Relative Contribution Research Articles

From Public to Transnational Administration: A System-Level Perspective on Accountability Beyond State Borders1

With the growing scholarship on international bureaucracies, public administration research (PA) is transcending “methodological nationalism” boundaries. However, PA scholarship has not yet properly examined accountability issues, and a system-level perspective is necessary for that purpose, as the scholarship on “transnational administration” suggests. Relying on the contribution of international relations (IR) scholarship, which is more sensitive to accountability issues, this paper highlights the multifaceted policy-making configurations that have emerged transnationally and identifies the associated core accountability challenges. After considering the intraorganizational level of international bureaucracies studied by PA scholars, the paper examines accountability issues at the organizational and interorganizational levels of transnational governance spheres, where policy-making combines quiet politics with a crucial role for the unelected. The paper reviews the accountability of international organizations and the conflicting pressures to which they are subject. Then, it highlights the implications for accountability of the development of multilevel bureaucratic networks and of the trend toward informalization. Challenges to accountability are accentuated by the hybridization of governance, which is studied next. The paper also critically examines the operation of interdependent accountability “forums” in transnational governance and the accountability issues that affect them, before showing what IR scholarship can in turn learn from PA research.

Perception and Contribution of Public Relations to Society: What Does the Public Think? Insights from Türkiye

The aim of this study is to understand how the public perceives public relations and why it is perceived in that way by society. This research is related to the perception of public relations and is conducted in Türkiye. Semi-structured interviews with 30 people from different occupations/professions are conducted to identify their views on public relations. In addition to the perception of public relations, this study aims to find out the contribution of public relations to the organizations and society. Findings state that public relations is considered to have an important function for the organization and society. The Turkish participants of the study have an idea of public relations and are accurately describing some aspects of public relations. Their view is not negative, and they think that public relations contributes to society because it provides information to society from organizations. They also state that public relations should pay attention to the values of society. However, the public relations practitioner is perceived to favor the interest of the organization when a conflict between the organization and the public occurs.

Evaluating the relative contribution of patient effort and therapist skill in integrating homework into treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder.

Homework has historically been an integral component of cognitive behavioral interventions for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Previous studies differ in the measurement of therapy homework, resulting in inconsistent conclusions about its contributions to symptom reduction. Given the methodological burden associated with examining therapist skill within sessions, there has been no research evaluating the impact of both therapist and patient efforts on homework within and outside of the therapy session across protocols. We first examined the relative contribution of four homework-related variables to treatment outcomes of survivors of interpersonal violence (12 sessions; 58 survivors) diagnosed with PTSD and treated with cognitive processing therapy (CPT) in two randomized, controlled clinical trials. We then assessed the moderating effect of therapist competency in the homework element of CPT on these associations by examining therapist skill in 544 therapy sessions scored by independent raters. Perceived helpfulness of assignments emerged as the only significant predictor of PTSD symptom reduction (β = 0.48). Therapist homework competency moderated the relationship between time spent on homework and treatment outcome, such that more time spent on homework was associated with significantly poorer treatment response at low levels of therapist homework competency. Results suggest that patients' understanding of the direct contribution of homework to recovery is critical for increasing the effectiveness of the homework component of therapy. Therapist skill in incorporating homework effectively into the protocol is variable. It is essential that therapists ensure that patients' efforts (e.g., time dedicated to the task) are yielding clear results and perceived as fruitful. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

MODEL OPTIMALISASI CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT DALAM MENINGKATKAN UNIT ENTRY

This project aims to increase the number of unit entries at OtoXpert Karawang operated by Auto2000 through the optimization of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) model. The method used in this project is applied research with a qualitative and quantitative approach. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and analysis of relevant documents. The project results show that the implementation of the optimized CRM model can increase the number of inquiries, boost the number of customers making bookings, and optimize the digital marketing process. Strategies such as the use of digital advertising (Meta Ads), optimization of social media content, and the implementation of Flow Charts and SOPs for booking conversion and post-service follow-up, have significantly increased the number of unit entries at OtoXpert Karawang. The conclusion of this project is that the optimization of the CRM model implemented at OtoXpert Karawang successfully enhances the performance of customer relations contributions to unit entry. Recommendations are provided to continuously improve and develop CRM strategies to achieve more optimal results in the future.

Digital strategic collaborations in agriculture: a novel asset for local identity enhancement toward Agrifood 5.0

PurposeThe aim of this research is to elucidate the correlation between open innovation, digital strategies and networking in enhancing agricultural enterprises within the new perspective of Agrifood 5.0. As such, it contributes to making businesses more competitive, especially in the Italian agricultural sector, where small and medium-sized enterprises are highly fragmented. Numerous studies have asserted that the competitiveness of actors operating within a specific territory is closely linked to local identity and image enhancement. Agricultural organizations are undergoing a profound transformation, with technological assets emerging as catalysts for new synergies. Advanced technologies such as robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and automation (AI) are emerging as differentiating elements capable of further advancing the agricultural sector, transitioning it from Agrifood 4.0 to Agrifood 5.0. The empirical analysis of the research shows a positive correlation between a collaborative attitude and a propensity for innovation. Indeed, the data demonstrated that digital strategies and open innovation positively influence competitiveness in agricultural SMEs.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology employed in this study is mixed, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The quantitative aspect involves analysis of the dataset from the Italian Statistical Institute (ISTAT) through logistic regression, while the qualitative component entails analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of 174 agricultural cooperatives in southern Italian regions (Campania). This approach allows for a comprehensive understanding of the research topic, capturing both numerical trends and nuanced insights from interviews.FindingsAfter analyzing the data from the 7th General Census of Agriculture conducted by ISTAT, a clear understanding of the sector has emerged, revealing several potential research avenues. It is evident that innovation in the agricultural sector is often driven by the largest and best-capitalized production entities, primarily located in Italy. Conversely, smaller agricultural entities can benefit from networking as new technological assets act as catalysts for new synergies, innovation and competitiveness.Practical implicationsEnhancing the relational contribution within the network and humanizing a fragmented sector are crucial elements for promoting open innovation. Network structuring facilitates the transmission of managerial knowledge, contributing to an overall increase in the intellectual and relational capital of the agricultural sector. These factors, combined with open innovation, enhance the competitiveness of individual firms and elevate the brand of the entire sector, creating a conducive environment for transitioning toward Agrifood 5.0. This transition is characterized by increased interconnection, continuous innovation and overall prosperity. Specific studies on this topic are lacking in Italy, particularly in the southern regions. Therefore, this contribution focuses on investigating the Campania region.Originality/valueThe novelty of this study lies in its investigation of the relationship between agricultural enterprises and innovation in the context of enterprises networking strategies (i.e. associationism and/or cooperation), promoting competitiveness. The limitations of this study are related to the dimension of the sample selected and its relationship with other productive sectors.

BEATRICE: Bayesian Fine-mapping from Summary Data using Deep Variational Inference.

We introduce a novel framework BEATRICE to identify putative causal variants from GWAS statistics. Identifying causal variants is challenging due to their sparsity and high correlation in the nearby regions. To account for these challenges, we rely on a hierarchical Bayesian model that imposes a binary concrete prior on the set of causal variants. We derive a variational algorithm for this fine-mapping problem by minimizing the KL divergence between an approximate density and the posterior probability distribution of the causal configurations. Correspondingly, we use a deep neural network as an inference machine to estimate the parameters of our proposal distribution. Our stochastic optimization procedure allows us to simultaneously sample from the space of causal configurations. We use these samples to compute the posterior inclusion probabilities and determine credible sets for each causal variant. We conduct a detailed simulation study to quantify the performance of our framework against two state-of-the-art baseline methods across different numbers of causal variants and different noise paradigms, as defined by the relative genetic contributions of causal and non-causal variants. We demonstrate that BEATRICE achieves uniformly better coverage with comparable power and set sizes, and that the performance gain increases with the number of causal variants. We also show the efficacy BEATRICE in finding causal variants from the GWAS study of Alzheimer's disease. In comparison to the baselines, only BEATRICE can successfully find the APOE allele, a commonly associated variant of Alzheimer's. Thus, we show that BEATRICE is a valuable tool to identify causal variants from eQTL and GWAS summary statistics across complex diseases and traits.

Stereotype lift and stereotype threat effects on subgroup mean differences for cognitive tests: A meta-analysis of adult samples.

A large body of literature has studied the effect of stereotype threat and stereotype lift on cognitive test performance. Research on stereotype threat (ST) examines whether the awareness of a negative stereotype can decrease stereotyped group members' test performance. A less commonly studied influence of stereotypes is stereotype lift (SL), defined as an increase in a group's test performance due to not being part of a negative stereotype. For example, men might perform better on math tests if they are primed on the stereotype that men are better than women at math. Walton and Cohen (2003) previously meta-analyzed the impact of SL on cognitive tests, finding an overall d = 0.24. We report an updated meta-analysis on SL with more samples and moderator analyses. We then meta-analyzed between-group effects (majority-minority group differences both in the presence and absence of SL and ST) to compare their relative contributions to subgroup mean differences on cognitive tests. Our results indicate that SL has a small influence on cognitive test performance (d = 0.09, SDres = 0.19), and that subgroup mean differences result largely from between-group effects rather than from the effects of ST and SL. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Decomposing the Socio-economic Inequalities in Utilization of Full Antenatal Care in Jharkhand State, India

It is widely evidenced that low socio-economic status is significantly associated with poor health, but inequalities caused by social and economic factors are poorly quantified. This paper attempts to measure contributions of selected factors to the differences in full antenatal care (ANC) utilization in the state of Jharkhand, India, based on the third wave of District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS-3) data in 2007–2008. Full ANC is defined as having a minimum of three antenatal visits, at least two tetanus toxoid injections and receiving folic acid tablets for at least 90 days or more during the last pregnancy. Multivariate and decomposition statistical techniques were employed to examine the factors associated with utilization of ANC services and their contributions to inequalities in utilization. Results show that the factors with the largest contribution to utilization of ANC services were poor economic status of women (37.53%), mass media exposure (30.71%), and residence in a rural area (15.56%). The relative contributions of region, mothers’ education, age, and birth order of the women in generating inequalities were small. Therefore, to improve maternal health and to reduce socio-economic gaps in the state, more focus is needed on vulnerable sections of society and regions where the effects of government health programs hardly reach.

Not a Handful of “Nothin”— The Contribution of the Human Relations to Management Thought

Not a Handful of “Nothin”— The Contribution of the Human Relations to Management Thought

Exploring the Factors Controlling the Annual Range of Amazon Precipitation

Abstract The annual range (AR) of precipitation in the Amazon River basin has increased steadily since 1979. This increase may have resulted from natural variability and/or anthropogenic forcing, such as local land-use changes and global warming, which has yet to be explored. In this study, climate model experiments using the Community Earth System Model, version 2 (CESM2), were conducted to examine the relative contributions of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) variability and anthropogenic forcings to the AR changes in the Amazon rainfall. With CESM2, we design several factorial simulations, instead of actual model projection. We found that the North Atlantic SSTs fluctuation dominantly decreases the precipitation AR trend over the Amazon by −85%. In contrast, other factors, including deforestation and carbon dioxide, contributed to the trend changes, ranging from 25% to 35%. The dynamic component, specifically the tendency of vertical motion, made negative contributions, along with the vertical profiles of moist static energy (MSE) tendency. Seasonal-dependent changes in atmospheric stability could be associated with variations in precipitation. It is concluded that surface ocean warming associated with the North Atlantic natural variability and global warming is the key factor in the increased precipitation AR over the Amazon from 1979 to 2014. The continuous local land-use changes may potentially influence the precipitation AR in the future. Significance Statement The annual range (AR) in precipitation, the difference between wet- and dry-season precipitation, has increased from 1979 to 2014 in the Amazon. This increase may have resulted from global warming, deforestation, and sea surface temperature variability in North Atlantic and Pacific. To explore the role of each of these factors in altering the Amazon precipitation AR, five experiments were designed in the climate model (CESM). Among these experiment results, the effect of North Atlantic SSTs was the strongest. In the future, deforestation, global warming, and different ocean temperature states in the North Atlantic and Pacific may become increasingly influential on the changes in precipitation. Further investigation is needed to ascertain how the AR of precipitation in the Amazon will change.

Lower-Extremity Energetic Distribution During Rate-Controlled Ballet Jumps (Sautés) in Healthy Dancers.

Dancers frequently perform jumps in the context of a prolonged, continuous dance piece. The purpose of this study is to explore the lower-extremity energetics in healthy dancers performing repetitive dance jumps (sautés) before and after typical dance-specific choreography. Lower-extremity kinetic data were collected from 14 healthy female dancers during a series of sautés performed before and after 3minutes of dance. Percent contributions of the lower-extremity joints to the whole-limb mechanical energy expenditure during ground contact were calculated. The jumps performed at the beginning were compared with the jumps at the end of the dance choreography. Dancers maintained the jump rate and consistent whole-limb mechanical energy expenditure between the jump series. As expected, for both jump series, the sautés had greater relative energetic contribution from the ankle and knee as compared with lesser contribution from the hip and toe. However, we observed lesser contribution from the knee and greater contribution from the hip after a 3-minute dance. After performing typical dance choreography, the dancers demonstrated a distal to proximal redistribution of individual joints' contribution to whole-limb mechanical energy expenditure.

Lifestyle predictors of colorectal cancer in European populations: a systematic review

BackgroundColorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most prevalent cancer in Europe, with one-fifth of cases attributable to unhealthy lifestyles. Risk prediction models for quantifying CRC risk and identifying high-risk groups...

Stickiness: A New Variable to Characterize the Temperature and Humidity Contributions toward Humid Heat

Abstract Extreme wet-bulb temperatures (Tw) are often used as indicators of heat stress. However, humid heat extremes are fundamentally compound events, and a given Tw can be generated by various combinations of temperature and humidity. Differentiating between extreme humid heat driven by temperature versus humidity is essential to identifying these extremes’ physical drivers and preparing for their distinct impacts. Here we explore the variety of combinations of temperature and humidity contributing to humid heat experienced across the globe. In addition to using traditional metrics, we derive a novel thermodynamic state variable named “stickiness.” Analogous to the oceanographic variable “spice” (which quantifies the relative contributions of temperature and salinity to a given water density), stickiness quantifies the relative contributions of temperature and specific humidity to a given Tw. Consistent across metrics, we find that high magnitudes of Tw tend to occur in the presence of anomalously high moisture, with temperature anomalies of secondary importance. This widespread humidity dependence is consistent with the nonlinear relationship between temperature and specific humidity as prescribed by the Clausius–Clapeyron relationship. Nonetheless, there is a range of stickiness observed at moderate-to-high Tw thresholds. Stickiness allows a more objective evaluation of spatial and temporal variability in the temperature versus humidity dependence of humid heat than traditional variables. In regions with high temporal variability in stickiness, predictive skill for humid heat-related impacts may improve by considering fluctuations in atmospheric humidity in addition to dry-bulb temperature. Significance Statement Extreme humid heat increases the risk of heat stress through its influence over humans’ ability to cool down by sweating. Understanding whether humid heat extremes are generated more due to elevated temperature or humidity is important for identifying factors that may increase local risk, preparing for associated impacts, and developing targeted adaptation measures. Here we explore combinations of temperature and humidity across the globe using traditional metrics and by deriving a new variable called “stickiness.” We find that extreme humid heat at dangerous thresholds occurs primarily due to elevated humidity, but that stickiness allows for thorough analysis of the drivers of humid heat at lower thresholds, including identification of regions prone to low- or high-stickiness extremes.

Knowledge graph representation learning with relation-guided aggregation and interaction

Knowledge graph representation learning with relation-guided aggregation and interaction

Disentangling the intrinsic relaxivities of highly purified graphene oxide

The chemistry of contrast agents (CAs) for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications is an active area of research and, in recent work, it was shown that CA-based graphene oxide (GO) has valuable properties for biomedical uses. GO has a potential as MRI CAs thanks to several functionalities, like its ability to penetrate tissues and cell membranes, as well as easy coupling with therapeutic agents, therefore showing the potential for both a diagnostic and therapeutic role. In this study, we performed a thorough cleaning of the GO sample (synthesized using a modified Hummers method), minimizing the amount of residual manganese down to 73 ppm. Using a wide range of physical–chemical methods (morphology, chemical composition, elemental analysis, spectroscopies, and imaging), we characterized the intrinsic longitudinal and transverse relaxivities of highly purified GO nanosheets. X-band electron paramagnetic resonance allowed to recognize the paramagnetic species involved, and 1.0 T MRI was used to disentangle the relative contributions to the MRI contrast of pristine GO nanosheets arising from structural defects and residual paramagnetic manganese impurities embedded in the nanomaterial. Although experiments show that the MRI relaxivity of GO nanosheets arises from the cumulative effect of structural defects and paramagnetic impurities, we conclude that the latter contribution to the longitudinal and transverse relaxivities becomes irrelevant for highly purified (pristine) GO. This novel finding clearly demonstrates that, apart from trivial manganese inclusion, pristine GO produces an inherent MRI response via structural defects, and therefore it is on its own a suitable candidate as MRI contrast agent.

Multimodal Contrastive Transformer for Explainable Recommendation

Explanations play an essential role in helping users evaluate results from recommender systems. Various natural language generation methods have been proposed to generate explanations for the recommendation. However, they usually suffer from two problems. First, since user-provided review text contains noisy data, the generated explanations may be irrelevant to the recommended items. Second, as lacking some supervision signals, most of the generated sentences are similar, which cannot meet the diversity and personalized needs of users. To tackle these problems, we propose a multimodal contrastive transformer (MMCT) model for an explainable recommendation, which incorporates multimodal information into the learning process, including sentiment features, item features, item images, and refined user reviews. Meanwhile, we propose a dynamic fusion mechanism during the decoding stage, which generates supervision signals to guide the explanation generation. Additionally, we develop a contrastive objective to generate diverse explainable texts. Comprehensive experiments on two real-world datasets show that the proposed model outperforms comparable explainable recommendation baselines in terms of explanation performance and recommendation performance. Efficiency analysis and robustness analysis verify the advantages of the proposed model. While ablation analysis establishes the relative contributions of the respective components and various modalities, the case study shows the working of our model from an intuitive sense.

Blood Kinetics of Lipophilic and Proteinophilic Pollutants during Two Types of Long-Term Fast in King Penguins.

In vertebrates, fasting is an intricate physiological process associated with strong metabolic changes, yet its effect on pollutant residue variation is poorly understood. Here, we quantified long-term changes in plasma concentrations of 20 organochlorine and 16 perfluoroalkyl pollutants in king penguins Aptenodytes patagonicus during the breeding and molting fasts, which are marked by low and high levels of protein catabolism, respectively, and by strong lipid use. The profile of measured pollutants in plasma was dominated by perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS, initial relative contribution of 60%). Initial total pollutant concentrations were similar in molting (3.3-5.7 ng g-1 ww) and breeding penguins (range of 4.2-7.3 ng g-1 wet weight, ww). Long-term fasting (25 days) for molting and breeding led, respectively, to a 1.8- and 2.2-fold increase in total plasma pollutant concentrations, although the rate and direction of change were compound-specific. Hexachlorbenzene (HCB) and PFOS concentrations increased in plasma (net mobilization) during both types of fasting, likely due to lipid use. Plasma perfluoroundecanoate (PFUnDA) and perfluorotridecanoate (PFTrDA) concentrations increased in breeders (net mobilization) but decreased in molting individuals (net excretion), suggesting a significant incorporation of these pollutants into feathers. This study is a key contribution to our understanding of pollutant variation in blood during long-term fasting in wildlife.

A rationale for modelling hydrogen-induced softening in fcc single crystals

A rationale for modelling hydrogen-induced softening in fcc single crystals

Relationships between long-term exposure to major PM2.5 constituents and outpatient visits and hospitalizations in Guangdong, China

Relationships between long-term exposure to major PM2.5 constituents and outpatient visits and hospitalizations in Guangdong, China

75 Years of women representation in Afghanistan: Looking back to look forward

AbstractThis article analyzes barriers and facilitators to Afghan women's representation in the last 75 years, from Zahir Shah (1933–1973) to Ashraf Ghani (2014–2021) and now under the Taliban (2021–…). We conducted a qualitative analysis using administrative documents and related academic contributions from each period to address this topic. The analysis shows that the representation of women in Afghanistan's public administration (PA) has been limited and passive in terms of both numbers and impacts. Historically, Afghanistan's PA has remained a mostly patriarchal system, where prejudice and gender‐based discrimination are a reality in government organizational structures. Our findings show that socio‐economic and political realities have contributed to gender inequality and the underrepresentation of Afghan women in PA. These realities include international invasions, conflicts, frequent regime changes, and cultural elements, which encompass a strong traditional culture, specific religious and patriarchal mindsets, and an overall lack of attention to gender issues. Results also reveal that over the past 75 years, women have not been actively involved in the development and decision‐making processes in the country. As a result, Afghanistan has never experienced a representative PA that mirrors the demographical groups of society, notably women. This study indicates that the interests of Afghan women have mostly been ignored in the policy‐making process and that issues of diversity and gender equality in PA were not on the agenda of the different Afghan regimes.