Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GREEN SUPPLY CHAIN BEST PRACTICES IN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY IN KENYA

The purpose of the paper was to highlight the green supply chain best practices in the Kenyan hospitality industry. The rise in greenhouse emissions and pollution of the environments by firms has precipitated the need for organizations to realign their supply chain operations with a view of conserving the scarce resources. Firms in the hospitality industry rely on energy and water as their key resource inputs in ensuring that they offer better services to clients. The paper looks at how firms in the hospitality industry in Kenya are implementing green procurement, green design, green operations, green manufacturing and waste management as green supply chain best practices. This is a conceptual paper and the methodology used is a desktop research in which in depth literature review is done to highlight green supply chain practices among firms in the Kenyan hospitality industry. In reviewing the best practices, the paper utilizes data from the Eco-Tourism Kenya database of sustainable practices employed by different firms in the hospitality industry through the eco rating certification scheme. The analysis is based on previously conducted research from books and relevant journals and articles. The findings of the paper confirm that firms within the hospitality industry are implementing global green supply chain management best practices as they strive to achieve sustainability within their operations. The study concludes that firms within the hospitality industry in Kenya need to enhance the levels of implementing green supply chain practices in managing their operations. This is an emerging supply chain management paradigm that will enable firms to realize long term sustainability in their operations.
Automatic recognition of syllabic speech segments using spectral and temporal features

An automatic speech recognition system is presented which starts from a demisyllable segmentation of the speech signal. Recognition of these segments is based on a set of spectral and temporal acoustic features which are automatically extracted from LPC-spectra and assembled in one feature vector for each demisyllable. The 24 components of this vector describe formants, formant loci, formant transitions, formant-like "links" for characterization of nasals, liquids or glides, the spectral distribution of fricative noise or bursts (turbulences), and duration of pauses. Preliminary recognition experiments were carried out with feature vectors extracted from a set of 360 German initial demisyllables which represent 45 consonant clusters combined with 8 vowels. When compared with template matching methods, the feature representations yield a drastic reduction in the number of components needed to represent each segment.
Improved Global Asymptotical Synchronization of Chaotic Lur'e Systems With Sampled-Data Control

This brief investigates the global asymptotical synchronization problem of chaotic Lur'e systems with sampled-data control. Based on a time-varying delay system transformed from the sampled-data error system, an augmented Lyapunov functional containing some useful system information is constructed, no useful terms in the derivative of the Lyapunov functional are ignored, and the relationship among the time-varying delay, its upper bound, and their difference is taken into account. A less conservative delay-dependent synchronization criterion expressed in terms of linear matrix inequalities is obtained. The effectiveness and merits of the proposed method are finally illustrated via numerical simulations for Chua's circuits.
Effect of Prolonged Hypoxia Upon Granularity of Renal Juxtaglomerular Cells

The various experimental models used in previous studies of the juxtaglomerular apparatus do not permit the effect of changes in oxygen tension of the renal parenchyma to be separated from that of changes in distension of the renal arterial bed. To study the isolated effect of prolonged hypoxia, three groups of rats, matched for weight, were kept in low oxygen, room air, and high oxygen environment for two weeks. The animals were pair-fed with the hypoxic rats serving as the determinant group. Supplemental injections of sodium chloride were given daily to avoid the effect of sodium deprivation on the juxtaglomerular cells. It was found that the hematocrits and also the granularity of the juxtaglomerular cells were significantly increased in the hypoxic rats as compared to the other two groups. Blood pressures, serum sodium levels, and urinary excretion of sodium were comparable among the three groups. These findings demonstrate that increased granularity of the renal juxtaglomerular cells can be induced by prolonged hypoxia.
Microstrip Dual-Band Bandpass Filter Using U-Shaped Resonators

Coupled resonators are widely used in the design of filters with dual-passband responses. In this paper, we present a dual-band bandpass filter using only couplings between adjacent resonators without cross-couplings. The dual-band bandpass filter with centre frequencies of 1747MHz and 1879MHz respectively is designed and fabricated using microstrip U-shaped resonators. Using the coupled resonator pair as a dual-band cluster, a miniaturised structure is achieved as compared to the conventional topology. The measured responses agree closely with the simulations.
Identifying Phishing Threats in Government Web Services

The governmental use of Web technologies, including e-Government, has many advantages for citizens, but progress in this relationship has highlighted information security as an important issue in preserving a citizen’s privacy. Unfortunately, unique governmental characteristics lead users to authenticate its service unwillingly; users may investigate service’s possible and likely vulnerabilities carelessly when perceiving trustworthiness. In this paper, we study a threat model about how government Web services become privacy leak targets, especially through phishing attacks. We identify three service characteristics, sensitivity, involuntarity, and linkability, and illustrate how phishers can effectively exploit these characteristics. Furthermore, we conducted a real phishing attack experiment, hijacking a government-certified commercial service in South Korea to complete our investigation. Finally, we propose mitigation strategies for building a trustworthy government Web service against phishing attacks.
Alignement, union et intersection de modèles : 3 transformations pour l'analyse des systèmes d'information

En systeme d'information, l'integration de modeles consiste a regrouper au sein d'un unique modele l'ensemble des entites metiers de plusieurs modeles connectes d'un point de vue thematique. Dans cette communication, trois transformations sont proposees afin d'assister cette integration et d'ameliorer les modeles : la premiere produit un modele d'alignement mon-trant les correspondances entre les modeles, la seconde produit un modele union (Least Common Multiple Model ou LCM) et la troisieme produit un modele intersection (Greatest Common Model ou GCM) constitue des seuls elements communs a tous les modeles. Le LCM est la plus petite des unions des modeles et le GCM, noyau de tous les modeles, est la plus grande des intersections des modeles. Ces transformations sont realisees a l'aide de l'Analyse Formelle de Concepts (AFC) en basant les transformations sur des operations portant sur les contextes formels.
Stream Power: Origins, Geomorphic Applications, and GIS Procedures

Stream power is a widely used parameter to investigate, engineer, and manage river systems. The varied uses of stream power are increasing as it becomes easier to derive stream power using remotely sensed data coupled with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and improved computational power and technology. This document was created to provide clarity to researchers and practitioners using stream power in their work. It includes a review of the physical basis, terminology, and applications of stream power; an examination of the many considerations and techniques for computing stream power; and a step by step example workflow to compute stream power using GIS and Microsoft Excel. The 33 steps in this example can be adjusted to suit individual needs of different projects.
Stakeholder management in Serbia's CSR practice

The article tests the stakeholder management theory in the case of Serbia, a country where modern corporate social responsibility practice was introduced relatively recently, despite rich tradition of philanthropy. To validate the theory, we formulated three hypotheses, assuming that stakeholder management is predominantly used as a PR tool, that stronger corporate governance correlates with developed CSR function within the organisation and that regulated industries such as researched examples of construction and banking demonstrate more advanced stakeholder management. These hypotheses were examined against the available literature review and a comprehensive empirical study (desk research, online survey and in-depth interviews with business managers, compared with best European practice). We have shown that the financial sector places most emphasis on its customers, whilst the construction sector (cement industry) sets the local community and employees in the cornerstone of its business operations, in line with international practice. However, public relations or marketing sector are primarly engaged with stakeholders' relationship in Serbia from a company's image perspective, lacking understanding the stakeholder role in business performance improvement, which indicates a lower level of development and early stage in transition to best European union practices.
Real Option Value Effects of Cross-Border Acquisitions: Service versus Manufacturer MNEs

There are a number of real option motivations for U . S. multinational enterprises (MNEs) making foreign direct investments (FDI) via cross-border acquisitions. So me of these investments contain growth options, som e hold flexibility options, and some FDI are embedded with both growth and flexibility options. This study po sits abnormal shareholders value effects when real options are ac quired by U.S. MNEs in cross-border acquisitions, an d the study further predicts the value effects for service MNEs are greater than for manufacturer MNEs because serv ice MNEs are less encumbered operationally by hysteresis than ma nufacturer MNEs. Real option value effects are test ed empirically for 235 U.S. MNE cross-border acquisitions. Using estudy methodology, this research determines ab normal acquisition announcement returns for the total stud y sample and for manufacturing MNE and service MNE su bsamples. The study further tests for significant differences in mean and median returns between the service and manufacturer MNE subsamples. The test results for the subsample dare mixed.
SUBCRITICAL WATER HYDROLYSIS OF SUGARCANE BAGASSE

Sugarcane bagasse is an agricultural residue produced in large amounts with great potential to be used as a source of cellulosic and hemicellulosic sugars that can be further fermented to produce second generation ethanol. Subcritical water hydrolysis (SWH) is a clean and fast hydrolysis method that has been proven technically feasible. Although a few studies on hydrolysis with SWH have been conducted with sugarcane bagasse, the process is far from being optimized and further study on operation conditions is still needed to allow the process to be scaled-up to industrial level. In this work, a semi- batch unit equipped with a 50 mL reaction vessel was used to perform SWH of sugarcane bagasse at three different temperatures (213, 251 and 290 °C) for 30 min, with water flow rate of 33 mL/min and under 20 MPa. The hydrolysates were analyzed by HPLC as for their contents of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF), arabinose, fructose, galactose, glucose, mannose, xylose, cellobiose and raffinose. The total yield of monosaccharides decreased with the temperature from 213 °C (4.75 %) to 251 °C (4.05 %) and then increased at 290 °C (4.45 %). At 213 °C only hemicellulose was degraded. The treatment at 250 °C collapses the lignocellulosic structure; therefore the processes at 251 °C and 290 °C were faster than at 213 °C (22 min, 16 min and 30 min, respectively). The 5-HMF yield increased with temperature and proportionally to the glucose yield. The degree of polymerization of the solubilized oligosaccharides decreased with temperature.
Idempotent I/O for safe time travel

Debuggers for logic programming languages have traditionally had a capability most other debuggers did not: the ability to jump back to a previous state of the program, effectively travelling back in time in the history of the computation. This ``retry'' capability is very useful, allowing programmers to examine in detail a part of the computation that they previously stepped over. Unfortunately, it also creates a problem: while the debugger may be able to restore the previous values of variables, it cannot restore the part of the program's state that is affected by I/O operations. If the part of the computation being jumped back over performs I/O, then the program will perform these I/O operations twice, which will result in unwanted effects ranging from the benign (e.g. output appearing twice) to the fatal (e.g. trying to close an already closed file). We present a simple mechanism for ensuring that every I/O action called for by the program is executed at most once, even if the programmer asks the debugger to travel back in time from after the action to before the action. The overhead of this mechanism is low enough and can be controlled well enough to make it practical to use it to debug computations that do significant amounts of I/O.
Msx and Dlx Homeogene Expression in Epithelial Odontogenic Tumors

Epithelial odontogenic tumors are rare jaw pathologies that raise clinical diagnosis and prognosis dilemmas notably between ameloblastomas and clear cell odontogenic carcinomas (CCOCs). In line with previous studies, the molecular determinants of tooth development—amelogenin, Msx1, Msx2, Dlx2, Dlx3, Bmp2, and Bmp4—were analyzed by RT-PCR, ISH, and immunolabeling in 12 recurrent ameloblastomas and in one case of CCOC. Although Msx1 expression imitates normal cell differentiation in these tumors, other genes showed a distinct pattern depending on the type of tumor and the tissue involved. In benign ameloblastomas, ISH localized Dlx3 transcripts and inconstantly detected Msx2 transcripts in epithelial cells. In the CCOC, ISH established a lack of both Dlx3 and Msx2 transcripts but allowed identification of the antisense transcript of Msx1, which imitates the same scheme of distribution between mesenchyme and epithelium as in the cup stage of tooth development. Furthermore, while exploring the expression pattern of signal molecules by RT-PCR, Bmp2 was shown to be completely inactivated in the CCOC and irregularly noticeable in ameloblastomas. Bmp4 was always expressed in all the tumors. Based on the established roles of Msx and Dlx transcription factors in dental cell fates, these data suggest that their altered expression is a proposed trail to explain the genesis and/or the progression of odontogenic tumors.
Clustering Marketing Datasets with Data Mining Techniques

Customer analysis is crucial phase for companies in order to create new campaign for their existing customers. If a company can understand customer features and make efforts to fulfill their wants and provide friendly service then the customer will be more supportive to the enterprise. The aim of this study was to develop a methodology to identify the characteristics of customers. It involved identification of the demographic characteristics of customers based on the analysis of categorical data using data mining clustering methods. The extracted knowledge can help companies identify valuable customers, and enable companies to make efficient knowledge-driven decisions.
Transformational Technologies and the Creation of New Work Practices: Making Implicit Knowledge Explicit in Task-based Offshoring

Studies have shown the knowledge transfer problems that arise when communication and storage technologies are employed to accomplish work across time and space. Much less is known about knowledge transfer problems associated with transformational technologies, which afford the creation, modification, and manipulation of digital artifacts. Yet, these technologies play a critical role in offshoring by allowing the distribution of work at the task level, what we call task-based offshoring. For example, computer-aided engineering applications transform input like physical dimensions, location coordinates, and material properties into computational models that can be shared electronically among engineers around the world as they work together on analysis tasks. Digital artifacts created via transformational technologies often embody implicit knowledge that must be correctly interpreted to successfully act upon the artifacts. To explore what problems might arise in interpreting this implicit knowledge across time and space, and how individuals might remedy these problems, we studied a firm that sent engineering tasks from home sites in Mexico and the United States to an offshore site in India. Despite having proper formal education and ample tool skills, the Indian engineers had difficulty interpreting the implicit knowledge embodied in artifacts sent to them from Mexico and the United States. To resolve and prevent the problems that subsequently arose, individuals from the home sites developed five new work practices to transfer occupational knowledge to the offshore site. The five practices were defining requirements, monitoring progress, fixing returns, routing tasks strategically, and filtering quality. The extent to which sending engineers in our study were free from having to enact these new work practices because on-site coordinators acted on their behalf predicted their perceptions of the effectiveness of the offshoring arrangement, but Indian engineers preferred learning from sending engineers, not on-site coordinators. Our study contributes to theories of knowledge transfer and has practical implications for managing task-based offshoring arrangements.
An exploration of factors affecting participation in U.S. health information exchange networks A dual network participation theory based case study

An Exploration of Factors Affecting Participation in U.S. Health Information Exchange Networks Judah Thornewill December 16, 2011 Background: Failure to achieve their goals of over 200 U.S. Health Information Exchange Networks (HIENs) which formed or operated in the U.S. from 2004 to 2010, lost time, capital and opportunity at individual, organizational and societal levels, and a lack of theory driven research on HIENs underscores a need for research to better understand factors affecting development of these kinds of large, complex collaborations. Purpose: A new dual network participation theory is developed by combining three source theories. The new theory supports integrated consideration of organizational and technological factors which affect participation by individuals and their affiliated organizations in complex collaborations like HIENs. Research questions are formulated focused on advancing knowledge about: types of participation in HIENs; validity of variables used to operationalize the theory; barriers and enablers to participation in HIENs; and implications for theory and research. Method: A retrospective, theory-driven, multi-level, multi-case, mixed methods case study is done using a convenience sample of 6 HIEN sites (network level), 109 individuals (individual level) and 125 organizations (organizational level). Qualitative data is analyzed to develop valid ordinal variables and test hypotheses for each case. Valid ordinal variables are entered into SPSS. A principle component analysis is done to create combined predictor variables. An OLS regression analysis supports identification v of predictor effects on intent to participate. Network level analyses identify key influences on the predictors. Findings: Network level barriers to participation include heterogeneity of participants, lack of HIEN resources, lack of qualified leadership, lack of training and education and lack of stable Network IT. Individual/organizational level barriers include lack of support from influential others, low benefit expectancy, lack of knowledge, and high cost expectancy. Recommendations are made for future research studies with enough statistical power for hypothesis testing across larger populations of sites/participants (e.g., 100-300 sites; 1,000 3,000 participants). Conclusions: While the use of a small, non-random sample of sites/subjects implies caution regarding generalization, the research yields new insights with implications for both practice and theory. These include preliminary recommendations for improving the success of HIENs and new opportunities for research on barriers and enablers of participation in large scale collaborations.
A Study of Scheduling Algorithms to Maintain Small Overflow Probability in Cellular Networks with a Single Cell

Wireless scheduling algorithms for the download of a single cell that can maximize the asymptotic decay rate of the queue-overflow probability as the overflow threshold approaches infinity. We first derive an upper bound on the decay rate of the queue-overflow probability over all scheduling policies. Specifically, we focus on the class of “α - algorithms,” the base station picks the user for service at each time that has the largest product of the transmission rate multiplied by the backlog raised to the power α. The α-algorithms arbitrarily achieve the highest decay rate of the queue-overflow probability. We design a scheduling algorithm that is both close to optimal in terms of the asymptotic decay rate of the overflow probability and to maintain small queue-overflow probabilities over queue-length ranges of practical interest.
Study of Online Banking Security Mechanism in India: Take ICICI Bank as an Example

Internet banking has gained wide acceptance internationally and seems to be fast catching up in India with more and more banks entering the fray. online banking is defined as the use of Internet as a remote delivery channel of banking system services via the World Wide Web. This system enable customers to access their accounts and general information of bank products and services anywhere anytime i.e the model of banking has transformed from brick and mortar to all pervading through 'Anywhere and Anytime Banking' through PC or other intelligent device using web browser software, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft internet Explorer or Firefox. But Online banking continues to present challenges to financial security and personal privacy. Billions of financial data transactions occur online every day and bank cyber crimes take place every day when bank information is compromised by skilled criminal hackers by manipulating a financial institution's online information system.This causes huge financial loses to the banks and customers.So one of the major concerns of people with respect to internet banking is the safety related to data of bank account, transactional information and also the access path of their accounts.The paper starts from the security problems Internet banking are facing,tries to explain suitable set of controls which consists of policies, procedures, organisational structures, hardware and software functions organisation has to establish , tries to explore various of Technology and Security Standards the RBI is recommending to banks for safe internet banking and analyses the current representative of the online banking security controls and measures with the case of