Effective forms of market orientation across the business cycle:a longitudinal analysis of business-to-business firms

Macroeconomic developments, such as the business cycle, have a remarkable influence on firms and their performance. In business-to-business (B-to-B) markets characterized by a strong emphasis on long-term customer relationships, market orientation (MO) provides a particularly important safeguard for firms against fluctuating market forces. Using panel data from an economic upturn and downturn, we examine the effectiveness of different forms of MO (i.e., customer orientation, competitor orientation, interfunctional coordination, and their combinations) on firm performance in B-to-B firms. Our findings suggest that the impact of MO increases especially during a downturn, with interfunctional coordination clearly boosting firm performance and, conversely, competitor orientation becoming even detrimental. The findings further indicate that both the role of MO and its most effective forms vary across industry sectors, MO having a particularly strong impact on performance among B-to-B service firms. The findings of our study provide guidelines for executives to better manage performance across the business cycle and tailor their investments in MO more effectively, according to the firm's specific industry sector.

Pharmacotherapies to manage diabesity:an update

Several pharmacotherapies have recently become available for addition to lifestyle measures to assist the management of coexistent type 2 diabetes and obesity. These are mostly administered as add-on to metformin or as alternative therapies if metformin is not appropriate. The sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (dapagliflozin, canagliflozin and empagliflozin) act by eliminating excess glucose in the urine. These agents provide a non-insulin-dependent mechanism to reduce hyperglycaemia and facilitate weight loss without causing frank hypoglycaemia. Their efficacy requires the individual to have adequate renal function. The glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists (exenatide, liraglutide, lixisenatide, dulaglutide and albiglutide [the last at the pre-launch stage at the time of writing]) are injected subcutaneously. Different members of the class offer different time courses for their onset and duration of action. Each potentiates insulin secretion and reduces glucagon secretion in a glucose-dependent manner to address prandial glycaemic excursions while avoiding interprandial hypoglycaemia. A satiety effect of these agents assists weight reduction, but delayed gastric emptying can cause initial nausea. The dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor class now comprises sitagliptin, vildagliptin, saxagliptin, linagliptin and alogliptin. These agents offer similar glucose-lowering efficacy without weight gain or hypoglycaemia by boosting the half-life of endogenous incretins, particularly GLP-1. A fixed-ratio injected combination of insulin degludec with liraglutide (IDegLira) has recently been launched and further agents to address hyperglycaemia and assist weight loss are advancing in development.

Exploring demographic information in social media for product recommendation

In many e-commerce Web sites, product recommendation is essential to improve user experience and boost sales. Most existing product recommender systems rely on historical transaction records or Web-site-browsing history of consumers in order to accurately predict online users’ preferences for product recommendation. As such, they are constrained by limited information available on specific e-commerce Web sites. With the prolific use of social media platforms, it now becomes possible to extract product demographics from online product reviews and social networks built from microblogs. Moreover, users’ public profiles available on social media often reveal their demographic attributes such as age, gender, and education. In this paper, we propose to leverage the demographic information of both products and users extracted from social media for product recommendation. In specific, we frame recommendation as a learning to rank problem which takes as input the features derived from both product and user demographics. An ensemble method based on the gradient-boosting regression trees is extended to make it suitable for our recommendation task. We have conducted extensive experiments to obtain both quantitative and qualitative evaluation results. Moreover, we have also conducted a user study to gauge the performance of our proposed recommender system in a real-world deployment. All the results show that our system is more effective in generating recommendation results better matching users’ preferences than the competitive baselines.

Connecting social media to e-commerce:cold-start product recommendation using microblogging information

In recent years, the boundaries between e-commerce and social networking have become increasingly blurred. Many e-commerce websites support the mechanism of social login where users can sign on the websites using their social network identities such as their Facebook or Twitter accounts. Users can also post their newly purchased products on microblogs with links to the e-commerce product web pages. In this paper, we propose a novel solution for cross-site cold-start product recommendation, which aims to recommend products from e-commerce websites to users at social networking sites in 'cold-start' situations, a problem which has rarely been explored before. A major challenge is how to leverage knowledge extracted from social networking sites for cross-site cold-start product recommendation. We propose to use the linked users across social networking sites and e-commerce websites (users who have social networking accounts and have made purchases on e-commerce websites) as a bridge to map users' social networking features to another feature representation for product recommendation. In specific, we propose learning both users' and products' feature representations (called user embeddings and product embeddings, respectively) from data collected from e-commerce websites using recurrent neural networks and then apply a modified gradient boosting trees method to transform users' social networking features into user embeddings. We then develop a feature-based matrix factorization approach which can leverage the learnt user embeddings for cold-start product recommendation. Experimental results on a large dataset constructed from the largest Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo and the largest Chinese B2C e-commerce website JingDong have shown the effectiveness of our proposed framework.

The Foodservice Industry's Social Responsibility Regarding the Obesity Epidemic, Part II: Incorporating Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility into Foodservice Operations

Just as all types of business firms are now expected to go beyond their profit-oriented activities in boosting the well-being of the community, so, too, is corporate social responsibility (CSR) expected from foodservice firms. The significance of the obesity epidemic, combined with the foodservice industry's role in the development of this epidemic, suggests that the industry has an ethical responsibility to implement CSR activities that will help reduce obesity, particularly among children. CSR should be seen as an efficient management strategy through which a firm voluntarily integrates social and environmental concerns into its business operations and its interactions with stakeholders. Although costs are associated with CSR initiatives, benefits accrue to the firm. Decisions regarding alternative CSR activities should be based on a cost-benefit analysis and calculation of the present value of the revenue stream that can be identified as resulting from the specific CSR activities. CSR initiatives should be viewed as long-term investments that will enhance the firms’ value. Key areas for foodservice firms' CSR activities include marketing practices, particularly practices impacting advertising to children and marketing that will enhance the firms’ visibility; portion-size modification; new-product development; and consistent nutrition labeling on menus.

Novas abordagens para configurações automáticas dos parâmetros de controle em comitês de classificadores

Significant advances have emerged in research related to the topic of Classifier Committees. The models that receive the most attention in the literature are those of the static nature, also known as ensembles. The algorithms that are part of this class, we highlight the methods that using techniques of resampling of the training data: Bagging, Boosting and Multiboosting. The choice of the architecture and base components to be recruited is not a trivial task and has motivated new proposals in an attempt to build such models automatically, and many of them are based on optimization methods. Many of these contributions have not shown satisfactory results when applied to more complex problems with different nature. In contrast, the thesis presented here, proposes three new hybrid approaches for automatic construction for ensembles: Increment of Diversity, Adaptive-fitness Function and Meta-learning for the development of systems for automatic configuration of parameters for models of ensemble. In the first one approach, we propose a solution that combines different diversity techniques in a single conceptual framework, in attempt to achieve higher levels of diversity in ensembles, and with it, the better the performance of such systems. In the second one approach, using a genetic algorithm for automatic design of ensembles. The contribution is to combine the techniques of filter and wrapper adaptively to evolve a better distribution of the feature space to be presented for the components of ensemble. Finally, the last one approach, which proposes new techniques for recommendation of architecture and based components on ensemble, by techniques of traditional meta-learning and multi-label meta-learning. In general, the results are encouraging and corroborate with the thesis that hybrid tools are a powerful solution in building effective ensembles for pattern classification problems.

Efeitos de fungicidas alternativos em folhas de Carthamus tinctorius L. (Asteraceae), potencial espécie para cultivo em agricultura familiar

The currently main development model on global society is driven by an economic rationality that endangers the environment and social justice. More and more, attention to this way of production and consumption is increasing, boosting research for sustainable development, with an environmental rationality that can harmonize nature preservation and welfare of all socioeconomic classes. One of the efforts on this sense is changing the sources supplying the energy demand, replacing fossil fuels for renewable and cleaner sources, such as biofuels. Carthamus tinctorius (safflower) is an oilseed crop with potential for biodiesel production, with good oil yield and chemical profile, allied to good adaptation to climates such like the northeastern semiarid lands of Brazil. With public policies fomentation, the use of this species may be an interesting alternative for family farming. In farming in general, the use of pesticides to prevent and combat diseases and plagues is common, which is not a sustainable practice. Thus, there are researched alternative, less dangerous substances. In this study, it was aimed to assess if neem (Azadirachta indica) leaf extract (20% m/v) and Bordeaux mixture (copper sulfate) have effects on safflower. It was also aimed to verify acceptance of farmers on safflower crop in Apodi, a municipality in Rio Grande do Norte state, Brazil, in view of it being localized in the aimed region for this crop cultivation. Besides that, understanding that the farmers’ knowledge and inclination to adopt the crop is fundamental for the introduction of this species and socioeconomic growth due to its exploration. In addition, a booklet with basic information on safflower was produced. In the field experiment, the fungicides were pulverized on plants cultivated in field experimental plots, with collection of leaf samples for analysis on anatomy, cuticle, and epicuticular wax morphology, the protective layer that interfaces with the surrounding ambient. In Apodi, forty-five farmers from Potiguar Cooperative of Apiculture and Sustainable Rural Development (COOPAPI) underwent semi-structured interviews, which also addressed their assessment on currently cultivated crops and perception of pesticide uses and sustainable alternatives. After comparing using analysis of variance, it was found that there was no difference between treatments in the experiment, as well as no anatomical or morphological modifications. Safflower acceptation among farmers was wide, with 84% of interviewees believing in a perspective of good incomes. The current scenario, comprised of low crop diversity, fragile in face of droughts and plagues, can partially explain this opinion. The booklet was effective in catching people attention for the species potential. There was wide acknowledgement on the importance of alternative pesticides, justified by health security. Based on the assessed parameter in the results of this research, the treatments here utilized may be recommended as fungicides for safflower. Given the crop susceptibility to fungi in heavy rainy period, it is advised that its potential introduction on the region shall be focused on semiarid areas.

High resolution study of narrow tailed radio galaxies in clusters

Clusters of galaxies are the most massive and large gravitationally bounded systems in the whole Universe. Their study is of fundamental importance to constrain cosmological parameters and to obtain informations regarding various kind of emission in different wavebands. In particular, in the radio domain, beside the diffuse emission, the study is focused on the radio galaxies emission. Radio galaxies in clusters can have peculiar morphology, since they interact with the intracluster medium (ICM) in which they are embedded. Particularly, in this thesis we focused our attention on the so-called Narrow-Angle Tailed radio galaxies (NAT), which present radio jets that are bent at extreme angle, up to 90 degrees, from their original orientation. Some NAT show a narrow extended structure and the two radio tails are not resolved even with high resolution radio observations. An example is provided by the source IC310, in the Perseus Cluster, whose structure has been recently interpreted as due to Doppler boosting effects of a relativistic jet oriented at a small angle with respect to the line of sight. If the structure is due to relativistic effects, this implies that the jets are relativistic at about 400 kpc from the core, but this is in contrast with unified models, which predict that for low-power radio source (NAT are classified as FRI radio galaxies) the jets decelerate to sub-relativistic speed within a few kpc from the core. To investigate this scientific topic, in this thesis we have analyzed the innermost structure of a sample of eleven radio galaxies showing a very narrow NAT structure. We can conclude that the structure of these radio galaxies is different from that of IC310. These radio galaxies are indeed strongly influenced by environmental effects and are similar to classical NAT sources.

O produtor familiar na pecuária leiteira : limites e potencialidades

The technological change is nowadays, comprehended as a playing field which involves cultural and economic processes of appreciation and depreciation of the social aspects of family unit. The exclusion of small producers from the activity is used as an argument to characterize that in the contemporary intercapitalist competition, the family ways of production take up restrict social positions of a technical progress and of a cultural and economic appreciation. The state, a coparcener of the modernization process, has its relevance as a financing agent, a technical capacitor, an infrastructure propitiator, that is, through macro and microeconomic policies which can create sustainable conditions to permit, mainly, not only the family producer to be inserted in the activity, but, above all, to remain in it. This way, this study aims to identify and analyze the family producer, through its limits and potentialities, with a thesis that this would be the main agent responsible for boosting the Brazilian milk production in quantity and quality. Therefore, results were compared obtained from a field survey with data collection via semi-structured open interviews in a sample of 108 producers effectively respondents, namely: 59 family farmers with active DAP (research focus) and 49 employers producers the municipality of Monte Alegre de Minas - MG. Technological indices were used to identify the developmental stage of the producers, thus allowing a comparative study between them. The field research covered all rural municipality of Monte Alegre de Minas – MG and, the result found that the majority of family farmers presented lower rates than technological employers producers. However, it allowed us to state also that the producer family and assisted by public policies, can be the agent of transformation of dairy farming.

Emergence of additional visible range photoluminescence due to aggregation of cyanine dye:astraphloxin on carbon nanotubes dispersed with anionic surfactant

Self-organization of organic molecules with carbon nanomaterials leads to formation of functionalized molecular nano-complexes with advanced features. We present a study of physical and chemical properties of carbon nanotube-surfactant-indocarbocyanine dye (astraphloxin) in water focusing on aggregation of the dye and resonant energy transfer from the dye to the nanotubes. Self-assembly of astraphloxin is evidenced in absorbance and photoluminescence depending dramatically on the concentrations of both the dye and surfactant in the mixtures. We observed an appearance of new photoluminescence peaks in visible range from the dye aggregates. The aggregates characterized with red shifted photoluminescence peaks at 595, 635 and 675 nm are formed mainly due to the presence of surfactant at the premicellar concentration. The energy transfer from the dye to the nanotubes amplifying near-infrared photoluminescence from the nanotubes is not affected by the aggregation of astraphloxin molecules providing important knowledge for further development of advanced molecular nano-complexes. The aggregation with the turned-on peaks and the energy transfer with amplified photoluminescence create powerful tools of visualization and/or detection of the nanotubes in visible and near-infrared spectral range, respectively, boosting its possible applications in sensors, energy generation/storage, and healthcare.

Maternal HIV-1 envelope-specific antibody responses and reduced risk of perinatal transmission.

Despite the wide availability of antiretroviral drugs, more than 250,000 infants are vertically infected with HIV-1 annually, emphasizing the need for additional interventions to eliminate pediatric HIV-1 infections. Here, we aimed to define humoral immune correlates of risk of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV-1, including responses associated with protection in the RV144 vaccine trial. Eighty-three untreated, HIV-1-transmitting mothers and 165 propensity score-matched nontransmitting mothers were selected from the Women and Infants Transmission Study (WITS) of US nonbreastfeeding, HIV-1-infected mothers. In a multivariable logistic regression model, the magnitude of the maternal IgG responses specific for the third variable loop (V3) of the HIV-1 envelope was predictive of a reduced risk of MTCT. Neutralizing Ab responses against easy-to-neutralize (tier 1) HIV-1 strains also predicted a reduced risk of peripartum transmission in secondary analyses. Moreover, recombinant maternal V3-specific IgG mAbs mediated neutralization of autologous HIV-1 isolates. Thus, common V3-specific Ab responses in maternal plasma predicted a reduced risk of MTCT and mediated autologous virus neutralization, suggesting that boosting these maternal Ab responses may further reduce HIV-1 MTCT.

Can a Broader Education Narrow the Gap? Evidence on Non-Academic Features of Schooling

Empirical studies of education programs and systems, by nature, rely upon use of student outcomes that are measurable. Often, these come in the form of test scores. However, in light of growing evidence about the long-run importance of other student skills and behaviors, the time has come for a broader approach to evaluating education. This dissertation undertakes experimental, quasi-experimental, and descriptive analyses to examine social, behavioral, and health-related mechanisms of the educational process. My overarching research question is simply, which inside- and outside-the-classroom features of schools and educational interventions are most beneficial to students in the long term? Furthermore, how can we apply this evidence toward informing policy that could effectively reduce stark social, educational, and economic inequalities?

The first study of three assesses mechanisms by which the Fast Track project, a randomized intervention in the early 1990s for high-risk children in four communities (Durham, NC; Nashville, TN; rural PA; and Seattle, WA), reduced delinquency, arrests, and health and mental health service utilization in adolescence through young adulthood (ages 12-20). A decomposition of treatment effects indicates that about a third of Fast Track’s impact on later crime outcomes can be accounted for by improvements in social and self-regulation skills during childhood (ages 6-11), such as prosocial behavior, emotion regulation and problem solving. These skills proved less valuable for the prevention of mental and physical health problems.

The second study contributes new evidence on how non-instructional investments – such as increased spending on school social workers, guidance counselors, and health services – affect multiple aspects of student performance and well-being. Merging several administrative data sources spanning the 1996-2013 school years in North Carolina, I use an instrumental variables approach to estimate the extent to which local expenditure shifts affect students’ academic and behavioral outcomes. My findings indicate that exogenous increases in spending on non-instructional services not only reduce student absenteeism and disciplinary problems (important predictors of long-term outcomes) but also significantly raise student achievement, in similar magnitude to corresponding increases in instructional spending. Furthermore, subgroup analyses suggest that investments in student support personnel such as social workers, health services, and guidance counselors, in schools with concentrated low-income student populations could go a long way toward closing socioeconomic achievement gaps.

The third study examines individual pathways that lead to high school graduation or dropout. It employs a variety of machine learning techniques, including decision trees, random forests with bagging and boosting, and support vector machines, to predict student dropout using longitudinal administrative data from North Carolina. I consider a large set of predictor measures from grades three through eight including academic achievement, behavioral indicators, and background characteristics. My findings indicate that the most important predictors include eighth grade absences, math scores, and age-for-grade as well as early reading scores. Support vector classification (with a high cost parameter and low gamma parameter) predicts high school dropout with the highest overall validity in the testing dataset at 90.1 percent followed by decision trees with boosting and interaction terms at 89.5 percent.

Eco-innovation – does additional engagement lead to additional rewards?

Purpose: Eco-innovation is any form of product, process or organisational innovation that contributes towards sustainable development. Firms can eco-innovate in a variety of ways. The purpose of this paper is to identify nine different eco-innovation activities – including such items as reducing material use per unit of output, reducing energy use per unit of output, reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) “footprint” – and the authors ask whether these act as substitutes or complements to one another. Design/methodology/approach: Eco-innovation is any form of product, process or organisational innovation that contributes towards sustainable development. Firms can eco-innovate in a variety of ways. In this paper the authors identify nine different eco-innovation activities – including such items as reducing material use per unit of output, reducing energy use per unit of output, reducing CO2 “footprint” – and the authors ask whether these act as substitutes or complements to one another. Findings: Introducing only one eco-innovation activity has little payoff (in terms of turnover per worker) with only those firms who reduce their CO2 “footprint” having higher levels of turnover per worker. When introducing more than one eco-innovation activity the authors find that certain eco-innovation activities complement one another (e.g. reducing material use within the firm at the same time as improving the ability to recycle the product after use) others act as substitutes (e.g. reducing material use within the firm at the same time as recycling waste, water or materials within the firm). Practical implications: The results suggest that firms can maximise their productive capacity by considering specific combinations of eco-innovation. This suggests that firms should plan to introduce eco-innovation which act as complements, thereby, boosting productivity. It also suggests that eco-innovation stimuli, introduced by policy makers, should be targeted at complementary eco-innovations. Originality/value: The paper analyses whether eco-innovations act as complements or substitutes. While a number of studies have analysed the importance of eco-innovation for firm performance, few have assessed the extent to which diverse types of eco-innovation interact with each other to complement or substitute for one another.

A monovalent chimpanzee adenovirus Ebola vaccine boosted with MVA

BACKGROUND The West African outbreak of Ebola virus disease that peaked in 2014 has caused more than 11,000 deaths. The development of an effective Ebola vaccine is a priority for control of a future outbreak. METHODS In this phase 1 study, we administered a single dose of the chimpanzee adenovirus 3 (ChAd3) vaccine encoding the surface glycoprotein of Zaire ebolavirus (ZEBOV) to 60 healthy adult volunteers in Oxford, United Kingdom. The vaccine was administered in three dose levels — 1×1010 viral particles, 2.5×1010 viral particles, and 5×1010 viral particles — with 20 participants in each group. We then assessed the effect of adding a booster dose of a modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) strain, encoding the same Ebola virus glyco- protein, in 30 of the 60 participants and evaluated a reduced prime–boost interval in another 16 participants. We also compared antibody responses to inactivated whole Ebola virus virions and neutralizing antibody activity with those observed in phase 1 studies of a recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus–based vaccine expressing a ZEBOV glycoprotein (rVSV-ZEBOV) to determine relative potency and assess durability. RESULTS No safety concerns were identified at any of the dose levels studied. Four weeks after immunization with the ChAd3 vaccine, ZEBOV-specific antibody responses were similar to those induced by rVSV-ZEBOV vaccination, with a geometric mean titer of 752 and 921, respectively. ZEBOV neutralization activity was also similar with the two vaccines (geo- metric mean titer, 14.9 and 22.2, respectively). Boosting with the MVA vector increased virus-specific antibodies by a factor of 12 (geometric mean titer, 9007) and increased glycoprotein-specific CD8+ T cells by a factor of 5. Significant increases in neutralizing antibodies were seen after boosting in all 30 participants (geometric mean titer, 139; P<0.001). Virus-specific antibody responses in participants primed with ChAd3 remained positive 6 months after vaccination (geometric mean titer, 758) but were significantly higher in those who had received the MVA booster (geometric mean titer, 1750; P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS The ChAd3 vaccine boosted with MVA elicited B-cell and T-cell immune responses to ZEBOV that were superior to those induced by the ChAd3 vaccine alone. (Funded by the Wellcome Trust and others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02240875.)

La Seguridad Energética y la Estrategia Global de Seguridad de la Unión Europea

El presente artículo plantea una definición ampliada del concepto de seguridad energética, yendo más allá del concepto clásico establecido por la Agencia Internacional de la Energía, incorporando cuestiones relativas a la eficiencia energética, la aceptabilidad del modelo energético y los retos que impone el cambio climático, pero sin perder de perspectiva las exigencias y las dinámicas competitivas económicas globales. Sobre la base de este concepto ampliado, se examina la evolución de la seguridad energética en el marco de la Unión Europea, con una atención particular a cómo se concibe la seguridad energética en la Estrategia Global de Seguridad de 2016.