evaluer l'influence exacte de la pre-annotation automatique sur la qualite et la rapidite de correction humaine, grâce a une serie d'experiences menee sur l'annotation morpho-syntaxique de l'anglais. Nous avons egalement apporte des solutions pratiques concernant l'evaluation de l'annotation manuelle, en donnant au gestionnaire les moyens de selectionner les mesures les plus appropriees. Enfin, nous avons mis au jour les processus en œuvre et les outils necessaires pour une campagne d'annotation et instancie ainsi la methodologie que nous avons decrite.
CFTR mutations and polymorphisms in adults with disseminated bronchiectasis: a controversial issue.

The recently published paper by King et al 1 prompted us to report the results of our study of 19 Serbian patients with disseminated bronchiectasis (DB) of unknown cause for whom complete screening of the CFTR gene was performed. Our patients consisted of four men and 15 women of mean age 54.5 years (range 24–79); the mean age at onset of the disease was 38.8 years. The diagnosis was based on high resolution computed tomographic (HRCT) scanning. Known and common causes of bronchiectasis such as primary ciliary dyskinesia, immunodeficiency, and α1­-antytripsin deficiency were excluded. Most of the patients had Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from their sputum. Pulmonary function tests were performed in …