Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An analysis of the impact of environmental scanning on the performance of Small and Medium Retail Enterprises in Harare

Small to Medium enterprises in Zimbabwe are faced with serious challenges related to the prevailing turbulent operating environment. Due to increased competition, economic uncertainty, technological advances, regulatory changes, increased customer expectation and globalization, SMEs have realized the need to scan their operating environment. The retail sector in Harare has seen many SMEs businesses closing down and generally performing below expectations. The research study sought to analyze the relationship between environmental scanning and business performance of the Retail SMEs in Harare. The environmental scanning factors identified in the study were frequency of scanning, use of different scanning information sources and use of scanning techniques/tools. A quantitative study was conducted which used the survey as the research strategy. A self-administered questionnaire was used as the research instrument for data collection. A total of 150 Retail SMEs in Harare were sampled using simple random sampling technique. The respondents were selected from Retail SMEs owners/managers who were present at their workplaces. The data processing was done using SPSS, correlation and regression analysis were applied to test the relationship between the variables. The research study results showed a strong positive relation between environmental scanning and performance of retail SMEs in Harare. It was recommended that Retail SMEs in Harare should conduct environmental scanning as it leads to increased business performance. They should increase the frequency of scanning, collect information from a wide range of sources and fully utilize the scanning techniques such as SWOT and PEST analysis. The researcher suggested further research studies to incorporate different business sectors like manufacturing, travel and hospitality and mining.
Return to work after percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty: a continuing problem.

Earlier studies have shown that return to work following PTCA is frequent; however PTCA is now performed in patients with more extensive coronary artery disease. The present study was designed to compare the vocational outcome of patients who underwent PTCA in 1980-1982 with that of patients who underwent the procedure in 1985. From 1980 to 1982, 53 of 73 consecutive patients who were employed before PTCA returned to work (73%). Return to work was related to primary success of the procedure (85% vs 40%, P less than 0.01) age (46.1 +/- 7.9 vs 49.3 +/- 6.6 years, P less than 0.05) and clinical status at follow-up (72% feeling well or very well vs 30%, P less than 0.01). In 1985, although the primary success rate had increased to 89%, the overall rate of return to work in the 91 patients employed before PTCA was 64%. The decrease was particularly striking for patients with primary success of the procedure (64% vs 85%, P less than 0.01). The patients in the 1985 group had greater incidences of previous myocardial infarction (40% vs 11%, P less than 0.01) and multivessel coronary disease (43% vs 8%, P less than 0.01); however, these factors were not related to subsequent return to work. In contrast, the age of the patients, which was an important determinant of work resumption, was significantly higher in the 1985 patients (49.9 +/- 7.3 vs 46.4 +/- 9.1 years, P less than 0.01). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Enrollment Issues in Agricultural Education Programs and FFA Membership.

In 1976, enrollment in agricultural education secondary school programs nationally was at an all-time high of over 697,000 students, with an FFA membership of over 509,000. However, in the past 12 years, agricultural education enrollment has dropped 27% nationally to 506,000 with a proportional decrease in FFA membership (National FFA Organization, 1989). This drop in enrollment, about 1 to 3% annually, has led to teacher reductions in multiple teacher departments and, in some instances, complete elimination of agricultural education programs (Norris & Townsend, 1987). This decline in enrollment is considerably greater than the 20% decrease in secondary enrollment for the same time period (US Bureau of the Census, 1989).
Upstart Industrialization and Exports, Japan 1880-1910

Japanese exports between 1880 and 1910 increased massively in volume, changed composition, and shifted away from leading industrialized countries toward poorer Asian neighbors. The product mix also varied with the level of development of the destination, with new products and specializations more likely to ship to less developed regional economies. Using a new disaggregated data set of the bilateral-product level exports for the universe of Japanese trade partners, we find that changes in various extensive margins (new markets, new goods) account for over 30 percent of export growth over this period. Determinants of initial entry include trade costs and market size. Products started in a small number of markets and accumulated additional destinations building on earlier successes. Subsequent entry was also influenced by product-level characteristics interacting with destination-specific characteristics. We confirm that export growth for “new” products was stronger in LDCs than in advanced economies, but the latter still claimed a larger share of overall trade growth. There is little evidence that Japan exported low quality manufactured goods to new, low-income destinations. Instead, reductions in trade costs helped Japan augment market share. Exit is relatively rare but appears to be determined by market-specific demand-side effects and product-specific factors.
The Relationship between Environmental Management Practices and Environmental Performance: The Role of Organisational Culture

Nowadays, organisations and their management are working very hard to forecast and respond to ever-changing new markets and fierce competition. Due to increase in globalisation and technological advancements, the constant variable for todayâ€™s workplace is perhaps the ability to continuously evolve. Organisations must ensure that their activities do not harm or negatively impact the environment. This study investigated the effect of organisational culture on the relationship between environmental management practice and environmental performance. Organisational culture was measured using an adapted version of the Henriâ€™s 2006 instrument which was based on a competing values perspective. Questionnaires were administered to 300 respondents (general managers/general managers) from various hotels in the Malaysian hotel industry. The hierarchical multiple regression method showed that organisational culture is not significantly related to environmental performance. However, to some extent, organisational culture has moderated the relationship between environmental management practice and environmental performance. This result implied that most of the sampled hotels in Malaysia employed a control dominant type of culture in achieving objectives. The results also showed even though hotels create an environmental culture in their activities, if people are not ready and not willing to share their knowledge toward creation of new values and beliefs, better environmental performance will not be achieved. This insignificant finding may be due to new beliefs relating to environmental issues in the Malaysian hotel industry.
Molecular markers for population genetic analyses in the family Psittacidae (Psittaciformes, Aves)

The selection of molecular markers for population studies is an important tool for biodiversity conservation. The family Psittacidae contains many endangered and vulnerable species and we tested three kinds of molecular markers for their potential use in population studies of five psitacid species: 43 hyacinth macaws (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus), 42 blue-and-yellow macaws (Ara ararauna), 23 red-and-green macaws (Ara chloroptera), 19 red-spectacled amazons (Amazona pretrei); and 18 red-tailed amazons (Amazona brasiliensis). We tested 21 clones from a genomic library of golden conure (Guarouba guarouba) minisatellites and 12 pairs of microsatellite primers developed for the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus) and A. hyacinthinus. We also tested seven tetranucleotide repeat primers for their ability to amplify regions between microsatellite loci (inter simple sequence repeats, ISSRs). We were able to select seven markers that were variable in different degrees for three species (A. hyacinthinus, A. chloroptera and A. ararauna). The mini and microsatellites produced more polymorphic patterns than the ISSRs. The genetic variability of the species studied seems to be correlated with their endangered status.
Universal Classification Applied to Musical Sequences

In this paper we examine the utility of a certain type of learning techniques that are based on information-theoretic methods for music modeling. Using universal compression algorithms we apply the notion of entropy to characterize sequences in terms of their statistical source coding. This approach provides powerful methods for generation and comparison of sequences without any explicit knowledge of their statistical source. The method was applied for automatic extraction and aleatoric generation of melodies with typical motivic/melodic phrases, style mixture and style classification. The classification results show an interesting grouping that separates works of early classical period from works of a later romantic period.
Ways of technical training perfection in rowing on kayaks

Purpose: to find out the ways of rower’s movements perfection. Material: in the research 114 qualified rowers participated. Results: it was found that every rover has the zones of optimal and critical temp. With linear increasing of rowing temp there happens non-linear change of boat’s speed; of working parameters and efficiency of rower’s movements. The highest values of rowers’ efficiency coefficient were registered in zone of intensity of 70-80% from maximal. With temp’s increasing to maximal boat’s speed stabilizes and efficiency coefficient sharply reduces. At the end of distance we registered confident worsening of rowers’ main coordination elements under influence of rising tiredness. Conclusions: in the process of motor qualities’ training it is necessary to ensure: increase working temp up to critical; restore optimal correlation of technical parameters with every new level of temp.
Stochastic modelling of EV charging at charging stations

It is reasonable to suppose that not every electric car will be charged at home sockets: some vehicle owners will eventually use charging stations. There are two options for such a charging station: it can be built either at the parking lots of shopping centers, or along highways, similar to the gas stations of today. These charging stations of course require additional feed-in of electric energy. To calculate the necessary capacity of such infeed one has to know the main operating parameters of the charging stations, such as the number of charging sockets or the parking capacity of the station. Another important parameter is the time needed to charge the battery. People do not like waiting, so a charging station must be designed taking these constraints into consideration. In this article the mathematical model of charging stations is proposed, followed by the results of the numerical simulations based on stochastic modelling of EV charging.
Analyse et transformation des questions médicales en requêtes SPARQL

In this paper we tackle question analysis in the medical domain. More precisely, we study how to translate a natural language question into a machine-readable representation. The underlying transformation process requires determining three key points: (i) What are the main characteristics of medical questions? (ii) Which methods are the most suited to extract these characteristics? and (iii) how to translate the extracted information into a machine- readable representation? We present a complete question analysis approach including medical entity recognition, relation extraction and automatic translation to SPARQL queries. Our study supports the claim that SPARQL can represent a wide range of natural language questions.
The effect of morphine on orthodontic tooth movement in rats

Abstract Objectives To investigate the effect of morphine as an exogenous opioid on orthodontic tooth movement. Naltrexone will be used as an opioid antagonist to confirm the results. Methods Forty rats were randomly divided into four equal groups. The first group received no injection; the second group received daily injections of morphine; the third group received daily naltrexone-morphine injections and the fourth group daily injections of naltrexone-normal saline. The left first maxillary molar in each rat was tipped mesially with a NiTi closed coil spring. The rats were sacrificed after 14 days and the maxillae fixed, sectioned serially and examined histologically. Results The greatest amount of tooth movement occurred in the Control group and the least amount of tooth movement in the Morphine group. Tooth movement in the Morphine group was significantly different from the other three groups (p < 0.05). The differences in tooth movement in the Control, Morphine-naltrexone and Naltrexone-saline groups were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). No statistically significant histological differences were found. Conclusions Morphine reduced orthodontic tooth movement in rats. This effect was reversed by the opioid antagonist, naltrexone, which had no effect on tooth movement.
Human Bile Salt Export Pump Promoter Is Transactivated by the Farnesoid X Receptor/Bile Acid Receptor*

The bile salt excretory pump (BSEP, ABCb11) is critical for ATP-dependent transport of bile acids across the hepatocyte canalicular membrane and for generation of bile acid-dependent bile secretion. Recent studies have demonstrated that the expression of this transporter is sensitive to the flux of bile acids through the hepatocyte, possibly at the level of transcription of the BSEP gene. To determine the mechanisms underlying the regulation of BSEP by bile acids, the promoter of the BSEP gene was cloned. The sequence of the promoter contained an inverted repeat (IR)-1 element (5′-GGGACA T TGATCCT-3′) at base pairs −63/−50 consisting of two nuclear receptor half-sites organized as an inverted repeat and separated by a single nucleotide. This IR-1 element has been shown in several recent studies to serve as a binding site for the farnesoid X receptor (FXR), a nuclear receptor for bile acids. FXR activity requires heterodimerization with RXRα, and when bound by bile acids, the complex effectively regulates the transcription of several genes involved in bile acid homeostasis. Gel mobility shift assays demonstrated specific binding of FXR/RXRα heterodimers to the IR-1 element in the BSEP promoter. In HepG2 cells, co-transfection of FXR and RXRα is required to attain full transactivation of the BSEP promoter by bile acids. Two FXR transactivation-deficient mutants (an AF-2 deletion and a W469A point mutant) failed to transactivate, indicating that the effect of bile acids is FXR-dependent. Further, mutational analysis confirms that the FXR/RXRα heterodimer activates transcription through the IR-1 site in the human BSEP promoter. These results demonstrate a mechanism by which bile acids transcriptionally regulate the activity of the bile salt excretory pump, a critical component involved in the enterohepatic circulation of bile acids.
Visual Tracking via Probabilistic Hypergraph Ranking

Online object tracking is a challenging issue because the appearance of an object tends to change due to intrinsic or extrinsic factors. In this paper, we propose a tracking algorithm based on probabilistic hypergraph ranking. First, three types of hypergraphs are constructed to encode local affinity information. Then, a probabilistic hypergraph is built by combining three distinct hypergraphs linearly. Second, an adaptive template constraint is proposed to effectively use the discriminative information of different templates. Third, object tracking is formulated as a transductive learning issue, and the optimal target location is determined by maximum a posteriori estimation on the ranking scores. Finally, a dynamic updating scheme of positive and negative template sets provides the proposed tracker with robustness against appearance variations. A series of experiments and evaluations on various challenging image sequences is performed, and the results show that the proposed algorithm performs favorably against other state-of-the-art methods.
The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Worcestershire

SUMMARY 1. Foot-and-mouth disease broke out on three pig farms of the Spetchley area of Worcestershire after the virus had been carried to them in skimmed milk. 2. A study of the natural features of the area and of the climatic conditions during the outbreak show that the wind could have carried the virus from one or other of these three to twenty-six others of the total thirty-two farms infected. 3. Bringing the cattle from the fields and keeping them in their sheds offered no protection. Nine farmers did so but the only effect was that the onset of infection was delayed for a day or so. 4. The direction in which cow-sheds faced likewise made no difference. Openings in the walls for ventilation obviously allowed virus to be carried inside. Mr J. S. Needham, M.R. C.V. S. , first showed me that the wind could have been responsible for the spread of the disease in the Spetchley outbreak. I am glad to be able, after my study, to support his view. I am indebted to Mr V. Harris, Officer-in-charge, R.A. F. Meteorological Station, Pershore, Worcestershire, for the climatic details.
Allocation of Systemic Risk

We critically review the translation of the core originating from game theory to the allocation of systemic risk. Whereas the core is commonly accepted for the portfolio allocation we will see that in a systemic context it might result in unfairnesses for certain members of the system. We observe that due to the presence of possible feedback mechanisms between the single entities, apart from the height of the induced losses, also the ability to transfer these losses has to be considered for the risk allocation problem. Since this new source of risk is only fully assessable in the complete system and not in the subsystems, it can not be captured by a core allocation. Thus, instead of considering upper bounds, as it is done for allocations in the core, we reverse the definition to lower bounds.
Face recognition based on the Android device using LBP algorithm

In this research uses the method a Local Binary Pattern (LBP) as a method of the face recognition. LBP used because they have computing is its simple allow can get the result by the time relatively fast. LBP will take the facial feature extraction by dividing it into several small areas. This study attempts to mobile developed an application based on android operating system to recognize the face in real-time. The methodology that was used on the application this uses the method LBP with a camera in front of a device android. This research will test the accuracy of LBP method in recognizing faces with variations in the level of light, the distance between front camera device and variations of the angle face. In this study was obtained the level of accuracy LBP for face recognition with variations of light of 90% from test in the morning. To variations in distance of 90% from test in distance 25cm, 50cm and 125cm for the angle of the face of 90% from test 00 until 300.
Confidence Interval Estimation of Cumulative Incidence for Clustered Competing Risks

In a cluster randomized trial studying a primary outcome patients are sometimes exposed to competing events. These are risks that alter the probability of the primary outcome occurring. Traditional methods of estimating the cumulative incidence for an outcome and its associated confidence interval under competing risks do not account for the effect of clustering. This may cause incorrect estimation of confidence intervals because outcomes among patients from the same center are correlated. This thesis compared six nonparametric methods of confidence interval construction for cumulative incidence, four of which account for clustering effect, under competing risks via simulation study. Over the range of examined scenarios, if the clustering effect is mild (i.e. ICC = 0.01), estimators not accounting for clustering never have significantly worse coverage than those that do. However, in cases with a large clustering effect (i.e. ICC = 0.05), using confidence interval estimators accounting for clustering should be considered.
A blind coherent spatiotemporal processor of orthogonal Walsh-modulated CDMA signals

A more efficient detection of orthogonal Walsh-modulated Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) signals is required not only for better exploitation of current IS-95 CDMA systems but also for future cdma2000 3G networks. Integration of adaptive antennas at the base station has been recognized as one key lever to increasing capacity and spectrum efficiency. Prospective array-receiver solutions such as the 2-D-RAKE improve performance; however, in the absence of a pilot signal, they have to implement noncoherent detection. In this work, we propose a space-time processor that achieves coherent detection of orthogonal Walsh-modulated CDMA signals without a pilot. We assess its performance in spatially correlated Rayleigh-fading. Simulation results for voice links of 9.6 Kbps indicate that up to an antenna-correlation factor of 0.8, the proposed receiver outperforms the conventional 2-D-RAKE's capacity by 90% in nonselective fading. This gain shrinks fast at higher correlation factors. In selective fading, however, it maintains about a 130% gain in capacity over the entire correlation range. For data links of 153.6 Kbps, this performance advantage increases up to 180–200%. With high-speed mobiles, however, it vanishes quickly at correlation factors beyond 0.5. Overall, the capacity gains of the proposed spatiotemporal receiver structure increase with reduced relative Doppler (Doppler-frequency/symbol-rate ratio). This may arise from increased spatiotemporal diversity, higher transmission rates, and/or slower mobility. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The internalization of social roles in institutionalized chronic mental patients.

Based on the internalization of a normal social role, an individual's social identity is seen as a reflection of how others perceive him and the social structure around him. The purpose of this study was to consider the theory from two opposing social situations: (1) the loss of internalized social roles as opposed to their incorporation, and (2) the internalization of a deviant social role as opposed to the internalization of a normal social role. The study of the chronically-ill, institutionalized mental patient enables both hypotheses to be tested at once, because the patient is removed from certain roles he has had in the past and is engaged in a deviant social role. Findings suggest (1) an individual will lose certain roles as part of his social identity if he is removed from these roles over time and (2) an individual does not acquire a social identity based on his deviant social role. The plausibility of these findings is discussed.