Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analyzing drivers and barriers of coordination in humanitarian supply chain management under fuzzy environment

– The purpose of this paper is to explore the barriers to coordination in humanitarian supply chain management (HSCM), proposes solutions and prioritizes them to overcome the barriers particularly in the Indian context. , – This study adopts a comprehensive and rigorous procedure to explore the barriers and solutions to coordination in HSCM. The research design is divided into three phases; first, the barriers and solutions are collected through an extensive literature review; second, barriers and solutions were verified with experts involved in relief operations of the disaster that occurred in Uttarakhand (a Northern state in India) on June 14, 2013 and finally, based on the weight of barriers estimated by fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, solutions to overcome the barriers are prioritized using fuzzy technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution that considers uncertainty and impreciseness rather than a crisp value. , – This study explored 23 barriers to coordination in HSCM and grouped into five categories i.e., strategic barriers, individual barriers, organizational barriers, technological barriers and cultural barriers, and finally 15 solutions were proposed and prioritized to overcome the barriers so decision makers can focus on overcoming these barriers and realize the benefits of coordination in HSCM. , – This study provides a more efficient, effective, robust and systematic way to overcome barriers to coordination and improve the competencies of humanitarian supply chain (HSC). , – This is the first kind of study that prioritizes the solutions to enhance coordination in HSC based on the weight of the barriers.
Study on Executives' Replacement, Corporate Performance, and Board Characteristics of Real Estate Listed Companies

Due to the separation of the ownership and management for the corporate, shareholders need to supervise and constraint the management level through certain mechanisms. Corporate performance is the most significant sign to evaluate executive’s ability, if the performance is unsatisfactory, shareholders will claim to replace the incompetent executive. Numerous executives replacement phenomenon appears in the listed companies, we need to study deeply how the reason, frequency and number of the executive replacement will affect the corporate performance. This paper makes use of the data from real estate listed companies in China (year 2006 to 2011), stated the frequency, number of the executives replacement and corporate performance, using Empirical Analysis Methods to study the intrinsically linked among executives replacement, corporate performance and board characteristics. The results show that ROA and LOSS have significant negative correlations with executives replacement; LnBs, Ind and LSP have significant positive correlations with executives replacement; ROE has no significant correlation with executives replacement. Finally according to the conclusions put forward a feasible suggestion to the executives replacement for the real estate listed company.
Mapping Bugweed (Solanum mauritianum) Infestations in Pinus patula Plantations Using Hyperspectral Imagery and Support Vector Machines

The invasive plant known as bugweed (Solanum mauritianum) is a notorious invader of forestry plantations in the eastern parts of South Africa. Not only is bugweed considered to be one of five most widespread invasive alien plant (IAP) species in the summer rainfall regions of South Africa but it is also one of the worst invasive alien plants in Africa. It forms dense infestations that not only impacts upon commercial forestry activities but also causes significant ecological and environment damage within natural areas. Effective weed management efforts therefore require robust approaches to accurately detect; map and monitor weed distribution in order to mitigate the impact on forestry operations. The main objective of this research was to determine the utility of support vector machines (SVMs) with a 272-waveband AISA Eagle image to detect and map the presence of co-occurring bugweed within mature Pinus patula compartments in KwaZulu Natal. The SVM when utilized with a recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE) approach required only 17 optimal wavebands from the original image to produce a classification accuracy of 93% and True Skills Statistic of 0.83. Results from this study indicate that (1) there is definite potential for using SVMs for the accurate detection and mapping of bugweed in commercial plantations and (2) it is not necessary to use the entire 272-waveband dataset because the SVM-RFE approach identified an optimal subset of wavebands for weed detection thus enabling improved data processing and analysis.
An Exploratory Study of Chinese Americans’ Debt Holding

Research concerning the financial well-being of Chinese American households is extremely limited. This article examines factors that affect the probability that Chinese American households will hold debt. Analysis of data from a survey of Chinese Americans in five Midwestern states in the U.S. indicated that 80.5% of the sample households held some type of debt. Factors associated with the probability that a Chinese American household would be a debtor included age, presence of children under 18, health, annual income, and amount of financial and non-financial assets.
Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Gag Engages the Bro1 Domain of ALIX/AIP1 through the Nucleocapsid

ABSTRACT Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and other retroviruses harbor short peptide motifs in Gag that promote the release of infectious virions. These motifs, known as late assembly (L) domains, recruit a cellular budding machinery that is required for the formation of multivesicular bodies (MVBs). The primary L domain of HIV-1 maps to a PTAP motif in the p6 region of Gag and engages the MVB pathway by binding to Tsg101. Additionally, HIV-1 p6 harbors an auxiliary L domain that binds to the V domain of ALIX, another component of the MVB pathway. We now show that ALIX also binds to the nucleocapsid (NC) domain of HIV-1 Gag and that ALIX and its isolated Bro1 domain can be specifically packaged into viral particles via NC. The interaction with ALIX depended on the zinc fingers of NC, which mediate the specific packaging of genomic viral RNA, but was not disrupted by nuclease treatment. We also observed that HIV-1 zinc finger mutants were defective for particle production and exhibited a similar defect in Gag processing as a PTAP deletion mutant. The effects of the zinc finger and PTAP mutations were not additive, suggesting a functional relationship between NC and p6. However, in contrast to the PTAP deletion mutant, the double mutants could not be rescued by overexpressing ALIX, further supporting the notion that NC plays a role in virus release.
Independent Polled Mutations Leading to Complex Gene Expression Differences in Cattle

The molecular regulation of horn growth in ruminants is still poorly understood. To investigate this process, we collected 1019 hornless (polled) animals from different cattle breeds. High-density SNP genotyping confirmed the presence of two different polled associated haplotypes in Simmental and Holstein cattle co-localized on BTA 1. We refined the critical region of the Simmental polled mutation to 212 kb and identified an overlapping region of 932 kb containing the Holstein polled mutation. Subsequently, whole genome sequencing of polled Simmental and Holstein cows was used to determine polled associated genomic variants. By genotyping larger cohorts of animals with known horn status we found a single perfectly associated insertion/deletion variant in Simmental and other beef cattle confirming the recently published possible Celtic polled mutation. We identified a total of 182 sequence variants as candidate mutations for polledness in Holstein cattle, including an 80 kb genomic duplication and three SNPs reported before. For the first time we showed that hornless cattle with scurs are obligate heterozygous for one of the polled mutations. This is in contrast to published complex inheritance models for the bovine scurs phenotype. Studying differential expression of the annotated genes and loci within the mapped region on BTA 1 revealed a locus (LOC100848215), known in cow and buffalo only, which is higher expressed in fetal tissue of wildtype horn buds compared to tissue of polled fetuses. This implicates that the presence of this long noncoding RNA is a prerequisite for horn bud formation. In addition, both transcripts associated with polledness in goat and sheep (FOXL2 and RXFP2), show an overexpression in horn buds confirming their importance during horn development in cattle.
An Analysis of Low-Arousal Piano Music Ratings to Uncover What Makes Calm and Sad Music So Difficult to Distinguish in Music Emotion Recognition

Music emotion recognition and recommendation systems often use a simplified 4-quadrant model with categories such as Happy, Sad, Angry, and Calm. Previous research has shown that both listeners and automated systems often have difficulty distinguishing low-arousal categories such as Calm and Sad. This paper seeks to explore what makes the categories Calm and Sad so difficult to distinguish. We used 300 low-arousal excerpts from the classical piano repertoire to determine the coverage of the categories Calm and Sad in the low-arousal space, their overlap, and their balance to one another. Our results show that Calm was 40% bigger in terms of coverage than Sad, but that on average Sad excerpts were significantly more negative in mood than Calm excerpts were positive. Calm and Sad overlapped in nearly 20% of the excerpts, meaning 20% of the excerpts were about equally Calm and Sad. Calm and Sad covered about 92% of the low-arousal space, where 8% of the space were holes that were not-at-all Calm or Sad. The largest holes were for excerpts considered Mysterious and Doubtful, but there were smaller holes among positive excerpts as well. Due to the holes in the coverage, the overlaps, and imbalances the Calm-Sad model adds about 6% more errors when compared to asking users directly whether the mood of the music is positive or negative. Nevertheless, the Calm-Sad model is still useful and appropriate for applications in music emotion recognition and recommendation such as when a simple and intuitive interface is preferred or when categorization is more important than precise differentiation.
Competitive Positioning Withing and Across a Strategic Group Structure: The Performance of Core, Secondary, and Solitary Firms

Drawing from economic and cognitive theories, researchers have argued that firms within an industry tend to cluster together, following similar strategies. Their positioning in strategic groups, in turn, is argued to influence firm actions and firm performance. We extend this research to examine performance implications of competitive positioning not just among but also within groups. We find that performance differences within groups are significantly larger than across groups, suggesting that some firms within groups develop better resource or competitive positions. We also find that secondary firms within a group outperform both core firms within the group and solitary firms, the latter being those not belonging to any multifirm strategic group. This suggests that secondary firms may be able to effectively balance the benefits of strategic distinctiveness with institutional pressures for similarity. We conclude that the primary implication of strategic groups does not relate to the ability of firms to create stable, advantageous market segments through collusion. Instead, strategic groups represent a range of viable strategic positions firms may stake out and use as reference points. Moreover, our results concerning secondary firms indicate that firm positioning within a group structure can have performance implications. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Evidence for Expression of Some Microtubule‐Associated Protein 1B in Neurons as a Plasma Membrane Glycoprotein

Microtubule‐associated protein (MAP) 1B is a high‐molecular‐weight cytoskeletal protein that is abundant in developing neuronal processes and appears to be necessary for axonal growth. Various biochemical and immunocytochemical results are reported, indicating that a significant fraction of MAP1B is expressed as an integral membrane glycoprotein in vesicles and the plasma membrane of neurons. MAP1B is present in microsomal fractions isolated from developing rat brain and fractionates across a sucrose gradient in a manner similar to synaptophysin, a well‐known vesicular and plasma membrane protein. MAP1B is also in axolemma‐enriched fractions (AEFs) isolated from myelinated axons of rat brain. MAP1B in AEFs and membrane fractions from cultured dorsal root ganglion neurons (DRGNs) remains membrane‐associated following high‐salt washes and contains sialic acid. Furthermore, MAP1B in intact DRGNs is readily degraded by extracellular trypsin and is labeled by the cell surface probe sulfosuccinimidobiotin. Immunocytochemical examination of DRGNs shows that MAP1B is concentrated in vesicle‐rich varicosities along the length of axons. Myelinated peripheral nerves immunostained for MAP1B show an enrichment at the axonal plasma membrane. These observations demonstrate that some of the MAP1B in developing neurons is an integral plasma membrane glycoprotein.
Finite-time stability of switched linear systems

In this paper, the problem of finite-time stability is studied for a class of switched linear systems, where some subsystems are not finite-time stable. A novel average dwell time approach for finite-time stability of switched linear systems in which not all subsystems are finite-time stable is first proposed. Moreover, by constructing a new multiple Lyapunov functional, sufficient condition is provided to cope with the problem of finite-time stability for the given systems. Finally, a numerical example is illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed results.
Localization of immunoglobulin A-binding sites within M or M-like proteins of group A streptococci

Many strains of group A streptococci are capable of binding human immunoglobulin A (IgA) by a nonimmune mechanism. M or M-like proteins constitute a family of structurally diverse molecules which form surface fibrillae, and some of the M or M-like protein forms are responsible for the IgA-binding activity. In this report, the binding site for IgA is localized within two structurally distinct M or M-like proteins, ML2.2 and Arp4. Apart from those structural domains which are common to all M and M-like proteins, ML2.2 and Arp4 lack significant levels of amino acid sequence homology, with the exception of a short segment (ALXGENXDLR) located at residues 21 to 30 of the mature ML2.2 protein. Recombinant fusion polypeptides containing portions of the ML2.2 and Arp4 proteins were expressed in Escherichia coli and tested for binding of human myeloma IgA. A 58-residue polypeptide containing residues 14 to 71 of ML2.2 bound human IgA. The IgA-binding site of Arp4 could be localized to a 53-residue polypeptide containing residues 43 to 95, which encompasses the ALXGENXDLR consensus sequence of Arp4 positioned at residues 50 to 59. Site-specific mutagenesis at three codons within the ALXGENXDLR coding sequence of both the ML2.2 and Arp4 recombinant polypeptides leads to a loss in IgA-binding activity. Thus, the ALXGENXDLR consensus sequence is essential for the nonimmune binding of IgA by both ML2.2 and Arp4. However, the failure to bind IgA by polypeptides which partially overlap the 58- and 53-residue IgA-binding polypeptides of ML2.2 and Arp4, yet contain the ALXGENXDLR consensus sequence, strongly suggests that flanking regions are also critical for IgA binding. In summary, the results indicate that common functional domains bearing significant sequence homology are distributed within regions of M or M-like molecules that are otherwise highly divergent.
How commitment both enables and undermines marketing relationships

Purpose – The relationship marketing literature puts forward that customer commitment is central to the development of marketing relationships. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which two components of customer commitment (affective commitment and continuance commitment) both enhance and undermine customer loyalty.Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical model was developed to determine the extent to which the components of commitment both served as mediators of and interacted with one another in the relationship between service quality and switching and advocacy intentions. This model was examined in a survey of customers in three service settings; financial services, retail‐grocery services and telecommunications services.Findings – Commitment serves as a partial mediator of the service quality‐loyalty relationship. It was also found that affective commitment made a negative impact on switching intentions and a positive impact on advocacy intentions in all three service settin.
Computing Field Scheduling: A Fully Decentralized Scheduling Approach for Grid Computing

Grid systems tend to grow in size, but currently deployed state-of-the-art schedulers have inherent scalability limits due to centralization. In this paper, we present a novel, fully decentralized scheduling approach for Grid Computing. The approach is inspired from the gravitational field in physics. In the approach, a task autonomously selects a suitable computing node based on local information without dedicated servers or coordinators. An important feature of the approach is that it schedules compute-intensive tasks so that the workload of Grid systems achieves balanced as soon as possible. From simulation results, the approach can scale to a large number of nodes and has a fast task convergence rate, maintaining high Grid utilization and good capability of balanced workload.
Genome-Wide Identification of Targets for the Archaeal Heat Shock Regulator Phr by Cell-Free Transcription of Genomic DNA

ABSTRACT The hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus grows optimally near 100°C and undergoes a heat shock response at 105°C, mediated at least in part by the heat shock regulator Phr. Genes encoding a small heat shock protein (HSP20) and a member of the AAA+ ATPase are the only known targets of the regulator, but a genetic mutant of Phr has yet to be characterized. We describe here an alternative approach for the identification of the regulon of Phr based on cell-free transcription of fragmented chromosomal DNA in the presence or absence of the regulator and hybridization of in vitro RNA to P. furiosus whole-genome microarrays. Our results confirmed the phr, the hsp20, and the aaa+ ATPase genes as targets of Phr and also identified six additional open reading frames, PF0624, PF1042, PF1291, PF1292, PF1488, and PF1616, as Phr-responsive genes, which include that encoding di-myo-inositol phosphate synthase. Transcription of the identified novel genes was inhibited by Phr in standard transcription assays, and the novel consensus sequence 5′-TTTAnnnACnnnnnGTnAnnAAAA-3′ (uppercase letters denote a high conservation of the bases) was inferred from our data as the Phr recognition motif. Mutational evidence for the significance of this sequence as Phr recognition was provided in DNA-binding experiments.
Marketing Decision Making and Decision Support: Challenges and Perspectives for Successful Marketing Management Support Systems

Marketing management support systems (MMSS) are computer-enabled devices that help marketers to make better decisions. Marketing processes can be quite complex, involving large numbers of variables and mostly outcomes are the results of the actions of many different stakeholders (e.g., the company itself, its customers, its competitors). Moreover, a large number of interdependencies exist between the relevant variables and the outcomes of marketing actions are subject to major uncertainties. Given the complexities of the market place, marketing management support systems are useful tools to help the marketing decision makers carry out their jobs. Marketing management support systems can only be effective when they are optimally geared toward their users. We, therefore, deal with decision making in marketing (which generates the need for marketing management support systems). We discuss how marketing decisions are made, how they should be made, and the relative roles of analytical versus intuitive cognitive processes in marketing decision making. We also discuss the match between marketing problem-solving modes and the various types of marketing management support systems. Finally we discuss how the impact of MMSS can be improved. This is important, given the current under-utilization of MMSS in practice. We discuss the conditions for the successful implementation and effective use of marketing management support systems. The issue ends with a discussion of the opportunities and challenges for marketing management support systems as we foresee them.
Assessment of the change in cetuximab‐induced antibody‐dependent cellular cytotoxicity activity of natural killer cells by steroid

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)‐targeted therapy has been widely accepted as a promising treatment for solid tumors. Steroid treatment is used to prevent adverse effect of anti‐EGFR antibody; however, influence of steroids in the antitumor activity of targeted antibody remains poorly understood. Herein, we demonstrated the impact of steroids in induced antibody‐dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) activity of natural killer (NK) cells by cetuximab.
The Comprehensiveness of Family Cancer History Assessments in Primary Care

Background: Accurate family history information is required for adequate breast and colorectal cancer risk assessments. Few studies have examined the comprehensiveness of the family medical history interview in primary care. Methods: We compared family cancer history information collected through a self-completed survey with that documented within medical charts for 310 patients. Results: Forty-three percent (18/42) of individuals at increased risk for breast or colorectal cancer based on their family history had documentation of this risk within their chart. Age of cancer diagnosis was recorded for 40% (50/124) of affected relatives identified by chart review compared with 81% (203/252) identified through the survey (p < 0.0001). Conclusions: Over half of the individuals at increased risk for breast or colorectal cancer based on their family history did not have documentation of this risk within their medical record, and the age of relatives at diagnosis was frequently missing.
A transaction cost explanation of vertical control in international markets

The author applies a model based on transaction cost analysis to explain the vertical control selections made by a sample of exporters. The model, which obtains significant support, suggests that an important contingency when deciding on the desired level of vertical control in a particular instance, is the ability of the market to limit the opportunistic tendencies of outside intermediaries. In effect, the market’s ability to enforce contractual arrangements is often limited. When such enforcement cannot be relied upon, greater control represents a necessary alternative.
INFORMATION SECRECY AND PUBLIC-KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY

The subject and need of information secrecy with emphasis to the choice of fully using an already established public channel is to be discussed. Related histories and current achievements made in the area of information hiding, notable persons who changed the course of its progress from ancient times to this last generation are to be introduced with the intention of making every one alert of the subject and the pitfalls of an unprotected information being conveyed on a public channel particularly in the areas of banking and financial related sectors and every one using such global networks as the Internet.