Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inventory financing in supply chains: A logistics service provider‐approach

– Against the background of the scanty knowledge about inventory financing in supply chains, the goal of this paper is to provide a conceptual explanation of the relevance and the implications of alternative inventory financing by a logistics service provider (LSP). , – First, based on a literature review, inventory‐related conflicts of interest between actors in the supply chain are discussed. Second, a concept of inventory financing through an LSP is developed. Third, the concept introduced is illustrated by means of a numerical example. , – The results of an illustrative example from Switzerland and a rough revenue and expenditure calculation highlight the effects that inventory financing through a logistics service provider may have for LSP. For the LSP profit depends mainly on the value and amount of the goods to be financed. , – The results of this paper can be applied to logistics service providers. The model developed can accordingly be used to calculate the additional effects of inventory financing service. , – This research offers initial insights into the importance of inventory financing from an LSP perspective. As activities in this field may offer additional profits and differentiation options, decision makers at logistics service providers might want to estimate the potential resting in this expansion of their service catalogue.
An investigation into university extra-curricular enterprise support provision

Purpose – The employment market means students need to be equipped with wide-ranging enterprising skills and experience. With small- and medium-sized enterprises crucial to the health of the UK economy providing graduates with the skills to start-up their own business is also of increasing pertinence. The purpose of this paper is to analyse universities’ provision and delivery of student support in developing their enterprise knowledge, skills and experience outside of the curriculum. Design/methodology/approach – An e-survey of universities alongside three follow-up semi-structured interviews with participants and an in-depth case study was gathered. The e-survey quantified what enterprise support activities the sample institutions currently offered and the interviews and case study examined the delivery of those activities through the perceptions of university staff/students. Findings – The respondents offered a range of enterprise support activity outside of the curriculum but delivery was hindered by .
Presence and Absence of Top and Right Advantage as an Indication of the Attentional Strategies Underlying Object Selection

To explore the conditions in which an object is selected in its entirety and better understand the process underlying such selection, a target, lying on the contour of an outline figure, was judged. Target position on the figure was either known or not known throughout a block of trials, and various properties of the figure itself—continuity, familiarity, and contrast—were manipulated. The pattern of results can best be accounted for by assuming that object selection involves a scan, beginning at the top-right end and terminating only when the bottom-left end is reached. Partial selection could have occurred only for the top and the right positions when the target was known always to be there. As to the manipulated properties, none interacted with knowledge of target position, indicating that they did not affect the process of selection. Most importantly, partial selection was not facilitated even in the discontinuous condition, in which the figure consisted of two separate elements.
Characterization of lipid in loin and bacon from finishing pigs fed full-fat soybeans or tallow.

This experiment tested whether the lipid composition of pork could be altered by changes in dietary lipid, that what effects these changes would have on production and meat characteristics. Pigs were fed diets containing 10 or 20%+ extruded full-fat soybeans (FFS) or 4% tallow for a 3- or 6-wk finishing period, with a corn-soybean meal diet fed as a control. Seventy barrows and 70 gilts were allotted into seven treatment groups with four pens per group. Analysis was on 28 experimental units, which were composite samples from pens. The significance of treatment, sex, and treatment x sex interaction F-statistics was evaluated on chloroform-methanol extractable total lipid, triacylglycerol, phospholipids, cholesterol, individually fatty acids (FA), and the major classes of FA obtained from longissimus muscle and bacon. Treatment effects (P less than .05) were detected for cholesterol content of longissimus and for total lipid and phospholipid content of bacon. Treatment effects (P less than .01) were detected for monoenoic, dienoic, and polyenoic (P) FA in both tissues, and for saturated (S) FA in bacon (P less than .05). Treatment effects (P less than .001) were detected in both tissues for the P:S ratio. The P:S ratio increased 54% for longissimus and 100% for bacon in the pigs fed FFS for 6 wk compared with pigs consuming a corn-soybean meal diet.
Trading system competition and market-maker competition

The recent success of some alternative trading systems (ATSs) has had a strong impact on the traditional stock exchange industry and many observers expect even more dramatic changes in the future. This paper investigates the nature of competition between stock exchanges and ATSs and argues that the introduction of ATSs weakens the level of competition between market-makers in the traditional exchange.
Controversies in the Management of Low-Risk Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

Controversy exists over optimal management of low-risk differentiated thyroid cancer. This controversy occurs in all aspects of management, including surgery, use of radioactive iodine for remnant ablation, thyroid hormone supplementation, and long-term surveillance. Limited and conflicting data, treatment paradigm shifts, and differences in physician perceptions contribute to the controversy. This lack of physician consensus results in wide variation in patient care, with some patients at risk for over- or undertreatment. To reduce patient harm and unnecessary worry, there is a need to design and implement studies to address current knowledge gaps.
Epidemiology non‐melanoma skin cancer and sloar keratoses in Australia: A tale of self immonlation in Elysian fields

Non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSC) are the commonest cancers in Australia. Their incidence rate is more than three times the rate of all other cancers combined. The incidence rate continues to rise to a stage where they now affect at least 1% of the population annually, necessitating treatment of more than 150,000 people per year. Exposure to sunlight in susceptible people appears to be the major environmental carcinogen in causation of these tumours. The exact nature of sunlight exposure necessary to induce them is still not entirely clear. Childhood exposure to sunlight stands out as being the major contributor to the development of all the common skin cancers. Solar keratoses are risk factors for NMSC and are precursors of squamous cell carcinoma. They appear to be more sensitive measures of carcinogenic sunlight exposure than frank invasive tumours. They are labile, and fluctuate in appearance clinically over time. Regular use of sunscreen can prevent new solar keratoses and increase clinical remission in existing ones. This is early evidence of the value of regular and adequate photoprotection in the long-term reduction of NMSC in Australia.
UV reflectance is associated with environmental conditions in Palaearctic Pieris napi (Lepidoptera: Pieridae)

The subject of our investigation was the visual features of wing color with special focus on the UV reflectance in the green‐veined white butterfly (Pieris napi). Previous studies had concluded that UV reflectance on dorsal wing surfaces is found only in the female P. napi. Based on UV sensitive photography, we analyzed a correlation between 12 geographic and environmental factors and UV reflectance patterns on 3 patches on the forewings of 407 P. napi specimens from the Palaearctic region. Results had shown that females significantly differ from males: they exhibit a 25% higher UV reflectance. To investigate whether and how UV reflectance levels on the forewings and hindwings of both sexes are influenced by the environment, we performed a principal component analysis (PCA) with several environmental variables. For several variables (in particular, latitude and longitude, mean annual temperature and precipitation, and temperature annual range and altitude), the generalized linear model (GLM) model revealed a significant correlation in both sexes. This suggests a link between UV reflectance levels and the environment and distribution of P. napi. We found that stronger UV reflectance is associated with generally more hostile environments and concluded that large‐scale environmental factors influence the UV reflectance on the forewings of both male and female green‐veined white butterflies.
Corpus Callosum Integrity and Neuropsychological Performance After Traumatic Brain Injury: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study

Objectives:(1) Detailed analysis of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) parameters (fractional anisotropy and radial diffusivity) to evaluate white matter integrity in the corpus callosum (CC), and (2) examine correlations between DTI data and performance on multiple measures of cognitive functioning. Participants:Twelve individuals with a history of complicated mild, moderate, or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) who were an average of 1.7 years postinjury and 12 control participants. Main Measures:Standardized and experimental neuropsychological tests; detailed analysis of DTI parameters. Results:The TBI group demonstrated DTI values suggesting decreased white matter integrity and correlations with severity of injury. Both groups showed correlations between DTI parameters and cognitive measures, with more significant correlations observed for the TBI group. White matter changes in the CC were evident chronically and were related to severity of injury. Conclusions:Diffusion tensor imaging parameters suggesting disruptions in white matter in the CC may be implicated in impaired performance, both in terms of cognitive tasks and reaction time, after TBI.
E-commerce practices among SMEs: A review of major themes and issues

The widespread use of Internet brings a new landscape to business. In particular, e-commerce (EC) application has been well accepted as a potential measure to improve effectiveness and efficiency of a firm’s operation. E-commerce further expands the firm’s market, enables new business model and embraces globalization (UNCTAD, 2003). Undeniably, large firms are most dominant and more pervasive than small and medium sized firms (SMEs) as far as EC is concerned (Daniel & Grimshaw, 2002). Nevertheless, the use of Internet and EC does benefit smaller-sized firms even though the extent of such benefits might not be the same. This is because SMEs have limited resources and capability. But EC fits better the SMEs because of their less complicated structures that make them more easily adapt to any changes. SMEs represent the largest proportion of established businesses in most countries. Hence, the role of SMEs towards the nation’s growth with respect to the economic, employment as well as gross domestic product (GDP) is not trivial. Obviously, information and communication technology (ICT) becomes one of the potential means to facilitate their business operations. On top of that, ICT is now becoming a major component of the country’s performance and competitiveness (UNCTAD, 2003). Hence, enabling IT helps them to respond to business environmental pressures, to fulfill customers’ demand, and to face globalization challenge (Bernades & Verville, 2005). To date, a considerable number of studies on the issue of EC and SMEs have been initiated since its commercialization in mid 1990s. Those studies have examined the issue from various aspects. This paper therefore attempts to analyze the major trends of prior researches in this research domain.
l‐Arginine dilates rat pial arterioles by nitric oxide‐dependent mechanisms and increases blood flow during focal cerebral ischaemia

l‐Arginine (≥ 30 mg kg−1, i.v.), but not d‐arginine (300 mg kg−1) administered 5 min after unilateral common carotid/middle cerebral artery occlusion increased regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) within the dorsolateral ischaemic cortex in spontaneously hypertensive rats. l‐Arginine (300 mg kg−1) increased rCBF from 22 ± 2.7 to 33 ± 4% of baseline as measured by laser‐Doppler flowmetry. This increase may explain the ability of l‐arginine to reduce infarct size following focal cerebral ischaemia, as reported previously. The mechanism appears to be mediated by nitric oxide since topical l‐NAME (1 μm), a nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, decreased pial arteriole calibre from 115 ± 2.2 to 106 ± 0.9% of baseline following l‐arginine infusion (300 mg kg−1).
Strategic Management and Innovativeness for Better (Global) Business Competitiveness: Case of Slovenia

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a key driver for (global) business/nation competitiveness: economic growth, innovation, employment and social integration. Thus (global) business competitiveness of any country can be observed throughout national (globally operating SMEs) enterprises and their innovation willingness/abilities. According to our opinion only an explicitly innovative direction is the path where enterprises/national main competitive advantages will be in the near future. Countries (and their policies) should therefore support that because public policies can play an instrumental role in promoting innovation. But enterprises need to innovate their enterprise policy, consequently also strategic management, and basic realisation process, to turn governance policy instruments into their advantage and thus better (global) business competitiveness. In our research we present Slovenia case.
Broad-based equity compensation, employee turnover, and unit performance

This study, which consists of two essays, examines the performance effects of a deferred equity plan on both individual employee and business unit outcomes. The first essay investigates the effects of deferred compensation plan characteristics on voluntary turnover decisions, using detailed data on store-level employees of a large retail firm. Overall, I find that employees who are eligible to receive deferred profitsharing payments have significantly lower voluntary turnover. However, the relation between eligibility and turnover varies depending upon the specific plan eligibility requirement (i.e., age, tenure, hours worked per year), with stronger retention effects when plan contributions are larger. Vesting restrictions are associated with lower turnover rates, but only among non-managerial store employees. Finally, the retention benefits from unvested plan holdings are driven primarily by deferred compensation that is invested in the company's stock rather than in diversified mutual funds. These findings suggest that employees may respond to the retention incentives provided by a deferred compensation plan, but that specific plan characteristics play a key role in determining the plan's retention benefits. The second essay examines the effects of equity compensation on unit performance at the same retail firm. Prior studies have argued that providing nonmanagerial employees "a piece of the pie" through equity compensation is a means to improve firm performance, while critics contend that the free-rider problem will negate the performance effects of broadbased employee ownership. I find that equity compensation is positively associated with unit profitability. While I find that reduced employee turnover mediates the relationship between equity compensation and performance, the evidence suggests that effort incentives are the primary source of performance effects. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Accounting First Advisor Christopher Ittner
System level simulation of a SIMD active memory enhanced PC (or, why we don't want 100% bandwidth utilisation)

Merged logic and DRAM "active memory" or processing-in-memory (PIM) devices are widely recognised as a mechanism to avoid the memory wall bottlenecks exhibited by modern computing platforms. As several design efforts are working on commodity DRAM replacement parts, we present a simulation architecture for a SIMD active memory enhanced workstation. Additionally, we show that actually making use of all the available bandwidth presented by a DRAM to on-chip logic will significantly degrade the performance of an interactive multitasking environment. In order to minimise this performance degradation, we present a modified data tiling technique to allow the SIMD array's register file to be used as a cache.
The expanding telephone number Part 2: Age variations in immediate memory for multiple-digit numbers

Immediate ordered recall of multiple-digit numbers was investigated in a practical read-and-key or listenand-key task for three age groups whose mean ages were 25.2 years (range 23-27), 44.1 years (range 42-44) and 63.6 years (range 61-68), all recruited from students and faculty staff at the University of Oslo. The two younger groups performed at comparable levels on the immediate memory task, surpassing the performance of the older group for both visual and auditory presentation of the digit-strings. Increasing the presentation time of the numbers affected the young and older age groups similarly by improving the memory performance. Analyses of the serial position curves revealed an enhancement of the well-known modality effect in the older subjects. The overall decline in memory performance observed at the age of 65 should be taken into account in design of communication technology for the general public.
Towards a classification of energy aware MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks

Power management is an important issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because wireless sensor nodes are usually battery powered, and an efficient use of the available battery power becomes an important concern specially for those applications where the system is expected to operate for long durations. This necessity for energy efficient operation of a WSN has prompted the development of new protocols in all layers of the communication stack. Provided that, the radio transceiver is the most power consuming component of a typical sensor node, large gains can be achieved at the link layer where the medium access control (MAC) protocol controls the usage of the radio transceiver unit. MAC protocols for sensor networks differ greatly from typical wireless networks access protocols in many issues. MAC protocols for sensor networks must have built-in power conservation, mobility management, and failure recovery strategies. Furthermore, sensor MAC protocols should make performance trade-off between latency and throughput for a reduction in energy consumption to maximize the lifetime of the network. This is in general achieved through duty cycling the radio transceiver. Many MAC protocols with different objectives were proposed for wireless sensor networks in the literature. Most of these protocols take into account the energy efficiency as a main objective. There is much more innovative work should be done at the MAC layer to address the hard unsolved problems. In this paper, we first outline and discuss the specific requirements and design trade-offs of a typical wireless sensor MAC protocol by describing the properties of WSN that affect the design of MAC layer protocols. Then, a typical collection of wireless sensor MAC protocols presented in the literature are surveyed, classified, and described emphasizing their advantages and disadvantages whenever possible. Finally, we present research directions and identify open issues for future medium access research. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Drug-drug interactions with antirheumatic agents: review of selected clinically important interactions.

Drug therapy for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) often requires the use of more than one drug, thus drug-drug interactions are very likely in this patient population. We discuss the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic mechanisms involved in drug-drug interactions. Our review focuses on selected examples involving drugs used to treat RA and other antirheumatic drugs [e.g., methotrexate and nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAID)] or with other therapeutic classes of drugs (e.g., NSAID and warfarin). Studies and case reports of drug-drug interactions with antirheumatic drugs are critically evaluated and the potential clinical implications are discussed.
Potential approaches for more successful dendritic cell-based immunotherapy

Introduction: Dendritic cells (DCs) are the most important antigen-presenting cell population for activating antitumor T-cell responses; therefore, they offer a unique opportunity for specific targeting of tumors. Areas covered: We will discuss the critical factors for the enhancement of DC vaccine efficacy: different DC subsets, types of in vitro DC manufacturing protocol, types of tumor antigen to be loaded and finally different adjuvants for activating them. We will cover potential combinatorial strategies with immunomodulatory therapies: depleting T-regulatory (Treg) cells, blocking VEGF and blocking inhibitory signals. Furthermore, recommendations to incorporate these criteria into DC-based tumor immunotherapy will be suggested. Expert opinion: Monocyte-derived DCs are the most widely used DC subset in the clinic, whereas Langerhans cells and plasmacytoid DCs are two emerging DC subsets that are highly effective in eliciting cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses. Depending on the type of tumor antigens selected for loading DCs, it is important to optimize a protocol that will generate highly potent DCs. The future aim of DC-based immunotherapy is to combine it with one or more immunomodulatory therapies, for example, Treg cell depletion, VEGF blockage and T-cell checkpoint blockage, to elicit the most optimal antitumor immunity to induce long-term remission or even cure cancer patients.
Structure-activity correlation of the lethality and central effects of selected cardiac glycosides.

Twenty-four-hour toxicity data were obtained for intravenous and intracerebral injections of digitoxin, digoxin, their mono-and bis-digitoxosides and their aglycones in adult male mice. Probit analysis was used to compute potency ratios of all possible pairs of drugs studied. The intravenous data suggested that the toxicity of both the digitoxin-and digoxin-related compounds decreases as time number of sugar residues decreases except for digitoxigenin. The C-12 hydroxyl group made little difference in intravenous toxicity except for the genins, in which the hydroxyl group present in digoxigenin decreased the toxicity. The intracerebral toxicity of these compounds suggest that the presence or absence of digitoxose residues has little, if any, effect on their toxicity by this route, whereas the presence of tile C-12 hydroxyl group increased the toxicity two to three times. In the aforementioned studies, digitoxigenin was, therefore, the most toxic intravenously and the least toxic intracercbrahly, and convulsions always preceded death with this particular agent. The intracerebral toxicities of the 3-epi and 3-keto derivatives of both digoxigenin and digitoxigenin were also obtained. Again, the digoxin-related compounds were more toxic by this route. In both cases, the 3-epi and 3-keto derivatives were less toxic than the parent aglycone.