Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corporate Social Responsibility: The Empirical Study of Listed Companies in the Stock Exchange of Thailand

Listed companies in the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET ) are expected by the society to be high performance organizations. Their performances should not contain a negative effect on society and environment, and different needs of their stakeholders must be appropriately satisfied. Therefore, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR ) is perceived as being necessary. The objective of this study was to investigate influential factors affecting CSR of the listed companies. 260 listed companies in the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET ) were selected as the study samples. Multi-stage sampling was used including stratified random sampling, proportion stratified sampling and purposive sampling. Concerning the research tool, a questionnaire was used. 228 of the listed companies (87%) returned the questionnaires. Multiple regression analysis was employed for data analysis. The results showed that the factor on transformational leadership contained the most positive influence on corporate social responsibility (β=.282, p<.001 ) followed by the factor on corporate governance (β=.204, p<.001 ) and the factor on stakeholder engagement (β=.167, p<.001 ), respectively. The multiple coefficient of determination (R 2 ) was of . 491.
Digital sales negotiation stories

Cultural features influence international sales negotiations. Cultural distance and cultural intelligence are key factors related to successful outcomes. To explore these influences on sales negotiation, digital stories based on actual sales negotiations are used. The digital stories were complemented by a cultural analysis of the sales professionals involved. The analysis covered the cultural dimensions, cultural intelligence and adaptive behaviours of the negotiators. The study showed that cultural intelligence is not a sufficient predictor of sales negotiation outcomes. In contrast, the cultural distance dimensions of performance, humane and short-term orientation do relate to sales outcome. Comparing cultures at the country level indicate that flexibility in negotiation and a low context culture also results in positive outcomes. It is important to assess the cultural distance of customers and to adapt negotiation styles related to what occurs during the actual process.
Sociodemographic markers and behavioral correlates of sexually transmitted infections in a nonclinical sample of adolescent and young adult women.

BACKGROUND We examined sociodemographic markers and 3-month behavioral correlates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in a nonclinical cross-section of adolescent and young adult women. METHODS All women (N=2288) enrolled in recruit training for the US Marine Corps during a 1-year period were asked to voluntarily participate in either a cognitive-behavioral, skills-building intervention to prevent STIs and unintended pregnancies or a nutrition and fitness program. Participants (94.2%) completed a self-administered questionnaire and were screened for Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and Trichomonas vaginalis infection. The present study presents only the baseline data from the larger study. RESULTS One or more STIs was diagnosed in 14.1% of participants. Results of a logistic-regression model indicated that the presence of an STI at screening was significantly (P<or=.05) associated with the participants' type of residence (rural), age (17-18 and 21-23 years), years of sexual experience (>or=2 years), frequency of hormonal contraceptive use (never and sometimes), perception that their sex partners had other concurrent sex partners, and the race or ethnicity of their last sex partner (African American and Native American). CONCLUSIONS The high prevalence of STIs in this nonclinical sample of young women suggests the need for ongoing screening and prevention interventions that target young, healthy, sexually active women.
A comparison study of HSS and triple-R protocols for CDMA wireless data networking with packet collision and capture effect

This paper proposes a new multiple access control protocol, the hierarchy schedule sensing (HSS) protocol, for CDMA wireless data networking with high terminal density in a relatively small area, a typical example of which is a data-centric device network based on Bluetooth technology to provide device-to-device wireless connections. This paper studies the packet collision effect on network performance under the (HSS) protocol, in which a common-coded permission frame (PF) beacon is employed to schedule request transmissions to avoid packet collisions. To reduce the scheduling delay, hierarchical group-based codes are adopted in the scheme. The performance of such a network is evaluated by a Markov chain model. The average packet collision rate with capture effect is derived explicitly. The performance of the proposed protocol is compared with the triple-receiver-based code (triple-R) protocol, which does not use the PF beacon to regulate request packet transmissions. It is revealed from the obtained results in this paper that, despite of its low implementation complexity, the HSS protocol is a fairly robust multiple access control protocol featured by uniformly high throughput, low delay and stable performance, even under a relatively heavy offered traffic load. Copyright © 2003 AEI.
Green purchasing and supply policies: do they improve companies’ environmental performance?

Asks how does green purchasing change the environmental performance of the firms in a supply chain/network and what is the influence of supply chain and industry structure on that performance? Do such changes contribute to companies’ overall environmental performance and to sustainability? Discusses these, and related questions, by exploring the activities of the UK hardware retailer, B&Q, as an example of green purchasing and supply in action.
Quasiconformal mappings that highly distort dimensions of many parallel lines

We construct a quasiconformal mapping of $n$-dimensional Euclidean space, $n \geq 2$, that simultaneously distorts the Hausdorff dimension of a nearly maximal collection of parallel lines by a given amount. This answers a question of Balogh, Monti, and Tyson.
Adventures and Ethics in MF Authentication

We are Seeing Adventures in MF Authentication that means Multi-factor authentication, It ensures that a user is who they claim to be. The more factors used to determine a persons identity, the greater the trust of authenticity. It serves a vital function within any organization -securing access to corporate networks, protecting the identities of users, and ensuring that a user is who he claims to be. Â Evolving business needs around cloud applications and mobile devices, combined with rising threats, and the need to reduce costs, require entirely new considerations for access control. A strong authentication solution that validates the identities of users and computing devices that access the non-public areas of an organization’s network is the first step in building a secure and robust information protection system.
Phosphatidylinositol 4-Phosphate Negatively Regulates Chloroplast Division in Arabidopsis[OPEN]

Phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate binds specifically to PDV1 and PDV2, the components of the chloroplast division apparatus, and plays an important role as a negative regulator of chloroplast division. Chloroplast division is performed by the constriction of envelope membranes at the division site. Although constriction of a ring-like protein complex has been shown to be involved in chloroplast division, it remains unknown how membrane lipids participate in the process. Here, we show that phosphoinositides with unknown function in envelope membranes are involved in the regulation of chloroplast division in Arabidopsis thaliana. PLASTID DIVISION1 (PDV1) and PDV2 proteins interacted specifically with phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P). Inhibition of phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase (PI4K) decreased the level of PI4P in chloroplasts and accelerated chloroplast division. Knockout of PI4Kβ2 expression or downregulation of PI4Kα1 expression resulted in decreased levels of PI4P in chloroplasts and increased chloroplast numbers. PI4Kα1 is the main contributor to PI4P synthesis in chloroplasts, and the effect of PI4K inhibition was largely abolished in the pdv1 mutant. Overexpression of DYNAMIN-RELATED PROTEIN5B (DRP5B), another component of the chloroplast division machinery, which is recruited to chloroplasts by PDV1 and PDV2, enhanced the effect of PI4K inhibition, whereas overexpression of PDV1 and PDV2 had additive effects. The amount of DRP5B that associated with chloroplasts increased upon PI4K inhibition. These findings suggest that PI4P is a regulator of chloroplast division in a PDV1- and DRP5B-dependent manner.
Toward a measure of service convenience: multiple‐item scale development and empirical test

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on the development and nomological testing of a 17‐item scale measuring the five dimensions of service convenience (decision, access, transaction, benefit, and post‐benefit) as proposed by Berry, Seiders, and Grewal.Design/methodology/approach – A cross‐sectional survey methodology was used to collect the data.Findings – Reliability and validity assessments provided evidence of the scale's psychometric validity. Service convenience was found to be a significant predictor of overall satisfaction in the context of personal cellular telephone and internet usage.Research limitations/implications – This study uses a student sample which may limit its generalizability to other respondents. Also, the cross‐sectional survey methodology does not allow for the investigation of causation. Future research should investigate other contexts outside of the cellular and internet services examined in this study and across a broader sample. Furthermore, the ability to retros.
Analytic steady-state solution of fine alignment with velocity measurements

Fine alignment process is used after the initialization procedure to improve the accuracy of the attitude to a desired value. In stationary conditions, zero velocity updates are usually used to achieve that goal. In this paper, we derive closed form solutions for the error state covariance of the fusion process. With such closed form solutions at hand, insight can be gained into the parameters involved in the fine alignment process. In addition, a numerical simulation is used to verify the analytical expressions.
Changes in the Release of Gamma‐Aminobutyric Acid and Catecholamines in the Preoptic/Septal Area Prior to and During the Preovulatory Surge of Luteinizing Hormone in the Ewe

The technique of intracranial microdialysis was used to monitor changes in the outflow of the catecholamines, noradrenaline, adrenaline and dopamine and the inhibitory amino‐acid γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the preoptic/septal area of the conscious ewe during an oestradiol‐induced surge of luteinizing hormone (LH). The same animals were sampled twice from an identical brain site, once in the presence of oestradiol and once in its absence, when no surge occurred and LH levels remained low. Changes in the outflow of GABA, noradrenaline and adrenaline (but not dopamine) were related to changes in LH secretion. Specifically, GABA outflow was maximal in the hours following oestradiol administration but began a sustained fall some 10 h before the surge began, to level off just before the first increment in LH secretion. Low GABA concentrations were maintained until after gonadotrophin levels had once more returned to baseline. The release of all three catecholamines was pulsatile. Noradrenergic activity was greater in the presence of oestradiol although activity did not alter over the 20 h of sampling. The pulse frequency of adrenaline was maximal in the hours immediately prior to the LH surge and minimal in the hours following its initiation. These data suggest that a decrease in GABAergic transmission in the vicinity of the LH‐releasing hormone cell bodies is a necessary component of the neural mechanism by which the oestradiol‐induced surge of LH is generated. A general increase in noradrenergic activity coupled with changes in the release of adrenaline at the time of the surge may be additional prerequisites for successful ovulation.
A comparison of the development process of industrial structure between Mainland China Guangdong and Taiwan

As China’s Guangdong Province has been in the forefront of Chinese growth, and it is one of the biggest contributions to Chinese economy, this paper compares the development process of industrial structure between Mainland China Guangdong province and one of Asian four tigers’ Taiwan. This paper is aim to see if the structure components are similar or difference during the growth process. Taking a broader view in the more descriptive parts like GDP per capita, composition of GDP by industry, productivity of each industry, gross output value of each industry and each industry output and the composition of the employed population. Then applying the shift-share analysis to examine employment and productivity for three sectors primary industry (agriculture), secondary industry (industry) and tertiary industry (service). The results are that Guangdong started about 1980 from the same level as Taiwan about 1960, and despite fast growth in Taiwan (tiger economy), Guangdong caught-up with Taiwan and before 2010 was at about the same level. The GDP per capita of Guangdong exceeded Taiwan in 2008. In Guangdong,the high proportion of net output and low proportion of secondary employment population in secondary industry may caused by high-intense overtime working. The result of shift share analysis shows that the annual rate of change of GDP per capita of Taiwan is lower than Guangdong.
Bounded model checking of high-integrity software

Model checking [5] is an automated algorithmic technique for exhaustive verification of systems, described as finite state machines, against temporal logic [9] specifications. It has been used successfully to verify hardware at an industrial scale [6]. One of the most successful variants of model checking is Bounded Model Checking (BMC) [2] which leverages the power of state-of-the-art satisfiability (SAT) 1 and satisfiability-modulo-theory (SMT) 2 to push the boundaries of automated verification. Like model checking, BMC was developed originally for hardware, but has since been extended and applied successfully to verify sequential [4], multi-threaded [1, 10], as well as real-time software [3]. A key benefit of BMC-based software model checkers, such as CBMC [4], is that they are able to handle bit-level semantics of programs precisely. Thus, they are able to detect errors due to integer overflows, and prove correctness of programs that use bit-level operations, without reporting false warnings, or missing bugs. This makes BMC ideal for verifying high-integrity software, where the cost of failure is substantial. Indeed, CBMC has been used to verify a wide variety of low-level safety and security-critical systems, such as co-pilots [8], OS schedulers [7], and hypervisors [11] (see url{http://www.cprover.org/cbmc/applications.shtml} for a more expansive list). This tutorial will provide an introduction to BMC, its underlying technical principles, and applications to verifying sequential, multi-threaded, and real-time software. The tutorial will be hands-on, with live demonstrations of using BMC tools for verifying sample programs written in C.
scientific studies and regulatory submissions The emerging science of quantitative imaging biomarkers terminology and definitions for

The development and implementation of quantitative imaging biomarkers has been hampered by the inconsistent and often incorrect use of terminology related to these markers. Sponsored by the Radiological Society of North America, an interdisciplinary group of radiologists, statisticians, physicists, and other researchers worked to develop a comprehensive terminology to serve as a foundation for quantitative imaging biomarker claims. Where possible, this working group adapted existing definitions derived from national or international standards bodies rather than invent new definitions for these terms. This terminology also serves as a foundation for the design of studies that evaluate the technical performance of quantitative imaging biomarkers and for studies of algorithms that generate the quantitative imaging biomarkers from clinical scans. This paper provides examples of research studies and quantitative imaging biomarker claims that use terminology consistent with these definitions as well as examples of the rampant confusion in this emerging field. We provide recommendations for appropriate use of quantitative imaging biomarker terminological concepts. It is hoped that this document will assist researchers and regulatory reviewers who examine quantitative imaging biomarkers and will also inform regulatory guidance. More consistent and correct use of terminology could advance regulatory science, improve clinical research, and provide better care for patients who undergo imaging studies. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Duke University, Durham, NC, USA Elucid Bioimaging Inc, Wenham, MA, USA Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, MD, USA Biostatistics Consulting, LLC, Kensington, MD, USA Harvard-Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA Brown University, Providence, RI, USA Corresponding author: Daniel C Sullivan, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Email: daniel.sullivan@duke.edu Statistical Methods in Medical Research
Interfirm strategic business unit:A theorethical framework to performance evaluation

In global markets, manufacturing businesses has to combine together a flexible use of time for reducing the action-reaction times in customer’ relation and space, in order to take the most of different manufacturing locations: thus, companies are pressed to search for manufacturing solutions that can combine both manufacturing time and spatial requirements, in order to control and guard the most convenient global areas with own strategic manufacturing units. Businesses face competition also by associating with other businesses, creating a competitive network by stressing many and intense relationships: two or more companies achieve mutual advantage by giving up the absolute control they held over certain business processes, to exploit common benefits generated by their association 1 . This realize a radical re-thinking of their whole organization: through a massive recourse to outsourcing strategies – with the aim to take the best from the market by developing complex mechanisms aimed to implementing the competitive relationships either ‘individually’ or in association with other businesses (suppliers, distributors, or even competitors) – internal skills undergo a progressive reduction until the ‘core business’ remains under strict control. The shared activities can be realized in interfirm business units, representing the smallest part of a cooperative network. The aim this paper we examine the fundamental international literature on alliances and network, finding a new perspective on interfirm business units placement and performance evaluation
Metabolism of Estrogenic Isoflavones in Domestic Animals

Abstract The metabolism of estrogenic isoflavones in cattle and sheep is reviewed. Results from in vitro and in vivo studies are discussed, mainly regarding whether differences in sensitivity to phytoestrogens between cattle and sheep depend on differences in metabolism, particularly in conjugative capacity. Results from a feeding experiment with pigs fed red clover meal are presented. Levels of phytoestrogens in plasma from the pig are compared with those found in plasma from ruminants fed red clover silage. Some aspects relating to the possibility of pigs being exposed to risks when fed with feed containing estrogenic isoflavones are briefly discussed.
Harvesting Ambient Environmental Energy for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

In recent years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have grown dramatically and made a great progress in many applications. But having limited life, batteries, as the power sources of wireless sensor nodes, have restricted the development and application of WSNs which often requires a very long lifespan for better performance. In order to make the WSNs prevalent in our lives, an alternative energy source is required. Environmental energy is an attractive power source, and it provides an approach to make the sensor nodes self-powered with the possibility of an almost infinite lifetime. The goal of this survey is to present a comprehensive review of the recent literature on the various possible energy harvesting technologies from ambient environment for WSNs.
Morningness-Eveningness Correlates with Verbal Ability in Women but Not Men

Individuals differ along a continuum of preference for diurnal activity level, known as Morningness-Eveningness. Some evidence suggests that an Eveningness orientation (i.e., preference for later rise and bed times) is weakly associated with higher cognitive ability, but no studies have examined this relationship using clinically accepted, psychometrically valid measures of cognitive ability. The present study examined the correlation between Morningness-Eveningness with scores on the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) of 54 healthy volunteers. Lower Morningness (i.e., Greater Eveningness) orientation was correlated (r = −.23) with higher Verbal IQ for the entire sample. When the data were examined separately by sex, the correlation between Morningness-Eveningness and Verbal IQ was significant for women (r = −.44) but not for men (r = −.09).
olecular Normalization of Dystrophin n the Failing Left and Right Ventricle of atients Treated With Either Pulsatile or ontinuous Flow-Type Ventricular Assist Devices

OBJECTIVES We investigated the integrity of dystrophin in left ventricle (LV) and right ventricle (RV) of patients with end-stage heart failure due to ischemic cardiomyopathy (IHD) or dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), and compared the efficacy of pulsatile or continuous flow assist devices on dystrophin reverse remodeling. BACKGROUND Recently we demonstrated that the amino (N)-terminus of dystrophin is preferentially disrupted in failing LV myocardium irrespective the underlying etiology, and that this defect is reversed by mechanical unloading using left ventricular assist device (LVAD) therapy. METHODS Myocardial samples were obtained from seven normal controls, seven failing hearts (either DCM or IHD), and 14 failing-heart patients who underwent placement of either pulsatile (7 patients) or continuous flow (7 patients) LVADs for progressive refractory HF. The expression and integrity of dystrophin in these samples were determined by immunohistochemistry using antibodies against the N-terminal and carboxyl (C)-terminal domains. RESULTS Immunohistochemical staining identified disruption of the N-terminal dystrophin in both LVs and RVs of all seven failing-heart patients, whereas the C-terminus was normal. Furthermore, this disruption was reversed in 12 of the 14 patients after LVAD therapy using either pulsatile or continuous devices; the degree of the reverse remodeling was similar in both ventricles, although greater recovery was noted in patients treated with pulsatile flow devices. CONCLUSIONS Integrity of the N-terminus of dystrophin is a useful indicator of both LV and RV function. In addition to improving LV hemodynamics, LVAD therapy results in amelioration of the myocardial structure of the right cardiac chamber. (J Am Coll Cardiol 2004;43:811–7) © 2004 by the American College of Cardiology Foundation