Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Effective Control Practices in Sales Management: A Comparative Study in Developing Countries

There are two perspectives on controlling the performance of salespeople - an outcome based perspective and behavior based perspective. The former process focuses on the objective measures of results while the latter perspective on performance control of salespeople incorporates complex and often subjective assessments of the attributes of sales people. A balance of these implications provides strong support for laying controls and evaluating the performance of sales people in varied socio-cultural selling situations. This study has been conducted in two developing countries in India and Mexico with varied socio-cultural selling situations. The study discusses the impact of sales territory design on these consequences in reference to the underlying rationale of management control, incentive pay, and territory design as predictors of performance and sales unit effectiveness and attempts to examine the relationships between incentive pay and management control and their impact on salesperson performance and sales organization effectiveness.
Analyzing Formulaic Patterns in Historical Corpora

This paper aims to point out a linguistic phenomenon that due to the current stage of research can be analysed only insufficiently with the help of an electronic text corpus. In this way, the paper adds a new aspect to the discussion about historical corpora by tackling the question of how they should be designed in order to be useful for linguistic research on so‐called formulaic patterns. The novelty of the question becomes apparent considering the fact that at present such historical corpora do not exist. In section 1, we define the term formulaic pattern because a clear understanding of this phenomenon is a prerequisite condition for collaborative research of it by historians of language and corpus and computer linguists. Section 2 gives a brief outline of the state of the art in the field of modern formulaic language within the framework of corpus and computer linguistics. Section 3 shows that some well known problems in this area are exacerbated when applied to historical texts. Section 4 presents a possible solution that has been implemented by the HiFoS Researchers' Group at the University of Trier (Germany). Joint research efforts planned with UKP Lab at the TU Darmstadt (section 5) demonstrate that the restrictions posed by historical formulaic patterns are challenges to be overcome, rather than insurmountable obstacles.
Are Non-Audit Fees Associated with Restated Financial Statements? Initial Empirical Evidence

An increasing number of firms have restated previously issued financial statements in recent years. Legislators, regulators, and others speculate that restatements are associated with fees received by auditors for non-audit services (non-audit fees). The current study provides empirical evidence about the association between firms that restate financial statements and the non-audit service fees received by incumbent auditors during reporting periods that required restatement. We identify a sample of 110 firms that restated financial statements previously filed with the SEC for fiscal years 2000 or 2001, and provided relevant audit and non-audit fee data. We compare the fees paid by the restatement sample with fee data for 3,481 firms that filed proxies with the SEC from February 5, 2001 to August 31, 2001 and develop benchmarks for expected non-audit fees, fee ratio, and total fees. Using these benchmarks, we calculate the unexpected values for these measures and investigate whether restatement firms differ from the control firms. Our findings of no significant differences between the restatement and control samples for unexpected non-audit fees, fee ratios, and total fees do not support concerns that either non-audit fees or total fees inappropriately influence the audit and lead to restatements.
Distinctive upper mantle anisotropy beneath the High Lava Plains and Eastern Snake River Plain, Pacific Northwest, USA

The Pacific Northwest (PNW) has experienced voluminous intraplate volcanism over the past ∼17 Ma, beginning with the Steens/Columbia River flood basalts and continuing with the still‐ongoing volcanism in the High Lava Plains (HLP) and eastern Snake River Plain (SRP). Here we present two complementary datasets (SKS splitting and Rayleigh wave phase velocity anisotropy) that place constraints on the anisotropic structure of the upper mantle beneath the HLP and SRP regions. Beneath the HLP, SKS phases reveal dominantly E‐W fast splitting directions and large (up to ∼2.7 s) delay times, with pronounced lateral variations in δt. Lateral and depth variability in the strength of anisotropy beneath the HLP is also evident from Rayleigh wave dispersion. Beneath the SRP, SKS splitting delay times are much smaller (∼0.5 s), and surface wave observations suggest a region of upper mantle anisotropy (∼50–150 km depth) with a geometry that deviates significantly from the generally plate motion parallel fast directions observed just outside of the SRP. Beneath the HLP, the geometry of the anomalously strong anisotropy is similar to the anisotropy in the deeper parts of the upper mantle, resulting in constructive interference and large SKS splitting delay times. Beneath the SRP, the geometry of the anomalous anisotropic region in the shallow mantle is different, resulting in destructive interference and reduced SKS splitting delay times. We discuss several possible explanations for these observations, including variations in olivine lattice‐preferred orientation (LPO) strength, transitions in olivine fabric type, and a contribution from aligned partial melt.
Inherently 3-Dimensional Method for Measurement of Computed Tomographic Resolution Anisotropy

Objective: Current techniques to measure computed tomography (CT) spatial resolution use separate methods for in-plane and out-of-plane directions. The growing use of near-isotropic voxel size necessitates a new single method that inherently measures resolution in any direction. Method: We introduce a method using a set of numerous glass microspheres suspended in a small volume from which a mean sphere image is constructed. Projecting asymptotes after imaging different microsphere sets with decreasing diameters provides an inherently 3-dimensional measure of spatial resolution and anisotropy. We apply the method to both a flat-panel and multidetector CT scanner. Results: The full-width at half-maximum from line profiles through mean sphere in transverse directions corresponds to known microsphere diameters. Increased longitudinal full-width at half-maximum corresponds to known anisotropy, which is larger for a multidetector CT scanner than for a flat-panel CT scanner. Conclusions: A new single method to measure CT resolution is inherently isotropic.
Proteomic Identification of saeRS-Dependent Targets Critical for Protective Humoral Immunity against Staphylococcus aureus Skin Infection

ABSTRACT Recurrent Staphylococcus aureus skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) are common despite detectable antibody responses, leading to the belief that the immune response elicited by these infections is not protective. We recently reported that S. aureus USA300 SSTI elicits antibodies that protect against recurrent SSTI in BALB/c but not C57BL/6 mice, and in this study, we aimed to uncover the specificity of the protective antibodies. Using a proteomic approach, we found that S. aureus SSTI elicited broad polyclonal antibody responses in both BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice and identified 10 S. aureus antigens against which antibody levels were significantly higher in immune BALB/c serum. Four of the 10 antigens identified are regulated by the saeRS operon, suggesting a dominant role for saeRS in protection. Indeed, infection with USA300Δsae failed to protect against secondary SSTI with USA300, despite eliciting a strong polyclonal antibody response against antigens whose expression is not regulated by saeRS. Moreover, the antibody repertoire after infection with USA300Δsae lacked antibodies specific for 10 saeRS-regulated antigens, suggesting that all or a subset of these antigens are necessary to elicit protective immunity. Infection with USA300Δhla elicited modest protection against secondary SSTI, and complementation of USA300Δsae with hla restored protection but incompletely. Together, these findings support a role for both Hla and other saeRS-regulated antigens in eliciting protection and suggest that host differences in immune responses to saeRS-regulated antigens may determine whether S. aureus infection elicits protective or nonprotective immunity against recurrent infection.
Central domain of IL-33 is cleaved by mast cell proteases for potent activation of group-2 innate lymphoid cells

Significance Interleukin-33 (IL-33) is an IL-1 family cytokine with important roles in type-2 immunity and human asthma. IL-33 is a key activator of the recently described group-2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s), which are involved in the initiation of allergic inflammation. Here, we investigated the mechanisms regulating IL-33 activity. We discovered that mast cells, critical effector cells in allergic disorders, secrete proteases, which cleave IL-33 and generate mature forms with increased biological activity. We demonstrate that these mature forms of IL-33 are 30-fold more potent than full-length IL-33 for activation of ILC2s. Our study suggests that inhibition of IL-33 cleavage by mast cell and other inflammatory proteases could be useful to limit IL-33–mediated responses in allergic asthma and other inflammatory diseases. Interleukin-33 (IL-33) is an alarmin cytokine from the IL-1 family. IL-33 activates many immune cell types expressing the interleukin 1 receptor-like 1 (IL1RL1) receptor ST2, including group-2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s, natural helper cells, nuocytes), the major producers of IL-5 and IL-13 during type-2 innate immune responses and allergic airway inflammation. IL-33 is likely to play a critical role in asthma because the IL33 and ST2/IL1RL1 genes have been reproducibly identified as major susceptibility loci in large-scale genome-wide association studies. A better understanding of the mechanisms regulating IL-33 activity is thus urgently needed. Here, we investigated the role of mast cells, critical effector cells in allergic disorders, known to interact with ILC2s in vivo. We found that serine proteases secreted by activated mast cells (chymase and tryptase) generate mature forms of IL-33 with potent activity on ILC2s. The major forms produced by mast cell proteases, IL-3395–270, IL-33107–270, and IL-33109–270, were 30-fold more potent than full-length human IL-331–270 for activation of ILC2s ex vivo. They induced a strong expansion of ILC2s and eosinophils in vivo, associated with elevated concentrations of IL-5 and IL-13. Murine IL-33 is also cleaved by mast cell tryptase, and a tryptase inhibitor reduced IL-33–dependent allergic airway inflammation in vivo. Our study identifies the central cleavage/activation domain of IL-33 (amino acids 66–111) as an important functional domain of the protein and suggests that interference with IL-33 cleavage and activation by mast cell and other inflammatory proteases could be useful to reduce IL-33–mediated responses in allergic asthma and other inflammatory diseases.
Generic Information Systems Design Strategies

Legacy systems are now recognised as a major problem in the design and implementation of information systems to support new business strategies and novel business processes. Information Systems (IS) research into the strategic applications of the technology typically focuses on the alignment of business and IS strategies. However it does not explicitly consider the impact of legacy information systems and their impact on new systems design strategies. Similarly the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) literature assumes a green-field site and does not prescribe strategies for overcoming problems associated with the existing systems and business practices. In this paper the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) approach is compared with other generic strategic options. The results suggest that although ERP projects are inherently riskier than less radical approaches the potential benefits are much higher, and the resulting systems provide a platform for longer-term development.
Getting more performance with polymorphism from emerging memory technologies

Storage-intensive systems in data centers rely heavily on DRAM and SSDs for the performance of reads and persistent writes, respectively. These applications pose a diverse set of requirements, and are limited by fixed capacity, fixed access latency, and fixed function of these resources as either memory or storage. In contrast, emerging memory technologies like 3D-Xpoint, battery-backed DRAM, and ASIC-based fast memory-compression offer capabilities across several dimensions. However, existing proposals to use such technologies can only improve either read or write performance but not both without requiring extensive changes to the application, and the operating system. We present PolyEMT, a system that employs an emerging memory technology based cache to the SSD, and transparently morphs the capabilities of this cache across several dimensions - persistence, capacity, latency - to jointly improve both read and write performance. We demonstrate the benefits of PolyEMT using several large-scale storage-intensive workloads from our datacenters.
Reallocating Profits in Restructuring Industries: Evidence from European and US Banking

We examine the reallocation of profits in the European and US banking sectors in the period of 1995 to 2004. Specifically, we ask whether the restructuring of both industries has contributed to an efficient reallocation of assets. Using a revised decomposition framework, we find that US banks are more flexible in the reallocation of profits than their European counterparts. In the US, efficient banks that appropriate assets decrease industry profitability, as expected in a market characterized by a sufficiently high level of competition. In addition, economies of scale are exploited more in the US than in Europe. Regulatory reforms in the EU, in particular in response to the current crisis, should therefore foster a more closely integrated European market.
The contextual role of TNFR family members in CD8+ T‐cell control of viral infections

Immunity to viruses must be tightly controlled to avoid pathology. Receptors and ligands of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) family play important roles in controlling lymphocyte activation and survival during an immune response. The role of specific TNF receptor (TNFR) family members in antiviral immunity depends on the stage of the immune response and can vary with the virus type and its virulence. Here, we focus on five members of the TNFR family that are prominently expressed on CD8+ T cells during viral infections, namely, 4‐1BB (CD137), CD27, OX40 (CD134), GITR, and TNFR2. 4‐1BB, CD27, OX40, and GITR have primarily prosurvival roles for CD8+ T cells during viral infection, although under some circumstances 4‐1BB, GITR, or CD27 signals can limit immunity. Although TNFR2 can be costimulatory under some circumstances, its main role in CD8+ T‐cell responses during viral infection appears to be in contraction of the response. Several TNF family ligands are being explored as adjuvants for viral vaccines, and agonistic antibodies to TNFR family members are being investigated for immunotherapy of chronic viral infection alone and in combination with checkpoint blockade. Such therapies will require thorough and specific optimization to avoid pathology induced by hyperstimulation of these pathways.
Accelerated Second-Degree Nursing Students: Predictors of Graduation and NCLEX-RN First-Time Pass Rates

It is important to understand and identify factors that affect students’ academic performance before entry into a nursing program and as they progress through the program. The authors discuss a study, and its outcomes, that assessed accelerated second-degree nursing students’ prenursing and core nursing grades that served to predict their success at completing the nursing program and passing NCLEX-RN on first attempt. Strategies were identified to help at-risk students to be successful in the program and with first-time passage of NCLEX-RN.
Duplex mode selection for device-to-device communications underlaying the cellular uplink

Device-to-device (D2D) communications, which enable nearby mobile devices to communicate with each other, have drawn significant research interests. To further improve the spectral efficiency of D2D communications, we integrate full-duplex (FD) into D2D communications. Since the residual self-interference (SI) will limit the performance gain introduced by the FD mode, we cannot directly determine which duplex mode should be used. Therefore, this paper investigates the duplex mode selection problem for D2D communications underlaying the cellular uplink. Two cases are considered, i.e., the base station (BS) has perfect instantaneous channel state information (CSI) of both cellular link and D2D link and the BS only has user location information. For each case, we give the conditions to use D2D communications and investigate the existence of feasible solutions. When the feasible solutions of both FD mode and HD mode exist, we use power control to further improve system performance and give the duplex mode selection scheme. Numerical results show that the mode selection scheme is determined by the rate requirements and the residual self-interference.
A Space-Time Multigrid Method for Parabolic Partial Differential Equations

We consider the solution of parabolic partial differential equations (PDEs). In standard time-stepping techniques multigrid can be used as an iterative solver for the elliptic equations arising at each discrete time step. By contrast, the method presented in this paper treats the whole of the space-time problem simultaneously. Thus the multigrid operations of smoothing and coarse-grid correction are defined on all of the space-time variables of a given grid level. The method is characterized by a coarsening strategy with prolongation and restriction operators which depend at each grid level on the degree of anisotropy of the discretization stencil. Numerical results for the one- and two-dimensional heat equations are presented and are shown to agree closely with predictions from Fourier mode analysis.
Inhibitors of Plasminogen Activator in Neutrophils and Mononuclear Cells from Septic Patients

Summary Leucocytes, both polymorphs and mononuclear cells, play a variety of roles in the evolution of human response to sepsis, both local and generalised. In this study, inhibitors of plasminogen activator were measured in leucocytes from normal and septic patients. Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) was identified in polymorphs from normal individuals and levels rose significantly in polymorphs from septic patients: neutrophils from normal subjects did not contain PAI-2 but this protein was detectable in significant quantities in polymorph preparations from septic patients. In contrast, mononuclear cells from normal and septic patients contained no detectable quantities of PAI-1. Significant amounts of PAI-2 were present in normal mononuclear cells, and the levels rose significantly in monocytes from septic patients. PAI-2 is thus here identified in human subjects, distinct from those with pregnancy or malignancy, as playing a role in a pathological process. The increased levels of both inhibitors produced by leucocytes may clearly contribute directly to the persistence of fibrin, a characteristic feature of the response to infection, local or general; they may thus participate in successful localisation of infections (abscess formation etc.) and in the evolution of the major systemic complications of disseminated sepsis characterised by microvascular occlusion by fibrin such as renal failure, shock lung or digital ischaemia.
Immune responses to invasive aspergillosis: new understanding and therapeutic opportunities

Purpose of review Invasive aspergillosis is a worldwide disease that primarily affects immune-compromised patients, agricultural workers with corneal abrasions, individuals with structural lung disease, and patients with primary immune deficiency. The critical function of the immune system is to prevent the germination of airborne conidia into tissue-invasive hyphae. This review covers recent advances that shape our understanding of anti-Aspergillus immunity at the molecular and cellular level. Recent findings Host defense against conidia and hyphae occurs via distinct molecular mechanisms that involve intracellular and extracellular killing pathways, as well as cooperation between different myeloid cell subsets. The strength and efficacy of the host response is shaped by the tissue microenvironment. In preclinical models of disease, host immune augmentation strategies have yielded benefits, yet translating these insights into therapeutic strategies in humans remains challenging. Summary Although advances in early diagnostic strategies and in antifungal drugs have ameliorated clinical outcomes of invasive aspergillosis, further improvements depend on gaining deeper insight into and translating advances in anti-Aspergillus immunity.
Spectator-based brand equity in professional soccer

The purpose of this study was to assess brand equity in professional soccer teams. Through a preliminary analysis and further adaptation of the Spectator-Based Brand Equity (SBBE) scale, a refined model was tested among soccer fans. Results gathered from a confirmatory factor analysis indicated an acceptable fit of the model to the data and confirmed the relationship between Internalization, a single first-order construct, and Brand Associations, a second-order construct with ten dimensions. Review of the psychometric properties indicated all constructs had good internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. A multi-group analysis showed the cross validity of the model, and a structural equation model revealed its predictive validity, indicating the proposed model as a valid tool for assessing brand equity in professional soccer teams. Managerial implications of these results are discussed, and some guidelines are suggested for
Polarimetric signature for oil spill observation

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) oil spill observation is not at all an easy task since the presence of many natural phenomena and surfactants call for complex and time-consuming classification techniques, generally based on the use of ancillary external data. In this study, polarization diversity is employed to assist oil spill observation techniques. The polarization signature, commonly used for land application, is firstly read in terms of a sea surface scattering mechanism with and without surface slicks. Experiments, accomplished over multilook complex (MLC) C-band SIR-C/X-SAR data, show that the polarization signature can be useful both for observing oil spills and for distinguishing between oil spills and biogenic look-alikes.