bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Personalities and Beliefs of Political Executives
Authors: Schafer Mark , Smith Gary 
Published: August 2020

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the beliefs and personality characteristics of political executives. There is a rich and important history in these areas, and yet there is much room for future research as well. We discuss many of the important research questions being asked in the study of beliefs and personalities, and along the way we review the development of the field. In our review of the existing literature, we focus on both classics and more recent contributions, noting the evolution of the field from qualitative, thick descriptions to more scientific, quantitative approaches. We also note that contributions have been made with beliefs and personalities on either the independent or dependent side of the equation. We finish with a look to the future in these areas, calling primarily for more data and empirical work, but also additional development of theories and new methods.
Political Executives in Party-Based Dictatorships
Authors: Baturo Alexander 
Published: August 2020

AbstractThe longevity of party-based dictatorships can be attributed to the durable institutional framework primarily provided by the ruling political parties. In contrast to an earlier research programme that investigated politics within the political executive, more recent comparative literature on authoritarian politics has largely ignored the role of the political executive in particular. The distinction between a party-based dictatorial regime and the political executive within such a regime allows us to address important questions related to the logic of collective leadership, executive selection and deselection, intra-elite bargaining, and the relationship between party and state executive bodies. Due to the existing methodological difficulties of examining opaque politics within authoritarian regimes, future scholarship may address important questions related to the political executive, drawing from advances in text analytics and expert surveys.
Constructivist Approaches to the Study of Political Executives
Authors: Grube Dennis C. 
Published: August 2020

AbstractConstructivism is a theoretical perspective that embraces the inherent uncertainties of human experience. In the study of political executives, this has manifested itself as seeking to understand and analyse how the ideas of actors are expressed through discourse, and how discourse in turn interacts with culture, context, data and perceived interests to shape projections of political reality. Constructivists examine both how political actors seek to frame the world that they see and how the wider citizenry frame their own perceptions in return in a constant iterative and recursive process of communication. This chapter outlines how constructivist approaches have been applied to the study of political executives to date, and suggests some potentially fruitful areas of future research for the decade ahead.
The Use of Visual Statistical Features in Empirical Aesthetics
Authors: Graham Daniel 
Published: August 2020

AbstractEvolution generally demands that the brain take advantage of the probable statistical structure in the natural environment. Much research in recent decades has confirmed that regular statistical features in natural scenes—especially low-level spatial regularities—can help explain processing strategies in the human visual system. Basic statistical features in various classes of human-created images broadly match those found in natural scenes. Such regularities can be seen as evolved constraints on the visual structure of aesthetic images and therefore human visual aesthetics. Some researchers have also attempted to find statistical features whose variation from natural images is associated with variations in preference and other aesthetic variables. There is evidence that variations in statistical features of luminance and color could be exploited by the visual system in certain situations. However, there is much ambiguity and variability in most reported relationships between variations in image statistical features and variations in measures of human aesthetics. In contrast, basic statistical constraints that align with efficient visual system processing are almost never violated in aesthetic images. Put simply, statistical features may constrain but may not explain variability in visual aesthetics. The chapter concludes with an outlook on future directions for research.
Instantons and Bows for the Classical Groups
Authors: Cherkis Sergey A , Hurtubise Jacques 
Published: August 2020

AbstractThe construction of Atiyah, Drinfeld, Hitchin and Manin provided complete description of all instantons on Euclidean four-space. It was extended by Kronheimer and Nakajima to instantons on ALE spaces, resolutions of orbifolds $\mathbb{R}^4/\Gamma$ by a finite subgroup Γ⊂SU(2). We consider a similar classification, in the holomorphic context, of instantons on some of the next spaces in the hierarchy, the ALF multi-Taub-NUT manifolds, showing how they tie in to the bow solutions to Nahm’s equations via the Nahm correspondence. Recently Nakajima and Takayama constructed the Coulomb branch of the moduli space of vacua of a quiver gauge theory, tying them to the same space of bow solutions. One can view our construction as describing the same manifold as the Higgs branch of the mirror gauge theory as described by Cherkis, O’Hara and Saemann. Our construction also yields the monad construction of holomorphic instanton bundles on the multi-Taub-NUT space for any classical compact Lie structure group.
Modulation of Frontal Oscillatory Power during Blink Suppression in Children: Effects of Premonitory Urge and Reward
Authors: Miyakoshi Makoto , Jurgiel Joseph , Dillon Andrea , Chang Susanna , Piacentini John , Makeig Scott , Loo Sandra K 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
There is a dearth of studies examining the underlying mechanisms of blink suppression and the effects of urge and reward, particularly those measuring subsecond electroencephalogram (EEG) brain dynamics. To address these issues, we designed an EEG study to ask 3 questions: 1) How does urge develop? 2) What are EEG-correlates of blink suppression? 3) How does reward change brain dynamics related to urge suppression? This study examined healthy children (N = 26, age 8–12 years) during blink suppression under 3 conditions: blink freely (i.e., no suppression), blink suppressed, and blink suppressed for reward. During suppression conditions, children used a joystick to indicate their subjective urge to blink. Results showed that 1) half of the trials were associated with clearly defined urge time course of ~7 s, which was accompanied by EEG delta (1–4 Hz) power reduction localized at anterior cingulate cortex (ACC); 2) the EEG correlates of blink suppression were found in left prefrontal theta (4–8 Hz) power elevation; and 3) reward improved blink suppression performance while reducing the EEG delta power observed in ACC. We concluded that the empirically supported urge time course and underlying EEG modulations provide a subsecond chronospatial model of the brain dynamics during urge- and reward-mediated blink suppression.
Differentiating kinds of systemic chronic stressors with relation to psychotic-like experiences in late childhood and early adolescence: the stimulation, discrepancy, and deprivation model of psychosis
Authors: Vargas Teresa , Damme Katherine S.F. , Osborne K. Juston , Mittal Vijay A. 
Published: August 2020

AbstractINTRODUCTIONChronic stress exposure occurs at the systems level, and is a key etiological factor in the development of psychotic disorders. However, conceptualizations distinguishing the impact of distinct dimensions of stress exposure are lacking; further, the magnitude of effect for differing exposures has yet to be explored.METHODSExploratory factor analysis was conducted to distinguish domains of environmental exposures in a nationally representative sample of 7,446 youth from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Environmental exposures were associated to psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). The magnitude of associations was compared among different environmental exposures. As an exploratory aim, objective versus subjective measures of environmental risk exposure were compared.RESULTSSix factors were defined, four of which fit theoretically with the Stimulation Discrepancy, and Deprivation (SDD) theory of developmental stress exposure and psychosis. The three domains of stimulation (high attentional demands and lack of safety), discrepancy (low social capital, social exclusion and lack of belonging), and deprivation (lack of developmentally appropriate environmental enrichment) were associated with PLEs, as predicted. Compared to exposures in other domains, exposures in the deprivation domain exhibited a significantly stronger association with PLEs. Objective and subjective measures converged in direction of association, though self-report stimulation exhibited a significantly stronger association with PLEs compared to objective stimulation domain measures.DISCUSSIONCurrent results suggest considering distinct environmental exposures as they relate to psychosis liability could inform putative mechanisms and degrees of vulnerability. The approach offers a valuable perspective to health policy efforts aimed at psychopathology prevention and intervention efforts.
Analysis of SIR-Network Model on COVID-19 with respect to its impact on West Bengal in India
Authors: Khatua Debnarayan , Guha Debashree , Kar Samarjit , De Anupam , Samanta Eshan 
Published: August 2020

AbstractThe recent global pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) disease has prompted many researchers to formulate lock-down and quarantine scenarios while the main concern of the researchers is to model the spread and the possible duration of the COVID-19 infections and also research on how long this is going to last. It seems that most of the researchers have recognized lock-down as one of the major impact factors in their models. As a result of this in the absence of lock-down the models formulated would not contribute much significant results. Hence, in this work we decide to formulate a mathematical model which would be able to predict the spread and also the possible duration of the pandemic, by considering both partial lock-down and the corresponding unlocking situations. Employing SIR-network models and taking the various districts of highly populated areas of West Bengal, India as the nodes or vertices we attempt to model the spread and duration of the pandemic during both partial lock-down and unlock phases but separately. We consider the populations where the locally present people and the people who have undergone migration of some shorts are well mixed together. In the network that we have provided the pointed edges refer to the migrating workers that is those that move away from their regular habitats in want of work. We use this research to study not only the trends that are associated with COVID-19 outbreaks, but also to study the impacts of the Government policies and the improvisation of medical facilities on this outbreak in West Bengal. At the end, we attempt to throw light upon the crisis that the economy of the state may have to go through separately on partial lock-down and unlocking scenarios.
Probiotic consumption relieved human stress and anxiety symptoms via modulating the gut microbiota and neuroactive potential
Authors: Ma Teng , Jin Hao , Kwok Lai-Yu , Sun Zhihong , Liong Min-Tze , Zhang Heping 
Published: August 2020

AbstractStress has been shown to disturb the balance of human intestinal microbiota and subsequently cause mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression. The gut microbial communities are able to synthesize and/or consume various neuroactive metabolites, and preliminary human studies have also demonstrated the ability of probiotics to modulate the levels of neurotransmitter. However, the study and interpretation of the biological significance of microbial neuroactive compounds have been hindered by the lack of dedicated reference databases and corresponding human intestinal microbiota reference genomes. Our previous study showed that ingesting the probiotic strain, Lactobacillus (L.) plantarum P-8, for 12 weeks could alleviate stress and anxiety of stressed adults. The current study was a follow-up work aiming to further elucidate mechanisms behind the observed beneficial effects by performing deep analysis of the fecal metagenomes of the probiotic (n = 43) and placebo (n = 36) groups. Comparing with the probiotic group, the gut microbiomes of the placebo group showed significantly higher Bray-Curtis dissimilarity between weeks 0 and 12 (p < 0.05). Comparing with week 0, the Shannon diversity index of the placebo group decreased significantly at week 12 (t-test; p < 0.05), but such decrease was non-significant for the probiotic group. Additionally, the fecal metagenomes of the probiotic group showed significant increases in the species-level genome bins (SGBs) of Bifidobacterium adolescent, Bifidobacterium longum, and Fecalibacterium prausnitzii increased, while decreases in the SGBs of Roseburia faeci and Fusicatenibacter saccharivorans. Furthermore, the 12-week probiotic supplementation enhanced the diversity of neurotransmitter-synthesizing and/or -consuming SGBs, and the levels of some predicted microbial neuroactive metabolites (short chain fatty acids, gamma-aminobutyric acid, arachidonic acid, and sphingomyelin et.al). In conclusion, this study revealed the potential mechanism of probiotics in alleviating stress and anxiety via the gut-brain axis. The modulation of the intestinal microbiota by probiotics is an attractive strategy for managing stress and anxiety.
Controllable Fusion of Human Brain Organoids Using Acoustofluidics
Authors: Ao Zheng , Cai Hongwei , Wu Zhuhao , Ott Jonathan , Wang Huiliang , Mackie Ken , Guo Feng 
Published: August 2020

AbstractThe fusion of human organoids holds promising potential in modeling physiological and pathological processes of tissue genesis and organogenesis. However, current fused organoid models face challenges of high heterogeneity and variable reproducibility, which may stem from the random fusion of heterogeneous organoids. Thus, we developed a simple and versatile acoustofluidic method to improve the standardization of fused organoid models via a controllable spatial arrangement of organoids. By regulating dynamic acoustic fields within a hexagonal acoustofluidic device, we can rotate, transport, and fuse one organoid with another in a contact-free, label-free, and minimal-impact manner. As a proof-of-concept to model ventral tegmentum (VTA)-prefrontal cortex (PFC) projection, we acoustically fused human forebrain organoids (hFOs) and human midbrain organoids (hMOs) with the controllable alignment of neuroepithelial buds. We characterized the successful development of fused assembloids via robust tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) neuron projection, accompanied by an increase of firing rates and synchrony of excitatory neurons. Moreover, we found that our controllable fusion can promote neuron projection (e.g., range, length, and density), projection maturation (e.g., higher firing rate and synchrony), and neural progenitor cell (NPC) division in the assembloids. Thus, our acoustofluidic method would facilitate the standardization and robustness of organoid-based disease models and tissue engineering.
Stimulating satisfaction and loyalty: transformative behaviour and Muslim consumers
Authors: Mohamed Naushad , Taheri Babak , Farmaki Anna , Olya Hossein , Gannon Martin Joseph 
Published: August 2020

Purpose
This study aims to investigate the combinations of religiosity, cosmopolitanism and perceived destination image leading to satisfaction and loyalty amongst Muslim consumers within the Maldivian tourism and hospitality context.

Design/methodology/approach
Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this study reveals that diverse combinations of religiosity, cosmopolitanism and destination image dimensions stimulate satisfaction and loyalty in Muslim consumers.

Findings
Multiple recipes can be used to design compelling destinations that balance the desire for religiosity and cosmopolitanism characteristic of contemporary Muslim consumers. The results confirm the applicability of complexity theory in explaining Muslim consumer behaviour within the Islamic destination context.

Practical implications
Several implications for the hospitality and tourism industry are drawn from the results, with suggestions for future research provided. Each fsQCA recipe identifies distinct suggestions to shape the design of destination attributes and hospitality offerings to stimulate consumer satisfaction and loyalty.

Originality/value
Complexity theory was applied to assess the complex causal relationships among Muslim consumers’ religiosity, perceived destination image, cosmopolitanism, satisfaction and loyalty.
Tribological and physical properties of PTFE-NBR self-lubricating composites under water lubrication
Authors: Feng Wei , Yin Lei , Han Yanfeng , Wang Jiaxu , Xiao Ke , Li Junyang 
Published: August 2020

Purpose
This paper aims to explore the possibility of converting the nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) water-lubricated bearing material into a self-lubricating bearing material by the action of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) particles and water lubrication.

Design/methodology/approach
A group of experimental studies was carried out on a ring-on-block friction test. The physical properties, tribological properties and interface structure of PTFE-NBR self-lubricating composites filled with different percentages of PTFE particles were investigated.

Findings
The experimental results indicated that the reduction in friction and wear is a result of the formation of the lubricating film on the surface of the composites. The lubricating film was formed of a large amount of PTFE particles continuously supplied under water lubrication conditions and the PTFE particles here can greatly enhance the load capacity and lubrication performance.

Originality/value
In this study, the tribological properties of PTFE particles added to the NBR water-lubricated bearing materials under water lubrication were investigated experimentally, and the research was carried out by a ring-on-block friction test. It is believed that this study can provide some guidance for the application of PTFE-NBR self-lubricating.

Peer review
The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2020-0187/
Employee proactivity, work engagement, job resources and service recovery performance: a study of structural linkages
Authors: Zahoor Adil 
Published: August 2020

PurposeThis study explores the driver influence of employee proactive personality on service recovery performance with work engagement as mediator. The moderating role of job resources (social support, supervisory coaching and performance feedback) is also examined in the proactivity-performance linkage to analyze the interaction effect of employee proactivity and job resources on recovery performance.Design/methodology/approachPrimary data pertaining to the constructs under investigation were collected using a structured questionnaire from 432 dyads of employees from four companies operating in the Indian retail banking sector. Each dyad comprised of one frontline employee and her peer (colleague). Responses to work engagement and job resources were self-reported by frontline staff, as peer ratings were solicited for frontline employees' proactivity and recovery performance.FindingsEmpirical findings suggest that frontline employees' proactive personality significantly ameliorates their work engagement which in turn exerts a positive driver effect on their service recovery performance. In the case of less proactive employees (those with a proactivity score of less than mean value), service recovery performance is boosted when they receive constant feedback on their recovery performance. The results, however, did not provide significant evidence with regard to the moderating role of social support and supervisory coaching.Originality/valueThis study is one of the maiden attempts to relate employee proactive personality with service recovery performance. Since the research relating personality with recovery performance is largely underexplored yet fundamentally important, this study expands the available literature by examining as to what type of employee is more likely to deliver superior service recovery performance with little organizational support.
SECURE – a new business model framework for measuring start-up performance
Authors: Arshi Tahseen Anwer , Rao Venkoba , Islam Sardar , Morande Swapnil 
Published: August 2020

PurposeExisting business model frameworks show weak conceptual unification, a paucity of measurement focus and limitations when applied in emerging economies. The study proposes a new business model framework – “Start-up Evaluation Calculus Using Research Evidence” (SECURE). The purpose of this study is to allow the measurement of the impact of business model design on start-up performance in emerging economies.Design/methodology/approachData collected from 713 entrepreneurs in select cities of India, Oman and the United Arab Emirates is analyzed through structural equation modeling. The study uses measurement and structural models to examine the validity of measures and additionally tests the five hypothesized relationships proposed in the study.FindingsThe SECURE’s components comprising desirability, marketability, feasibility, scalability and viability showed validity and reliability. They synergistically demonstrated a statistically significant effect on a mix of financial and non-financial start-up performance outcomes. An alternative structural relationship that examined the impact of SECURE on only financial performance outcomes showed a weaker model fit. The findings indicate that a business model framework is useful when its ex ante measures show a positive causal effect on the desired performance outcomes.Practical implicationsThe scores obtained by the SECURE framework serve as an evaluative tool that informs entrepreneurs and start-ups on the readiness of their proposed, incubated or existing start-ups.Originality/valueReplacing subjective judgments with objective assessment criteria, SECURE is one of the first quantitative and performance-driven business model frameworks that contain measures from all functional domains of a start-up business. Start-ups can evaluate their business models against the SECURE model’s research-driven quantitative criteria and assess their impact on start-up performance.
Identifying the drivers of resistance to corporate social responsibility: the case of Lebanese SMEs
Authors: Elhajjar Samer , Ouaida Fadila 
Published: August 2020

PurposeAlthough many Lebanese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) express concern about social and environmental issues and report intentions to engage in pro-environmental activities, other enterprises still resist to embed a culture of social responsibility. After the analysis of major scholarship in the field, this paper defines corporate social responsibility (CSR) culture and provides an overview of the contemporary debate on it.Design/methodology/approachThrough exploratory study, this paper identifies reasons why Lebanese SMEs do not embody CSR into their culture. The empirical data were gathered through 18 in-depth interviews with questions based on the main research questions.FindingsFindings reveal that resistance to change is one of the main drivers of resistance to CSR. Collective and organizational culture can source this resistance to CSR.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to filling the gap in the literature in relation to CSR in small-medium firms and in particular Lebanese SMEs.