bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Procurement strategy and outcomes of a new universities project in South Africa
Authors: Laryea Samuel 
Published: June 2019

Purpose
Construction project management outcomes in the literature typically portray significant deviations from expected outcomes. Various theories from studies that focus superficially on causes of project cost and time overruns rather than root causes have not addressed this problem. The need is for a better understanding of how procurement strategy provides a fundamental means to address this problem. The purpose of this paper is to examine the procurement strategy used to deliver a new universities project in South Africa within budget and to ascertain its influence on the outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach
A case study was designed to provide a comprehensive and intensive methodology to identify and examine the construction procurement strategy and its influence on the project outcomes. Document analyses and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data on the construction procurement strategy and outcomes from the client team.

Findings
The evidence brought forward demonstrates that the successful outcome was largely a consequence of the client team, procurement strategy and systems of delivery. However, the collaborative procurement strategy formed the basis of the successful project delivery and outcomes. A general observation from the data is that an appropriate construction procurement strategy developed by an experienced client team and proactively implemented by an integrated delivery team working collaboratively is likely to achieve the intended project outcomes.

Practical implications
The findings show three critical keys to achieving intended outcomes – people, procurement strategy and systems of delivery at the governance, portfolio, programme and project management levels.

Originality/value
The value of this paper lies in using a comprehensive methodology to study the relationship between procurement strategy and outcomes. The findings can be applied by client teams to achieve better outcomes and value for money in infrastructure projects.
Predicting the project time and costs using EVM based on gray numbers
Authors: Nadafi Samira , Moosavirad Seyed Hamed , Ariafar Shahram 
Published: June 2019

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine the project completion time and cost under non-deterministic conditions using interval gray numbers (IGNs).

Design/methodology/approach
The earned value management (EVM) method based on the IGN has been developed.

Findings
The EVM method based on the IGN has been verified by a numerical example that can be applied to construction projects.

Practical implications
The EVM method, based on the gray numbers, reduces the budget and time shortage risk. Also, using this method, the managers would not be restricted to provide very exact values in their progress reports in the non-deterministic conditions.

Originality/value
One notable and significant point in all projects during the execution process is to estimate the project completion time and cost. However, non-deterministic conditions for both planned and actual physical completion percentage of projects have not been considered for predicting the project completion time and cost in the literature. Therefore, the novelty of this paper is the prediction of project completion time and cost under non-deterministic conditions using IGN.
Design effectiveness of academic library web sites
Authors: Abifarin Fasola P. , Imavah Shaka Apodoghe , Olobashola Ayodele S. 
Published: June 2019

Purpose
Academic library websites need evaluation to determine whether users can derive useful experiences while visiting them to perform tasks. This is more so because visiting an academic library website is by voluntary action rather than compulsion as is the case with university, polytechnic and college sites where students must conduct academic transactions that cannot be reasonably avoided. The result of such an evaluation provides signposts for improvement so that academic library websites can continue to be useful to their users. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess the structural effectiveness of academic library websites in Nigeria.

Design/methodology/approach
The case study, research strategy and survey research approach were adopted for the study. Through a Web search, 14 universities, one polytechnic and one college of education were identified while three academic library websites were selected for the study. The evaluation of the websites was un-moderated and conducted remotely by user participants who were recruited across the three tertiary institutions under study. A five-point scale questionnaire served as the research instrument while data were presented in tables and analyzed using the median score. The Kruskall–Wallis test by ranks was used to test the null hypothesis at a five per cent level of significance.

Findings
Out of the 20 items presented for assessment, Group 1 and 2 disagreed to 11 (55 per cent) while agreeing on the remaining 9 (45 per cent) on Lib 1 and Lib 2 websites. Group 3 agreed to 11 (55 per cent) while disagreeing on 9 (45 per cent) on the Lib 3 website. The null hypothesis proposed for the study was rejected as the p-value of 0.04 was significant at p < 0.05. This indicated that most of the critical issues pertaining to design effectiveness were perceived to be ineffective.

Originality/value
The findings from this study call for a review of the design of academic library websites in Nigeria so that users can identify which websites are easier to use.
Accelerate proposal generation in R-CNN methods for fast pedestrian extraction
Authors: Wang Juncheng , Li Guiying 
Published: June 2019

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a novel region-based convolutional neural networks (R-CNN) approach that is more efficient while at least as accurate as existing R-CNN methods. In this way, the proposed method, namely R2-CNN, provides a more powerful tool for pedestrian extraction for person re-identification, which involve a huge number of images and pedestrian needs to be extracted efficiently to meet the real-time requirement.

Design/methodology/approach
The proposed R2-CNN is tested on two types of data sets. The first one the USC Pedestrian Detection data set, which consists of three sub-sets USC-A, UCS-B and USC-C, with respect to their characteristics. This data set is used to test the performance of R2-CNN in the pedestrian extraction task. The speed and performance of the investigated algorithms were collected. The second data set is the PASCAL VOC 2007 data set, which is a common benchmark data set for object detection. This data set was used to analyze characteristics of R2-CNN in the case of general object detection task.

Findings
This study proposes a novel R-CNN method that is both more efficient and more accurate than existing methods. The method, when used as an object detector, would facilitate the data preprocessing stage of person re-identification.

Originality/value
The study proposes a novel approach for object detection, which shows advantages in both efficiency and accuracy for pedestrian detection task. It contributes to both data preprocessing for person re-identification and the research on deep learning.
Flexible polypyrrole-coated conductive fabric sensor for large deformation measurement
Authors: Zhang Chi , Xue Pu , Luo Yubo 
Published: June 2019

Purpose
Strain sensors have been widely used to measure the strain of the structure. However, the ordinary sensing elements are not suitable for measuring large deformation on an irregular surface, which limits their applications. Recently, flexible sensors have attracted extensive interest because they can overcome the shortage of the ordinary sensing elements. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the whole measurement process of strain sensing behavior and the dimension design of fle3xible strain sensing system use the macroscopic measurement method of material tensile test to accurately measure the resistance change with strain. Afterwards, combining electrical components, the flexible strain sensors are produced for two biomedical applications: the wearable data-collecting gloves and rehabilitation training system.

Findings
The results show that the developed conductive fabric can exhibit high sensitivity, large workable strain range (>50 percent) under simple and repeated tension and good stability. Both applications demonstrate that the polypyrrole-coated fabric sensor can successfully measure the large and repeat strain, capture the motion of body and display corresponding information almost in real time.

Originality/value
The limitation lies in the lack of a holistic strain sensing mechanism study, and the lack of a corresponding theoretical model to explain the experimental results.
Application of public blockchain to control the immutability of data in online scientific periodicals
Authors: Tarkhanov Ivan , Fomin-Nilov Denis , Fomin Michael 
Published: June 2019

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of content immutability and integrity of online scientific periodicals on the sites of small publishers that can be violated not only by the external hack of the publisher’s site but also by publisher’s and author’s misconduct or by submitting different versions of a periodical to different sites.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors defined a list of requirements that verify online scientific publications immutability and integrity. Then, the authors analyzed existing projects and recently emerged information on security technologies and identified challenges met during the development and testing. The use of the public blockchain network Ethereum as a secure storage location for data was explained.

Findings
The authors developed the method of checking online scientific periodicals for immutability and presented ecosystem architecture to control immutability and integrity of data. On the example of the online periodical “Istoriya”, it was demonstrated how the immutability of online scientific publication has been verified with the use of the public blockchain over a six-month period. First, operating results were evaluated; challenges hampering the implementation of the suggested ecosystem on Ethereum now were identified; and potential advantages of the suggested approach as compared to similar projects were discovered.

Research limitations/implications
The considered prototype is not a ready-to-use system, but in future providing higher transparency and the development of general distributed ecosystem small publishers will have new opportunities for development given that the issues of scalability, reliability and operating speed on a public blockchain will be addressed. Introduction of the described ecosystem may even provoke some changes on such conservative market as that of publishing of academic papers.

Originality/value
This research is one of the first attempts to expand digital object identifier technology with the use of additional verifications based on the data storage and search in the public blockchain. The suggested idea is the example of “blockchainified science” that was brought to implementation in a real online journal. This method has some advantages compared to Crossmark service.
Banks’ audit committees, audit firm alumni and fees paid to audit firm
Authors: Ittonen Kim , Myllymäki Emma-Riikka , Tronnes Per Christen 
Published: June 2019

PurposeThis paper focuses on bank audit committees and examines whether audit committee members who are former auditors are associated with the acquisition of audit and non-audit services from their former employers.Design/methodology/approachThe study empirically examines a sample of large banks that are included in the S&P Composite 1500.FindingsThe paper reports significantly lower audit fees and a higher proportion of non-audit fees to total fees when the audit committee chair is an alumnus of the incumbent audit firm. Moreover, additional analysis reveals that these findings are stronger for banks with more earnings management.Research limitations/implicationsOverall, the findings indicate that audit firms might consider banks using their alumni as audit committee chairs to be less risky or easier to audit, thus requiring relatively less effort from the auditors. The reduced effort required to audit clients with audit firm alumni on their audit committees then has the effect of reducing the audit fees charged. Alternatively, their auditing experience and cognitive proximity might influence the assessment of the need for auditing or the ability to negotiate lower audit fees on the part of audit firm alumni.Originality/valueThis paper provides empirical evidence of the association between audit firm alumni in influential positions on an audit committee and fees paid to those audit firms in the banking industry. The findings contribute to the literature by suggesting that banks with affiliated former auditors chairing their audit committees not only have significantly lower audit fees but also a higher proportion is spent on non-audit services.
Impact of ownership structure and dividend on firm performance and firm risk
Authors: Rajverma Abhinav Kumar , Misra Arun Kumar , Mohapatra Sabyasachi , Chandra Abhijeet 
Published: June 2019

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of ownership structure and dividend payouts over firm’s profitability, valuation and idiosyncratic risk. The authors further investigate if corporate performance is sector dependent.

Design/methodology/approach
The study employs signaling and bankruptcy theories to evaluate the influence of ownership structure and dividend payout over a firm’s corporate performance. The authors use a panel regression approach to measure the performance of family owned firms against that of widely held firms.

Findings
The study confines to firms operating out of emerging markets. The results show that family owned firms are dominant with concentrated ownership. The management pays lower dividend leading to lower valuation and higher idiosyncratic risk. The study further illustrates that family ownership concentration and family control both influence firm performance and level of risk. The findings indicate that information asymmetry and under diversification lead to increased idiosyncratic risk, resulting in the erosion of firm’s value. Results also confirm that firms paying regular dividends are less risky and, hence, command a valuation premium.

Originality/value
The evidence supports the proposition that information asymmetry plays a significant role in explaining dividend payouts pattern and related impacts on corporate performance. The originality of the paper lies in factoring idiosyncratic risk while explaining profitability and related valuation among emerging market firms.
Functional studies for a dominant mutation in the EDAR gene responsible for hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia
Authors: Okita Tomoko , Asano Nobuyuki , Yasuno Shuichiro , Shimomura Yutaka 
Published: June 2019

AbstractHypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia (HED) is a rare genetic disorder characterized by hypotrichosis, hypohidrosis and hypodontia. The disease shows X‐linked recessive, autosomal dominant or autosomal recessive inheritance traits. The X‐linked form of HED is caused by mutations in the EDA gene, while autosomal forms result from mutations in either EDAR or EDARADD genes. Regarding recessive mutations in the EDAR gene, the pathomechanisms have been well characterized. However, it has remained largely unknown how dominant mutations in the EDAR cause HED. In this study, we performed in vitro analyses for a dominant EDAR gene mutation, p.F398*, as a representative. We showed that the p.F398* mutant EDAR completely lost its affinity to EDARADD, and suppressed the downstream nuclear factor‐κB activation induced by wild‐type EDAR in a dominant‐negative manner. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the mutant EDAR was capable of binding with the wild‐type EDAR, which led to reduced interaction between the wild‐type EDAR and EDARADD. Our findings not only underscore an essential role of the interaction between EDAR and EDARADD in ectodermal development, but also disclose, in part, the molecular basis of autosomal dominant HED.
Implications of a long‐term mast seeding cycle for climatic entrainment, seedling establishment and persistent monodominance in a Neotropical, ectomycorrhizal canopy tree
Authors: Henkel Terry W. , Mayor Jordan R. 
Published: June 2019

AbstractIn Guyana, we examined temporal variability and ecological consequences of seed‐based reproduction in the ectomycorrhizal, monodominant leguminous canopy tree Dicymbe corymbosa using an extensive 2003–2017 dataset encompassing two masting events. Annual seed output, predation and nutrient investment were recorded in primary D. corymbosa forests. Seedling establishment, survival and growth were monitored. Mast seeding occurred in 2003 and 2016 and low seeding events occurred every 3–4 years, separated by non‐reproductive years. In accordance with predicted climatic entrainment of regional masting, El Niño‐intensified dry seasons preceded each masting event but not low seeding events. The regularly variable seeding pattern by D. corymbosa suggests that innate supra‐annual periodicity may initiate D. corymbosa flowering. Internal resource thresholds may also contribute to periodicity, but El Niño‐associated intensified dry seasons appear necessary to entrain mass flowering and successful mast seeding across the region. In accordance with a predator satiation hypothesis, seed predation was proportionally higher during low seed years. Competitive gains from the 2016 masting event were evidenced by strong replenishment of declining seedling pools.
Examining a Hypothesis about the Past‐Oriented Aorist Infinitive in Post‐Classical Greek
Authors: Kavčič Jerneja 
Published: June 2019

AbstractI examine a hypothesis concerning the decline of the past‐oriented aorist infinitive in Greek in a corpus of private letters dating to between the third century BC and the sixth century AD. According to the hypothesis examined, the decline of the past‐oriented aorist infinitive was related to the aspectual value of the aorist infinitive in Greek and to the spread of the perfect in the cross‐linguistic sense of the word (Haspelmath 1992). In addition to supporting the hypothesis examined, the corpus also sheds new light on the syntax of infinitive clauses in the period investigated. It is observed that, when found in the corpus, past‐oriented aorist infinitives tend to be used in specific, predictable contexts that support their past‐orientedness, and they have a parallel in the use of the aorist injunctive in Vedic Sanskrit. This phenomenon is consistent with the hypothesis examined in that it assumes that the aorist infinitive encoded the perfective aspect rather than tense.
SnowedOut Atlanta: Examining digital emergence on facebook during a crisis
Authors: Pyle Andrew S. , Morgoch Meredith L. , Boatwright Brandon C. 
Published: June 2019

AbstractIndividuals in emergencies form spontaneous, emergent groups to respond and recover. With the rise of social media use in crises, academics and professionals must be aware of how groups digitally coordinate emergent response efforts. This paper examines digital emergence through the case of SnowedOut Atlanta, a Facebook group formed during the 2014 ice storms in Atlanta. The posts and actions of the group members are in line with those of traditional emergent groups. For example, group members shared informational, material, and emotional support. The findings also provide implications for practitioners and insight into the communication of such groups. In particular, emergency managers have an opportunity to seek out and partner with these types of groups in future similar events.
Bilateral brachial synovial cysts in systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis: Case report and literature review
Authors: Zheng Qi , Lu Meiping 
Published: June 2019

AbstractAimTo review the clinical features of brachial synovial cyst.MethodA case of bilateral brachial synovial cysts is described in a child suffering from systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis during a relapse. Magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasonography were conducted to further evaluate the nature of the cysts. The case is compared with known cases in a literature review.ResultsReview of the literature showed that brachial synovial cysts occur most commonly in systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis. It is considered that uncontrolled systemic inflammation and recurrent disease activity might be the cause of synovial cysts.ConclusionBrachial synovial cyst is a rare manifestation of juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Uncontrolled systemic inflammation inducing chronic damage to joint structure may be the primary cause of synovial cyst formation.
Cross‐cultural adaptation of the Hamilton axial spondyloarthritis questionnaire and development of a Chinese version in a multi‐ethnic Asian population
Authors: Xiang Ling , Teo Edmund Pek Siang , Low Andrea Hsiu Ling , Leung Ying Ying , Fong Warren , Xin Xiaohui , Gandhi Mihir , Kwan Yu Heng , Uy Elenore J. B. , Hamilton Louise , Thumboo Julian 
Published: June 2019

AbstractObjectiveTo cross‐culturally adapt the Hamilton axial spondyloarthritis (axial SpA) screening questionnaire and develop a Chinese version for use in a multi‐ethnic Asian population in Singapore.MethodsConsenting participants newly referred from primary care to a rheumatology specialist outpatient clinic for evaluation of possible axial SpA were studied. The original axial SpA questionnaire was revised based on inputs from cognitive debriefing interviews (CDIs) and discussions with an expert panel of rheumatologists and the developer. Forward and back translations of the adapted English version were also reviewed by the expert panel and the developer. The common translation produced was tested in CDIs with Chinese‐speaking participants. Adapted English and Chinese versions were pilot‐tested in a separate group of similar participants.ResultsParticipants were recruited for English (n = 25) and Chinese CDIs (n = 15, relatively older and less frequently presented with axial SpA symptoms), respectively. Alternative terms and explanatory notes were added to difficult medical terms to improve the understandability of the adapted English version. English medical terms were retained in the Chinese version. Pilot‐testing of the adapted axial SpA questionnaire was performed on 116 participants, all of whom reported ease of comprehension with both adapted versions. Only one participant was diagnosed with axial SpA, who also scored positive on the adapted axial SpA questionnaire.ConclusionThe adapted axial SpA questionnaire demonstrated good sensitivity in the pilot‐testing and appears to be a promising tool for facilitating early identification of axial SpA cases in the multi‐ethnic Asian population.
Prediction, Proxies, and Power
Authors: Carroll Robert J. , Kenkel Brenton 
Published: June 2019

AbstractMany enduring questions in international relations theory focus on power relations, so it is important that scholars have a good measure of relative power. The standard measure of relative military power, the capability ratio, is barely better than random guessing at predicting militarized dispute outcomes. We use machine learning to build a superior proxy, the Dispute Outcome Expectations (DOE) score, from the same underlying data. Our measure is an order of magnitude better than the capability ratio at predicting dispute outcomes. We replicate Reed et al. (2008) and find, contrary to the original conclusions, that the probability of conflict is always highest when the state with the least benefits has a preponderance of power. In replications of 18 other dyadic analyses that use power as a control, we find that replacing the standard measure with DOE scores usually improves both in‐sample and out‐of‐sample goodness of fit.