Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact Of Repackaging On Market Share: A Case Of Cadbury Nigeria Plc And Nestle Nigeria Plc.

Customers judge a product by its package before buying. It is logical to say that attractive packaging is crucial to get the first time buyers to buy (Soroka, 2002 and Diana 2005). Packaging and repackaging of products help to eliminate adulteration of products from the market. This study critically evaluated the impact of repackaging on the market share volume of beverage companies in Nigeria. The hypothesis of the study was stated in null form that re-packaging activities do not have significant impact on market share expansion of companies. The study sample consisted of Cadbury Nigeria Plc and Nestle Nigeria Plc which are the two major contending firms that trade on the floor of the Nigeria stock exchange market. The major source of data was from published reports of the selected firms in the industry of study. Data were analyzed using inferential statistics (correlation and, t-test). It was discovered in the course of this study that there was no significant relationship in the market share volume of the companies (Cadbury and Nestle Nigeria PLC) between their pre and post repackaging periods. It can therefore be stated that repackaging of products those not guarantee an increase in the market share volume of companies. Based on the findings of this study, we recommend that companies should expand the market by engaging in sales promotion to create awareness on their improved brands to get more customers which can result in larger market share volume. Repackaging of product should follow the trend of technological improvement and innovations.
Miniaturized Dual-Mode Ring Resonator Bandpass Filter With Microstrip-to-CPW Broadside-Coupled Structure

A microstrip-to-coplanar waveguide broadside-coupled section is used to replace a 34-section of the conventional dual-mode 1-ring resonator filter for circuit area miniaturization. It is believed that it is a new idea to incorporate the broadside-coupled section into a ring resonator filter for size reduction. For design purpose, some important characteristics of the broadside-coupled lines are investigated. In experiments, two realized circuits show only 19.4% of the area of a uniform ring. Measured responses show good agreement with simulation.
Phenotypic characterization of rhizobia from legumes and its application as a bioinoculant.

Symbiosis between leguminous plants and soil bacteria, commonly referred to as rhizobia, is of considerable economic importance, in low input sustainable agriculture, agroforestry and land reclamation, besides being eco-friendly. In the era of development and commercialization of bioinoculant technology for sustainable agriculture development, rhizobial inoculants have been targetted as potential candidate. A Total ten nodulated plants in replica i.e. five of soybean and five of French beans were collected from organic farm of Dehradun, Uttarakhand. Number of nodules present in sample soybean A, B and C were more than French bean. Soyabean showed medium, prominent, white colonies of YEMA whereas French bean showed large white colonies. All isolated Rhizobium strains were found to be Gram negative and these were having granules within the cell. All strains of Rhizobium [SbR, ScR, FaR, FbR, FcR] had peritrichous flagellar arrangement while SaR strain of had sub polar flagella. All strains of Rhizobium gave positive congo red and negative test with alkaline broth and lactose agar test. When Rhizobium strain isolated from the soyabean was used as bioinoculant, it increased the growth of inoculated plant and the plant appeared much healthier in comparison to the control.
Is Citrullination Required for the Presence of Restricted Clonotypes Reacting With Type II Collagen? Comment on the Article by Chemin et al

tory phenotype in response to carbamylated collagen, it is possible that T cells restricted to DRb1*04:01 are either deleted in the thymus or are tolerized to this collagen epitope, and carbamylation of this peptide alone may not be sufficient to overcome that tolerance. Based on the data presented in our recent article, in which we demonstrated differences in binding of citrullinated versus native vimentin and a-enolase (which correlate with disease susceptibility), we would be interested to see the effects of peripheral blood mononuclear cell stimulation with these peptides in carbamylated form.
New CMOS realization of the differential difference operational floating amplifier with wide input voltage range

A wide input voltage range differential difference operational floating amplifier is introduced. The proposed realization is based on the cascading connection of a differential difference transconductor (DDT) and a differential input balanced output current op-amp (DIBO). The proposed DDT is based on differential transconductor stage with rail-to-rail differential input voltage swing. The DIBO current op-amp consists of high gain transresistance amplification stage and high CMRR single input balanced output transconductor stage. The new DDOFA block has 74.17 MHz unity gain BW, DC gain of 57 dBmA/V and CMRR of 85.32 dB and rail-to-rail differential input voltage swing using CMOS 0.25 mum technology model.
Benefit Corporations as a Socially Responsible Business Model: The Role of Accounting

Abstract Benefit corporations are a form of incorporation that require management to pursue some specified social goal or benefit, even if this goal requires sacrificing profit maximization. Hence, benefit corporations are considered a new business model that explicitly incorporates a socially responsible component in the corporate mission. This alternative business model may offer investors and customers a more ethical corporate form due to the social responsibility motive. Several states currently allow companies to incorporate as benefit corporations, and more states are considering such legislation. To be successful, benefit corporations will require either investment from the capital markets and/or favorable treatment from government entities. Thus, the potential success of benefit corporations is likely to rely on the general interest of private investors and citizens as well as the ability to communicate operational success. As with the evolution of the for-profit corporate model and of free market economic systems, accounting may be critical to the success of benefit corporations. Accounting systems will need to be able to measure and report both profits and social benefits to the market. Socially conscious investors must have reliable information if they are to choose the benefit corporation model over other alternatives (e.g., maximizing their return from for-profit investments and making individual donations). Citizens must also have reliable information to bring pressure on governments to support this model if it proves viable. It is still too early to determine benefit corporations’ long-term impact on society or even whether this business model will succeed in the marketplace. Our purpose is to offer a basic framework for evaluating benefit corporations relative to current substitutes and to consider characteristics that would contribute to benefit corporation success. Within this context, we consider accounting systems’ role in assessing the social utility of this new business model.
A complementary numerical and physical investigation of vortex-induced vibration

Results are presented from low Reynolds number experimental investigations of vortex-induced vibration and comparison is made with results from corresponding two- and three-dimensional direct numerical simulations. It is shown that three-dimensional simulations are required to reproduce the response envelope observed experimentally. Phase-averaged contours of spanwise vorticity demonstrate the presence of the 2P shedding mode on the lower response branch in both the experimental and three-dimensional simulation results.
Market Valuation of Accrued Social Security Benefits

One measure of the health of the Social Security system is the difference between the market value of the trust fund and the present value of benefits accrued to date. How should present values be computed for this calculation in light of future uncertainties? We think it is important to use market value. Since claims on accrued benefits are not currently traded in financial markets, we cannot directly observe a market value. In this paper, we use a model to estimate what the market price for these claims would be if they were traded. In valuing such claims, the key issue is properly adjusting for risk. The traditional actuarial approach - the approach currently used by the Social Security Administration in generating its most widely cited numbers - ignores risk and instead simply discounts "expected" future flows back to the present using a risk-free rate. If benefits are risky and this risk is priced by the market, then actuarial estimates will differ from market value. Effectively, market valuation uses a discount rate that incorporates a risk premium. Developing the proper adjustment for risk requires a careful examination of the stream of future benefits. The U.S. Social Security system is "wage-indexed": future benefits depend directly on future realizations of the economy-wide average wage index. We assume that there is a positive long-run correlation between average labor earnings and the stock market. We then use derivative pricing methods standard in the finance literature to compute the market price of individual claims on future benefits, which depend on age and macro state variables. Finally, we aggregate the market value of benefits across all cohorts to arrive at an overall value of accrued benefits. We find that the difference between market valuation and "actuarial" valuation is large, especially when valuing the benefits of younger cohorts. Overall, the market value of accrued benefits is only 4/5 of that implied by the actuarial approach. Ignoring cohorts over age 60 (for whom the valuations are the same), market value is only 70% as large as that implied by the actuarial approach.
Migration and Multipotentiality of PSA-NCAM+ Neural Precursors Transplanted in the Developing Brain

By optimizing the previously described strategy for obtention of spheres enriched in PSA-NCAM+ precursors, we prepared PSA-NCAM-immunoselected cell populations from cerebral hemispheres of neonatal MBP-LacZ transgenic mice. These cells expressed Nestin, exhibited clonal expansion potential and formed spheres, which were initially enriched in PSA-NCAM+ cells but became enriched in GD3+ oligodendrocyte progenitors after 1 week in B104 contionned medium. One month after their periventricular transplantation into the brain of wild-type and/or shiverer newborn mice, cells from PSA-NCAM+ spheres exhibited a higher rostral migration potential than cells from GD3+ spheres, and clearly contributed to myelination in the olfactory bulb. In shiverer hosts, both sphere populations generated oligodendrocytes with similar myelination potential. In addition PSA-NCAM+ sphere cells generated GFAP+ astrocytes and NeuN+ neurons, depending on their site of insertion. These results evidence the high plasticity of newborn PSA-NCAM+ neural precursors and suggest that they are promising tools for cell therapy of CNS diseases, including myelin disorders.
The Contribution of Owners' Human and Social Capital to Firm Performance in Vietnamese Small and Medium Enterprises

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have held an increasingly important position in Vietnam’s economy, contributing significantly to the economic growth of the country. Despite that vital role, research on this subject is very limited, scarce in quantity, and questionable in quality, particularly on owners’ human and social capital as a significant input for SME performance. Therefore, this article aims at testing the relationship between owners’ human and social capital resources and firms’ financial performance, using the survey of 2,739 SMEs in Vietnam in 2004 conducted by Vietnam’s Institute of Labor Studies and Social Affairs (ILSSA) and The Faculty of Economics - Copenhagen University. The study then shows some significant results and opens future research directions.
Long-term progression in chronic manganism

We studied the long-term clinical course of five patients with chronic manganese intoxication. The mean scores of the King's College Hospital Rating Scale for Parkinson's disease increased from 15.0 ± 4.2 in 1987 to 28.3 ± 6.70 in 1991 and then to 38.1 ± 12.9 in 1995. The deterioration was most prominent in gait, rigidity, speed of foot tapping, and writing. Tissue concentrations of manganese in blood, urine, scalp hair, and pubic hair returned to normal. Follow-up MRIs did not show paramagnetic high-signal intensity on T1-weighted images. The data indicate that clinical progression in patients with manganese parkinsonism continues even 10 years after cessation of exposure.
When Protocols Become Fairy Tales and Gods Remain Buried Under: Excerpts From the Diary of Forensic Experts at Ground Zero During the Mega Quake That Hit Nepal

Abstract More than a year has passed since the mega quake hit Nepal. Although a lot is written about the lacunae in disaster preparedness, lessons learnt, and public health concerns after the aftermath, nothing much has been written about the fate of the deceased. Although saving takes priority after a disaster, the management of dead bodies also requires immediate attention because the process of identification becomes more difficult and expensive as time passes. This article shares the firsthand experiences of forensic experts at ground zero during the quake that may be useful to forensic experts responsible for handling such situations worldwide.
Perturbation Analysis of a Dynamic Priority Call Center

We analyze a call center with multiple customer types and dynamic priority service discipline, in which a low-priority customer becomes high priority when its waiting time exceeds a given deterministic service level threshold. Within each priority queue, the service discipline is first come, first served. Based on a fluid approximation of the system, we apply infinitesimal perturbation analysis (IPA) to derive estimators for the derivatives of the queue lengths with respect to the threshold parameter. Numerical examples illustrate the validity of the fluid model approximation and the accuracy of the IPA estimators.
State of the art in monitoring rotating machinery. Part 2

In the last thirty years there have been many developments in the use of vibration measurement and analysis for monitoring the condition of rotating machinery while in operation. These have been in all three areas of interest, namely fault detection, diagnosis and prognosis. Of these areas, diagnosis and prognosis still require an expert to determine what analyses to perform and to interpret the results. Currently much effort is being put into automating fault diagnosis and prognosis. Major economic benefits come from being able to predict with reasonable certainty how much longer a machine can safely operate (often a matter of several months from when incipient faults are first detected). This article discusses the different requirements for detecting and diagnosing faults, outlining a robust procedure for the former, and then goes on to discuss a large number of signal processing techniques that have been proposed for diagnosing both the type and severity of the faults once detected. Change in the severity can of course be used for prognostic purposes. Most procedures are illustrated using actual signals from case histories. Part 1 of this article appeared in the March 2004 issue of S&V.
Parallel QR algorithm for data-driven decompositions

Many fluid flows of engineering applications, although very complex in appearance, can be approximated by lower-order models governed by a few modes, able to capture the dominant behavior (dynamics) of the system. Recently, different techniques have been developed, designed to extract the most dominant coherent structures from the flow. Some of the more general techniques are based on data-driven decompositions, most of which rely on performing a singular value decomposition (SVD) on a formulated snapshot matrix. As the number of degrees of freedom of a simulation increases, the resulting data-matrix becomes longer, otherwise referred to as a tall-and-skinny (TS) matrix. Ultimately, the SVD of a TS data-matrix can no longer be handled on a single processor. To overcome this limitation, the present study employs the parallel TSQR algorithm of Demmel et al. (2012), which is further used as a basis of the underlying parallel SVD. This algorithm is shown to scale well on machines with a large number of processors and, therefore, allows the decomposition of very large data-sets.
X-rays from magnetic massive OB stars

Abstract The magnetic activity of solar-type and low-mass stars is a well known source of coronal X-ray emission. At the other end of the main sequence, X-rays emission is instead associated with the powerful, radiatively driven winds of massive stars. Indeed, the intrinsically unstable line-driving mechanism of OB star winds gives rise to shock-heated, soft emission (~0.5 keV) distributed throughout the wind. Recently, the latest generation of spectropolarimetric instrumentation has uncovered a population of massive OB-stars hosting strong, organized magnetic fields. The magnetic characteristics of these stars are similar to the apparently fossil magnetic fields of the chemically peculiar ApBp stars. Magnetic channeling of these OB stars' strong winds leads to the formation of large-scale shock-heated magnetospheres, which can modify UV resonance lines, create complex distributions of cooled Halpha emitting material, and radiate hard (~2-5 keV) X-rays. This presentation summarizes our coordinated observational and modelling efforts to characterize the manifestation of these magnetospheres in the X-ray domain, providing an important contrast between the emission originating in shocks associated with the large-scale fossil fields of massive stars, and the X-rays associated with the activity of complex, dynamo-generated fields in lower-mass stars.
The Final Frontier: A SAS ® Approach to Data Envelopment Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the methodology for using PROC OPTMODEL and macros to rank real estate properties using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Super Efficiency Models. DEA was used to categorize apartments as efficient or inefficient, in terms of costs and benefits as seen through the buyer’s perspective. The Super Efficiency Model was then used to comparatively rank efficient apartments in order of cost effectiveness.
Alterations in Lipoprotein Composition in Peritoneal Dialysis Patients

♦ Objective Dyslipidemia is common among patients with end-stage renal disease, whether treated by hemodialysis (HD) or peritoneal dialysis (PD). To better understand the specific lipoprotein abnormalities in PD patients, we measured the lipid and apolipoprotein (Apo) composition of the four major classes of plasma lipoproteins in PD patients, HD patients, and healthy control subjects: very low density (VLDL), intermediate density (IDL), low density (LDL), and high density lipoproteins (HDL). ♦ Design Fasting plasma samples were obtained from 15 nondiabetic PD patients, 15 nondiabetic HD patients, and 16 healthy control subjects, all from a cross section of patients and subjects in the region of Göteborg, Sweden. Lipoproteins were isolated by preparative ultracentrifugation, and lipid and apolipoprotein concentrations were measured by gas chromatography and electroimmunoassay, respectively. ♦ Results Alterations in lipoprotein composition were apparent in all four lipoprotein density classes from PD and HD patients. VLDL contained a significantly higher concentration of ApoCIII in both HD and PD patients, and an elevation of free cholesterol, triglyceride, ApoB, ApoCII, and ApoE in PD patients. IDL from both PD and HD patients contained an excess of free and esterified cholesterol and triglyceride and significantly elevated levels of ApoB, ApoCII, ApoCIII, and ApoE. LDL had a higher concentration of ApoB in PD patients and elevated triglyceride and ApoCIII in both PD and HD patients. HDL isolated from PD patients had lower free cholesterol and ApoAI levels compared to control subjects, but these were not significantly different from HD patients. ♦ Conclusions An increase in lipid and apolipoprotein mass in IDL, and an enrichment of ApoCIII in VLDL, IDL, and LDL were observed in both HD and PD patients. The predominant alteration in lipoprotein composition distinguishing PD patients from HD patients was an elevation of ApoB in LDL. Further study of these alterations in lipoprotein composition in PD patients will be helpful in understanding the underlying causes of dyslipidemia and, ultimately, to the selection of hypolipidemic drugs or other treatments to reduce the cardiovascular risks associated with dyslipidemia in these patients.
Optimal Selection of Secondary Indexes

When planning a database, the problem of index selection is of particular interest. The authors examine a transaction model that includes queries, updates, insertions, and deletions, and they define a function that calculates the transaction's total cost when an index set is used. Their aim is to minimize the function cost in order to identify the optimal set. The algorithms proposed in other studies require an exponential time in the number of attributes in order to solve the problem. The authors propose a heuristic algorithm based on some properties of the cost function that produces an almost optimal set in polynomial time. In many cases, the cost function properties make it possible to prove that the solution obtained is the optimal one. >
Frequency of Genotype With ΔF508 Mutation in CFTR Gene Among Iranian Cystic Fibrosis Patients With Pancreatic Insufficiency

Background: Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most prevalent lethal autosomal recessive disease with a broad spectrum of phenotypes. Mutation of ΔF508 in the CFTR gene is the most important and lethal mutation in CF, which contains 70% of all predisposing mutations for CF worldwide. Objectives: Determining frequency of genotypes with ΔF508 mutation in CFTR gene, and evaluation of correlation between genotype and phenotype of Iranian patients with CF. Patients and Methods: Thirty six patients were included in this cross sectional study. ΔF508 mutations in both alleles of the CFTR gene were checked. Results: Among 36 pediatric patients, ΔF508 mutation was detected in 9 (25%) patients; 2 patients were heterozygous, and 7 patients homozygous for this mutation. From overall 72 tracked alleles, 11 (15.2%) were found to have ΔF508 mutations. Differences in prevalence of dyspnea and bronchiectasis were significant in homozygote group, compared with non-mutated group for ΔF508. Conclusions: It seems that more ΔF508 mutated alleles lead to more severe symptoms of CF.