bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Pipasic: similarity and expression correction for strain-level identification and quantification in metaproteomics
Authors: Penzlin Anke , Lindner Martin S. , Doellinger Joerg , Dabrowski Piotr Wojtek , Nitsche Andreas , Renard Bernhard Y.
Published: June 2014

Motivation: Metaproteomic analysis allows studying the interplay of organisms or functional groups and has become increasingly popular also for diagnostic purposes. However, difficulties arise owing to the high sequence similarity between related organisms. Further, the state of conservation of proteins between species can be correlated with their expression level, which can lead to significant bias in results and interpretation. These challenges are similar but not identical to the challenges arising in the analysis of metagenomic samples and require specific solutions.

Results: We introduce Pipasic (peptide intensity-weighted proteome abundance similarity correction) as a tool that corrects identification and spectral counting-based quantification results using peptide similarity estimation and expression level weighting within a non-negative lasso framework. Pipasic has distinct advantages over approaches only regarding unique peptides or aggregating results to the lowest common ancestor, as demonstrated on examples of viral diagnostics and an acid mine drainage dataset.

Availability and implementation: Pipasic source code is freely available from https://sourceforge.net/projects/pipasic/.

Contact:  RenardB@rki.de

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online
Inductive matrix completion for predicting gene–disease associations
Authors: Natarajan Nagarajan , Dhillon Inderjit S.
Published: June 2014

Motivation: Most existing methods for predicting causal disease genes rely on specific type of evidence, and are therefore limited in terms of applicability. More often than not, the type of evidence available for diseases varies—for example, we may know linked genes, keywords associated with the disease obtained by mining text, or co-occurrence of disease symptoms in patients. Similarly, the type of evidence available for genes varies—for example, specific microarray probes convey information only for certain sets of genes. In this article, we apply a novel matrix-completion method called Inductive Matrix Completion to the problem of predicting gene-disease associations; it combines multiple types of evidence (features) for diseases and genes to learn latent factors that explain the observed gene–disease associations. We construct features from different biological sources such as microarray expression data and disease-related textual data. A crucial advantage of the method is that it is inductive; it can be applied to diseases not seen at training time, unlike traditional matrix-completion approaches and network-based inference methods that are transductive.

Results: Comparison with state-of-the-art methods on diseases from the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database shows that the proposed approach is substantially better—it has close to one-in-four chance of recovering a true association in the top 100 predictions, compared to the recently proposed Catapult method (second best) that has <15% chance. We demonstrate that the inductive method is particularly effective for a query disease with no previously known gene associations, and for predicting novel genes, i.e. genes that are previously not linked to diseases. Thus the method is capable of predicting novel genes even for well-characterized diseases. We also validate the novelty of predictions by evaluating the method on recently reported OMIM associations and on associations recently reported in the literature.

Availability: Source code and datasets can be downloaded from http://bigdata.ices.utexas.edu/project/gene-disease.

Contact:  naga86@cs.utexas.edu
Robust clinical outcome prediction based on Bayesian analysis of transcriptional profiles and prior causal networks
Authors: Zarringhalam Kourosh , Enayetallah Ahmed , Reddy Padmalatha , Ziemek Daniel
Published: June 2014

Motivation: Understanding and predicting an individual’s response in a clinical trial is the key to better treatments and cost-effective medicine. Over the coming years, more and more large-scale omics datasets will become available to characterize patients with complex and heterogeneous diseases at a molecular level. Unfortunately, genetic, phenotypical and environmental variation is much higher in a human trial population than currently modeled or measured in most animal studies. In our experience, this high variability can lead to failure of trained predictors in independent studies and undermines the credibility and utility of promising high-dimensional datasets.

Methods: We propose a method that utilizes patient-level genome-wide expression data in conjunction with causal networks based on prior knowledge. Our approach determines a differential expression profile for each patient and uses a Bayesian approach to infer corresponding upstream regulators. These regulators and their corresponding posterior probabilities of activity are used in a regularized regression framework to predict response.

Results: We validated our approach using two clinically relevant phenotypes, namely acute rejection in kidney transplantation and response to Infliximab in ulcerative colitis. To demonstrate pitfalls in translating trained predictors across independent trials, we analyze performance characteristics of our approach as well as alternative feature sets in the regression on two independent datasets for each phenotype. We show that the proposed approach is able to successfully incorporate causal prior knowledge to give robust performance estimates.

Contact:  daniel.ziemek@pfizer.com

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
GRASP: analysis of genotype–phenotype results from 1390 genome-wide association studies and corresponding open access database
Authors: Leslie Richard , O’Donnell Christopher J. , Johnson Andrew D.
Published: June 2014

Summary: We created a deeply extracted and annotated database of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) results. GRASP v1.0 contains >6.2 million SNP-phenotype association from among 1390 GWAS studies. We re-annotated GWAS results with 16 annotation sources including some rarely compared to GWAS results (e.g. RNAediting sites, lincRNAs, PTMs).

Motivation: To create a high-quality resource to facilitate further use and interpretation of human GWAS results in order to address important scientific questions.

Results: GWAS have grown exponentially, with increases in sample sizes and markers tested, and continuing bias toward European ancestry samples. GRASP contains >100 000 phenotypes, roughly: eQTLs (71.5%), metabolite QTLs (21.2%), methylation QTLs (4.4%) and diseases, biomarkers and other traits (2.8%). cis-eQTLs, meQTLs, mQTLs and MHC region SNPs are highly enriched among significant results. After removing these categories, GRASP still contains a greater proportion of studies and results than comparable GWAS catalogs. Cardiovascular disease and related risk factors pre-dominate remaining GWAS results, followed by immunological, neurological and cancer traits. Significant results in GWAS display a highly gene-centric tendency. Sex chromosome X (OR = 0.18[0.16-0.20]) and Y (OR = 0.003[0.001-0.01]) genes are depleted for GWAS results. Gene length is correlated with GWAS results at nominal significance (P ≤ 0.05) levels. We show this gene-length correlation decays at increasingly more stringent P-value thresholds. Potential pleotropic genes and SNPs enriched for multi-phenotype association in GWAS are identified. However, we note possible population stratification at some of these loci. Finally, via re-annotation we identify compelling functional hypotheses at GWAS loci, in some cases unrealized in studies to date.

Conclusion: Pooling summary-level GWAS results and re-annotating with bioinformatics predictions and molecular features provides a good platform for new insights.

Availability: The GRASP database is available at http://apps.nhlbi.nih.gov/grasp.

Contact:  johnsonad2@nhlbi.nih.gov
Cross-study validation for the assessment of prediction algorithms
Authors: Bernau Christoph , Riester Markus , Boulesteix Anne-Laure , Parmigiani Giovanni , Huttenhower Curtis , Waldron Levi , Trippa Lorenzo
Published: June 2014

Motivation: Numerous competing algorithms for prediction in high-dimensional settings have been developed in the statistical and machine-learning literature. Learning algorithms and the prediction models they generate are typically evaluated on the basis of cross-validation error estimates in a few exemplary datasets. However, in most applications, the ultimate goal of prediction modeling is to provide accurate predictions for independent samples obtained in different settings. Cross-validation within exemplary datasets may not adequately reflect performance in the broader application context.

Methods: We develop and implement a systematic approach to ‘cross-study validation’, to replace or supplement conventional cross-validation when evaluating high-dimensional prediction models in independent datasets. We illustrate it via simulations and in a collection of eight estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer microarray gene-expression datasets, where the objective is predicting distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS). We computed the C-index for all pairwise combinations of training and validation datasets. We evaluate several alternatives for summarizing the pairwise validation statistics, and compare these to conventional cross-validation.

Results: Our data-driven simulations and our application to survival prediction with eight breast cancer microarray datasets, suggest that standard cross-validation produces inflated discrimination accuracy for all algorithms considered, when compared to cross-study validation. Furthermore, the ranking of learning algorithms differs, suggesting that algorithms performing best in cross-validation may be suboptimal when evaluated through independent validation.

Availability: The survHD: Survival in High Dimensions package (http://www.bitbucket.org/lwaldron/survhd) will be made available through Bioconductor.

Contact:  levi.waldron@hunter.cuny.edu

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Functional association networks as priors for gene regulatory network inference
Authors: Studham Matthew E. , Tjärnberg Andreas , Nordling Torbjörn E.M. , Nelander Sven , Sonnhammer Erik L. L.
Published: June 2014

Motivation: Gene regulatory network (GRN) inference reveals the influences genes have on one another in cellular regulatory systems. If the experimental data are inadequate for reliable inference of the network, informative priors have been shown to improve the accuracy of inferences.

Results: This study explores the potential of undirected, confidence-weighted networks, such as those in functional association databases, as a prior source for GRN inference. Such networks often erroneously indicate symmetric interaction between genes and may contain mostly correlation-based interaction information. Despite these drawbacks, our testing on synthetic datasets indicates that even noisy priors reflect some causal information that can improve GRN inference accuracy. Our analysis on yeast data indicates that using the functional association databases FunCoup and STRING as priors can give a small improvement in GRN inference accuracy with biological data.

Contact:  matthew.studham@scilifelab.se

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Pareto-optimal phylogenetic tree reconciliation
Authors: Libeskind-Hadas Ran , Wu Yi-Chieh , Bansal Mukul S. , Kellis Manolis
Published: June 2014

Motivation: Phylogenetic tree reconciliation is a widely used method for reconstructing the evolutionary histories of gene families and species, hosts and parasites and other dependent pairs of entities. Reconciliation is typically performed using maximum parsimony, in which each evolutionary event type is assigned a cost and the objective is to find a reconciliation of minimum total cost. It is generally understood that reconciliations are sensitive to event costs, but little is understood about the relationship between event costs and solutions. Moreover, choosing appropriate event costs is a notoriously difficult problem.

Results: We address this problem by giving an efficient algorithm for computing Pareto-optimal sets of reconciliations, thus providing the first systematic method for understanding the relationship between event costs and reconciliations. This, in turn, results in new techniques for computing event support values and, for cophylogenetic analyses, performing robust statistical tests. We provide new software tools and demonstrate their use on a number of datasets from evolutionary genomic and cophylogenetic studies.

Availability and implementation: Our Python tools are freely available at www.cs.hmc.edu/∼hadas/xscape.

Contact:  mukul@engr.uconn.edu

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Probabilistic method for detecting copy number variation in a fetal genome using maternal plasma sequencing
Authors: Rampášek Ladislav , Arbabi Aryan , Brudno Michael
Published: June 2014

Motivation: The past several years have seen the development of methodologies to identify genomic variation within a fetus through the non-invasive sequencing of maternal blood plasma. These methods are based on the observation that maternal plasma contains a fraction of DNA (typically 5–15%) originating from the fetus, and such methodologies have already been used for the detection of whole-chromosome events (aneuploidies), and to a more limited extent for smaller (typically several megabases long) copy number variants (CNVs).

Results: Here we present a probabilistic method for non-invasive analysis of de novo CNVs in fetal genome based on maternal plasma sequencing. Our novel method combines three types of information within a unified Hidden Markov Model: the imbalance of allelic ratios at SNP positions, the use of parental genotypes to phase nearby SNPs and depth of coverage to better differentiate between various types of CNVs and improve precision. Our simulation results, based on in silico introduction of novel CNVs into plasma samples with 13% fetal DNA concentration, demonstrate a sensitivity of 90% for CNVs >400 kb (with 13 calls in an unaffected genome), and 40% for 50–400 kb CNVs (with 108 calls in an unaffected genome).

Availability and implementation: Implementation of our model and data simulation method is available at http://github.com/compbio-UofT/fCNV.

Contact:  brudno@cs.toronto.edu
Multiple interests across European coastal waters: the importance of a common language
Authors: Ramos Jorge , Soma Katrine , Bergh Øivind , Schulze Torsten , Gimpel Antje , Stelzenmüller Vanessa , Mäkinen Timo , Fabi Gianna , Grati Fabio , Gault Jeremy
Published: June 2014

Different marine and coastal activities have diverse economic, environmental, and socio-cultural objectives, which can lead to conflict when these multidimensional activities coincide spatially or temporally. This is sometimes driven by a lack of understanding or other users' needs and consequentially adequate planning and the utilization of a common language is essential. By using a transparent approach based on multi-criteria analysis, we characterize and establish priorities for future development/conservation for all users in the coastal area using six representative European Case Studies with different levels of complexity. Results varied according to location, but significantly it was found that stakeholders tended to favour ecological and social over economic objectives. This paper outlines the methodology employed, the results derived, and the potential for this approach to reduce conflict in coastal and marine waters.
Critical role for p53-serine 15 phosphorylation in stimulating transactivation at p53-responsive promoters
Authors: Loughery Jayne , Cox Miranda , Smith Linda M. , Meek David W.
Published: June 2014

The p53 tumour suppressor is induced by various stress stimuli and coordinates an adaptive gene expression programme leading to growth arrest or cell death. Some stimuli, such as DNA damage, lead to rapid and substantial multisite phosphorylation of p53, nucleated initially through phosphorylation of serine 15. Other stimuli, such as hyper-proliferation, do not stimulate p53-phosphorylation, raising questions regarding the physiological role for phosphorylation. Here, we show that a basal level of Ser15 phosphorylation occurs in both unstimulated cells and cells stimulated pharmacologically to induce p53. p53 in which Ser15 is substituted by alanine (S15A) fails to mediate p53-dependent transcription or growth arrest but can be rescued by substitution with aspartate (S15D: a phospho-mimic). Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analyses show that, while wt- and S15A-p53 are detectable on the CDKN1A (p21) promoter (as a representative p53-responsive promoter), S15A-p53 does not stimulate histone acetylation (a measure of chromatin relaxation), nor is its recruitment stimulated, in response to a DNA damage or pharmacological stimulus. These data demonstrate that Ser15 phosphorylation is required for p53 function in the physiological context of p53-responsive promoters and suggest a key and possibly universal role even for low levels of this modification in promoting p53-transcription function.
Spoken Language Dialogue Systems
Authors: Dale Robert
Published: June 2014

A spoken language dialogue system is a computational system which engages in multi-turn dialogic interaction with human users using speech as the means of communication. Any system which does this requires many of the capabilities of other natural language processing applications, encompassing both language understanding and language generation; but the nature of spoken language dialogue means that it also poses a number of additional challenges not faced by other applications. This chapter discusses a number of key issues that need to be addressed when attempting to build systems that can engage in natural dialogue, and provides an overview of existing research in these areas.
Reducing Unnecessary Preoperative Blood Orders and Costs by Implementing an Updated Institution-specific Maximum Surgical Blood Order Schedule and a Remote Electronic Blood Release System
Authors: Frank Steven M. , Oleyar Michael J. , Ness Paul M. , Tobian Aaron A. R.
Published: June 2014

Background:

Using blood utilization data acquired from the anesthesia information management system, an updated institution-specific maximum surgical blood order schedule was introduced. The authors evaluated whether the maximum surgical blood order schedule, along with a remote electronic blood release system, reduced unnecessary preoperative blood orders and costs.

Methods:

At a large academic medical center, data for preoperative blood orders were analyzed for 63,916 surgical patients over a 34-month period. The new maximum surgical blood order schedule and the electronic blood release system (Hemosafe®; Haemonetics Corp., Braintree, MA) were introduced mid-way through this time period. The authors assessed whether these interventions led to reductions in unnecessary preoperative orders and associated costs.

Results:

Among patients having surgical procedures deemed not to require a type and screen or crossmatch (n = 33,216), the percent of procedures with preoperative blood orders decreased by 38% (from 40.4% [7,167 of 17,740 patients] to 25.0% [3,869 of 15,476 patients], P < 0.001). Among all hospitalized inpatients, the crossmatch-to-transfusion ratio decreased by 27% (from 2.11 to 1.54; P < 0.001) over the same time period. The proportion of patients who required emergency release uncrossmatched blood increased from 2.2 to 3.1 per 1,000 patients (P = 0.03); however, most of these patients were having emergency surgery. Based on the realized reductions in blood orders, annual costs were reduced by $137,223 ($6.08 per patient) for surgical patients, and by $298,966 ($6.20/patient) for all hospitalized patients.

Conclusion:

Implementing institution-specific, updated maximum surgical blood order schedule–directed preoperative blood ordering guidelines along with an electronic blood release system results in a substantial reduction in unnecessary orders and costs, with a clinically insignificant increase in requirement for emergency release blood transfusions.
Epidemiology and microbiology of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli other than serogroup O157 in England, 2009–2013
Authors: Byrne Lisa , Vanstone Gemma L. , Perry Neil T. , Launders Naomi , Adak Goutam K. , Godbole Gauri , Grant Kathie A. , Smith Robin , Jenkins Claire
Published: June 2014

The implementation of direct testing of clinical faecal specimens for gastrointestinal (GI) pathogens by PCR offers a sensitive and comprehensive approach for the detection of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC). The introduction of a commercial PCR assay, known as GI PCR, for the detection of GI pathogens at three frontline hospital laboratories in England between December 2012 and December 2013 led to a significant increase in detection of STEC other than serogroup O157 (non-O157 STEC). In 2013, 47 isolates were detected in England, compared with 57 in the preceding 4 years (2009–2012). The most common non-O157 STEC serogroup detected was O26 (23.2 %). A total of 47 (47.5 %) STEC isolates had stx2 only, 28 (28.3 %) carried stx1 and stx2, and the remaining 24 (24.2 %) had stx1 only. Stx2a (64.0 %) was the most frequently detected Stx2 subtype. The eae (intimin) gene was detected in 52 (52.5 %) non-O157 STEC isolates. Six strains of STEC O104 had aggR, but this gene was not detected in any other STEC serogroups in this study. Haemolytic ureamic syndrome was significantly associated with STEC strains possessing eae [odds ratio (OR) 5.845, P = 0.0235] and/or stx2a (OR 9.56, P = 0.0034) subtypes. A matched case–control analysis indicated an association between non-O157 STEC cases and contact with farm animals. Widespread implementation of the PCR approach in England will determine the true incidence of non-O157 STEC infection, highlight the burden in terms of morbidity and mortality, and facilitate the examination of risk factors to indicate whether there are niche risk exposures for particular strains.
Conformational plasticity of the influenza A virus NS1 protein
Authors: Hale Benjamin G.
Published: June 2014

During infection, the influenza A virus non-structural protein 1 (NS1) interacts with a diverse range of viral and cellular factors to antagonize host antiviral defences and promote viral replication. Here, I review the structural basis for some of these functions and discuss the emerging view that NS1 cannot simply be regarded as a ‘static’ protein with a single structure. Rather, the dynamic property of NS1 to adopt various quaternary conformations is critical for its multiple activities. Understanding NS1 plasticity, and the mechanisms governing this plasticity, will be essential for assessing both fundamental protein function and the consequences of strain-dependent polymorphisms in this important virulence factor.
The management of the domestic refrigeration: microbiological status and temperature
Authors: Vegara Alberto , Di Ciccio Pierluigi , Rita Festino Anna , Costanzo Claudia , Pennisi Luca , Ianieri Adriana
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to provide information on the consumer management of refrigerated food, establish the level and the incidence of bacterial contamination and operating temperatures in domestic refrigerators from north and centre Italy.

Design/methodology/approach

– A questionnaire was designed involving 24 questions which covered three topics: the socio-demographic data, the domestic management of refrigerated food and general information about the refrigerator. The questionnaire responses were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis and further processed with the multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and cluster analysis (CA). Based on MCA and CA, 84 refrigerators were selected to assess the temperature and the microbiological status (total viable counts (TVC); Enterobacteriaceae total counts (ETC); Salmonella spp. and Listeria spp.).

Findings

– Totally, 660 interviews were carried out. The majority of respondents were female (81.4 per cent) and were married (71.4 per cent). Almost an half of them were between 31 and 50 years old (48.2 per cent) and had a secondary school degree (47 per cent). Regarding domestic management of refrigerated food, the majority of respondents (87.2 per cent) were aware of the correct temperature range (1-5°C) for retail refrigerator units, but only 18 per cent of them check the temperature. Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella spp. were not recovered; Listeria innocua was recovered (2.4 per cent). Regarding the TVC values, the 21.5 per cent of the tested refrigerators were classified as insufficient (from 100 to 104 cfu/cm2) or inadequate (>104 cfu/cm2). Consumer education should be focused in order to reduce foodborne disease. Only safety-conscious consumers can become active partners within the food safety chain.

Originality/value

– Result obtained from the present survey revealed that consumers are not familiar with their role in the food safety chain and that they allow numerous opportunities for microbiological contamination of food. The study clearly indicates the need for greater consumer education regarding proper domestic refrigerator management. Indeed, appropriate behaviours could make the refrigerator less likely to act as a significant niche for persistence and dissemination of food pathogens.
From killing cows to culturing meat
Authors: Buscemi Francesco
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate how in Britain, France and Italy the idea of the living animal is being detached from the action of eating meat. It is an ongoing historical process, which has recently been fuelled by the new issue of cultured meat.

Design/methodology/approach

– Starting from Goody's developmentalist stages (Production, Distribution, Preparation and Consumption), first this work analyses historically how these stages have undergone the process of the disappearance of the animal origins of meat (animal origins of meat are parts like the head and legs that remind us that once meat was an animal). Second, this paper applies cultured meat to Goody's stage of Production, linking the new product to the historical, above described, process.

Findings

– The analysis shows that, in the past, Goody's stages of Consumption, Distribution and Preparation witnessed the disappearance of the animal origins of meat, while Production was not affected by the phenomenon. Today, with testing on cultured meat, even the stage of Production has gone through this process. Now, all of Goody's stages are involved in the process. Usually considered a shocking novelty, cultured meat is instead a stage of a historical process.

Originality/value

– No one has previously analysed the disappearance of the animal origins of meat relating it to Goody's stages, and a current issue like cultured meat has never been considered a further step of this process.
Corporate strategy development via numerical situation analysis
Authors: Davies Alan , John Elwyn , Thomas Andrew
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– Using the numerical situation analysis (NSA) technique in the development of corporate strategy provides senior managers with a suitable methodology for the creation of alternative strategic options. Subsequently, it may be used to evaluate those options for possible selection and implementation by the company concerned. In addition, the technique provides a graphic temporal point description of an organisation's strategic situation. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to outline the technique of NSA via a hypothetical example and thereby illustrate its use in practice.

Design/methodology/approach

– By using a paradigm approach, the paper indicates the correct application of the NSA technique as a means of defining and evaluating alternative strategic options within a manufacturing company. As proposed, the methodology also permits several graphic illustrations of the strategic situation to be drawn, along with a scheme for monitoring the effectiveness of an adopted strategy.

Findings

– The evolution of the suggested NSA technique and its application to the formulation of strategic options for a manufacturing company are outlined in the paper. In practice, its application in four differing industries has resulted in some caveats regarding its use, and to some provisional conclusions being drawn in respect of its usefulness to senior management. These are recorded in the concluding section of the paper.

Research limitations/implications

– The design, development and application of NSA proposed in this paper together with the experience of its implementation and use, in practice, highlight a potentially useful extension to existing methods of strategy formulation. The methodology offers senior management a technique, whereby alternative strategic options may be defined and evaluated for possible adoption along with diagrammatic illustrations of an organisation's strategic situation. In addition, the approach allows a selected strategy to be monitored over time for effectiveness, thus providing an early warning mechanism in respect of strategic inutility.

Originality/value

– The paper contributes to the existing knowledge based on strategy development, evaluation and selection. It also provides a mechanism for monitoring a selected strategy for effectiveness over time and a structured framework for senior management to undertake the strategic planning process. It may when used in practice achieve an improved level of strategic understanding on the part of senior management and thereby stimulate improved corporate performance.
A frontier-based hierarchical clustering for airport efficiency benchmarking
Authors: Rodríguez-Déniz Héctor , Voltes-Dorta Augusto
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– When large samples are used to estimate airport efficiency, clustering is a necessary step before carrying out any benchmarking analysis. However, the existing literature has paid little attention to developing a robust methodology for airport classification, instead relying on ad hoc techniques. In order to address this issue, this paper aims to develop a new airport clustering procedure.

Design/methodology/approach

– A frontier-based hierarchical clustering procedure is developed. An application to cost-efficiency benchmarking is presented using the cost function parameters available in the literature. A cross-section of worldwide airports is clustered according to the relevant outputs and input prices, with cost elasticities and factor shares serving as optimal variable weights.

Findings

– The authors found 17 distinct airport clusters without any ad hoc input. Factors like the use of larger aircraft or the dominance of low-cost carriers are shown to improve cost performance in the airport industry.

Practical implications

– The proposed method allows for a more precise identification of the efficiency benchmarks, which are characterized by a set of cophenetic distances to their “peers”. Furthermore, the resulting classification can also be used to benchmark other indicators linked to airport costs, such as aeronautical charges or service quality.

Originality/value

– This paper contributed to airport clustering by providing the first discussion and application of optimal variable weighting. In regard to efficiency benchmarking, the paper aims to overcome the limitations of previous papers by defining a method that is not dependent on performance, but on technology, and that can be easily adapted to large airport datasets.
Competence development and work-family conflict
Authors: Roseli Wünsch Takahashi Adriana , Lemos Lourenço Mariane , Alexandre Sander Josué , Patricia da Silva Souza Carla
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– This study aims to understand how the development of teaching and research competencies affects graduate (MS and PhD level – calledstricto sensucourses in Brazil) management professors' work-family relations.

Design/methodology/approach

– This research is a case study about work-family conflicts in academic careers. The data collection and analysis occurred during the period between June 2009 and January 2012. The population is composed of 45 professors: 33 men and 12 women, corresponding, respectively, to 73 and 27 per cent of the professors in the programs. Eleven female professors and 26 male professors were interviewed in this research. Analysis of work-family conflicts was performed by means of open questions based on three conflict dimensions: time, strain and behavior.

Findings

– Investment in the development of teaching competencies brings conflicts into work-family relations. Among the three conflict dimensions considered, time stood out. When the conflict dimension was analyzed, more specifically in terms of behavior, it was evident that men perceive the effects of work-family conflicts to a lesser extent, as women suffer more from the triple impact (work, family and studies).

Research limitations/implications

– Context of a sector within a determined place.

Practical implications

– This text highlights the importance and current theme of gender and career for researchers and academy. Thus, this paper contributes so society can reflect on the roles men and women hold in the distribution of the responsibilities, highlighting the importance of balancing their division between couples, in family routines and in childcare. Such balance can improve a family's life, providing better conditions so women can manage their careers.

Social implications

– Likewise, this paper supports public policies that improve the life quality of women or those who will adopt children, such as policies that incentive public and private organizations to extend maternity leave for mothers and adoptive couples, and public policies that contribute so women can proceed in their careers and therefore can contribute to the advancement of society and their own bio-psycho-social development. This text also brings implications in order that organizations design policies that allow all employees to better balance work-time and other life activities in general.

Originality/value

– By selecting the graduate MS/PhD (stricto sensu) educational sector in particular, it was possible to learn the challenges, difficulties, achievements and limits inherent to the profession (professors), just as it was possible to verify existing conflicts, many times experienced and debated in organizational routines but not identified and shown by academic research in this sector.
Chaotic artificial bee colony approach to step planning of maintaining balance for quadruped robot
Authors: Luo Qinan , Duan Haibin
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a relatively new optimization method inspired by the herd behavior of honey bees, which shows quite intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to propose an improved ABC optimization algorithm based on chaos theory for solving the push recovery problem of a quadruped robot, which can tune the controller parameters based on its search mechanism. ADAMS simulation environment is adopted to implement the proposed scheme for the quadruped robot.

Design/methodology/approach

– Maintaining balance is a rather complicated global optimum problem for a quadruped robot which is about seeking a foot contact point prevents itself from falling down. To ensure the stability of the intelligent robot control system, the intelligent optimization method is employed. The proposed chaotic artificial bee colony (CABC) algorithm is based on basic ABC, and a chaotic mechanism is used to help the algorithm to jump out of the local optimum as well as finding the optimal parameters. The implementation procedure of our proposed chaotic ABC approach is described in detail.

Findings

– The proposed CABC method is applied to a quadruped robot in ADAMS simulator. Using the CABC to implement, the quadruped robot can work smoothly under the interference. A comparison among the basic ABC and CABC is made. Experimental results verify a better trajectory tracking response can be achieved by the proposed CABC method after control parameters training.

Practical implications

– The proposed CABC algorithm can be easily applied to practice and can steer the robot during walking, which will considerably increase the autonomy of the robot.

Originality/value

– The proposed CABC approach is interesting for the optimization of a control scheme for quadruped robot. A parameter training methodology, using the presented intelligent algorithm is proposed to increase the learning capability. The experimental results verify the system stabilization, favorable performance and no chattering phenomena can be achieved by using the proposed CABC algorithm. And, the proposed CABC methodology can be easily extended to other applications.
Drivers of return migration of Ghanaian health professionals: perspectives from doctors and nurses in urban Ghana
Authors: A. Adzei Francis , K. Sakyi Emmanuel , Amonoo-Harrison Jennifer
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to examine the trend of return migration of health professionals to Ghana and how it is impacting the delivery of health services in the country. It also highlights the challenges facing returnees to the country.

Design/methodology/approach

– A qualitative exploratory case study approach was employed in the study. Data gathered were analysed using the sequential model of qualitative content analysis.

Findings

– It was found that while push factors dominantly influence out-migration, pull factors rather dominated reasons for return migration. Other determinants of return migration include social and financial benefits to the home country, achieving goals for travelling, skills’ improvement and spousal consideration. The paper also highlights some of the challenges returnees usually encounter in the home country.

Social implications

– This paper makes reasonable recommendations regarding how return migration of Ghanaian health professionals might be smoother.

Originality/value

– The study brings to the fore, the necessity for the government to plan for health professionals, who returned to Ghana to contribute to the health system.
Factors affecting spin-off creation
Authors: Caiazza Rosa
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– The aim of the paper is to present a theoretical approach and an empirical analysis of factors affecting the spin-off creation, as although research on spin-off has increasingly received attention in recent years, few studies have focused on the main factors of the spin-off creation.

Design/methodology/approach

– Considering the exploratory nature of our research objectives, the Université Libre de Bruxelles cases were chosen to evidence macro-, meso- and microfactors that affect the university's ability to create a spin-off.

Findings

– Many factors that affect the spin-off creation were evidenced.

Originality/value

– A multilevel perspective for the spin-off analysis was offered.
The effect of tax amnesty on anti-money laundering in Bangladesh
Authors: Waris Attiya , Abdul Latif Laila
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– The article aims to rely on the global wealth chains theory to study the effect of tax amnesty on anti-money laundering (AML) in Bangladesh. This theory is an analytical framework intended to identify how wealth is repackaged and disguised to move it out of spheres of state oversight, regulation and taxation. It introduces the law on AML in Bangladesh, pointing out the revised Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendation that has expanded the scope of money laundering predicate offences to cover both indirect and direct tax crimes and smuggling in relation to customs and excise duties and taxes.

Design/methodology/approach

– Interviews in Bangladesh and desk research.

Findings

– There are some gaps in the scope of the offence, the coverage of predicate offences and the types of property covered by the money laundering offence. There is also an absence of financial penalties available to effectively sanction legal persons. The current money laundering offences are derived from the ordinance issued in 2008 by the caretaker government (2006-2008). The current act contains detailed definitions of money laundering and property and a list of predicate offences and sanctions for the offence. However, there are some gaps in the physical elements of the offence, and the range of its predicate offences remains too narrow. Adding tax evasion to its list of predicate offences will, given the history of money laundering in Bangladesh, aid in combating illegal transfer of assets abroad and recovery of the same and abolish tax amnesty.

Originality/value

– There is no paper that has analysed the linkages between money laundering and taxation in developing countries, especially Bangladesh.
Aspiration to implementation: building an enterprise digitization capability at the University of Melbourne
Authors: McRostie Donna
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– The aim of this study is to use the guiding strategy, Melbourneâ™’s Scholarly Information Future, which is a ten-year strategy that identifies in its aspirations the importance of building effective access to the rich cultural, scholarly and research collections of the University of Melbourne and acknowledges the critical role that digitization plays in achieving this vision. The University of Melbourne has a rich, complex and ultimately voluminous array of cultural, scholarly and research material that is of great interest and value to the its community, scholarly researchers and the global community. Since the strategy endorsement in 2008, the authors have progressively moved from a digitization environment that was uncoordinated, ad hoc and lacked centralized expertise that led to a proliferation of isolated, under-resourced areas producing inconsistent and indifferent quality images to our goal of an exemplar digitization framework, program and enterprise capability for the University to leverage.

Design/methodology/approach

– Case study of the journey taken by the University of Melbourne in building an enterprise digitization capability.

Findings

– This article outlines the journey and the approach in building this capability in a challenging economic environment, the engagement strategies to gain support and funding, skills and equipment and the unique challenges of the digitization of a diverse array of University collections. Second, it also explores digitization as transformation and outlines some of the infinite and extraordinary possibilities created from digitized content of library collections.

Originality/value

– This article will be of value to institutions that are considering taking similar steps.
A study of blog networks to determine online social network properties from the tie strength perspective
Authors: Hui-Ye Chiu Terry , Chen Chien-Chou , Joung Yuh-Jzer , Chen Shymin
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– Most studies on tie strength have focused on its definition, calculation and applications, but have not paid much attention to how tie strength can help analyse online social networks. Because ties play different roles in a network depending on their strength, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between tie strength and network behaviours.

Design/methodology/approach

– The authors propose a simple metric for tie strength measurement and then apply it to an online social network extracted from a blog network. These networks are massive in size and have technology for efficient data collection, thereby presenting the possibility of measuring tie strength objectively. From the results several key social network properties are studied to see how tie strength may be used as a metric to explain certain characteristics in social networks.

Findings

– The online networks exhibit all the structural properties of an actual social network, not only in following the power law but also with regard to the distribution of tie strength. The authors noted a strong association between tie strength and reciprocity, and tie strength and transitivity in online social networks.

Originality/value

– This paper highlights the importance of analysing online social networks from a tie strength perspective. The results have important implications for the development of efficient search mechanisms and appropriate group leaders in virtual communities.
Key drivers of consumer loyalty to Facebook fan pages
Authors: Ruiz-Mafe Carla , Martí-Parreño Jose , Sanz-Blas Silvia
Published: June 2014

Purpose

– With the rapid expansion of social networking sites, researchers and practitioners are challenged to understand drivers of customer loyalty in fan pages. The purpose of this paper is to identify the main drivers of Facebook fan page loyalty in order to promote the creation of affective links and long-term relationships with users.

Design/methodology/approach

– The impact of trust, fan page content dependency, attitude and consumer beliefs on loyalty to fan pages was tested through structural equation modelling techniques. The sample consisted of 691 Spanish Facebook users.

Findings

– Data analysis shows that attitude appears as a key variable in increasing loyalty to fan pages. The empirical study also found a significant positive influence of perceived usefulness, attitude, trust and dependency on loyalty in fan pages, and an indirect influence of perceived ease of use mediated by perceived usefulness and attitude.

Practical implications

– This research enables managers to know what aspects to highlight in their communication strategies to increase fan page use and positive word-of-mouth. Research findings show managers that Facebook fan page content should provide valuable information, be fun and foster user interactions in order to improve user attitude and loyalty. Practical recommendations to reinforce consumer trust on Facebook fan pages are also provided.

Originality/value

– There are still too few studies that analyse the effects of trust and fan page dependency on fan page users’ loyalty. This work aims to combine the influence of dependency on fan pages, trust, attitude and Technology Acceptance Model beliefs in order to construct an improved model for fan page loyalty formation.