Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of the internal audit on the accounting disclosure in Jordanian banks

This paper focuses on identifying most in influencing factors of internal audit on the accounting disclosure in Jordanian Commercial Banks (JCBs). The perceptions of JCBs' internal auditors have been investigated. In general it was found that the respondents believe that the role of the internal auditor in the accounting disclosure in the Jordanian banking sector ranges from satisfactory to very good. The results indicate a positive and significant correlation between accounting disclosure and the proficiency of auditor. The results of this study make a contribution to existing literature in the area of factors affecting the role of the internal auditor in the accounting disclosure in eastern developing countries such as Jordan. In addition, this research adds further evidence to the value of studying auditing efficiency.
Effect of different nitrogenous fertilizers on the growth and yield of three years old tea (Camellia sinensis) plants

Effect of different nitrogenous fertilizers on the growth and yield of three years old tea ( Camellia sinensis L) plants was investigated at National Tea Research Institute, Sh inkiari, (Mansehra) during 2005-06. The nitrogenous fertilizers used were ammonium sulphate, calcium ammonium nitrate, urea a nd nitrophos along with control receiving no fertil izer. All the nitrogenous fertilizers were applied at the rate of 100 kg N acre -1 along with the constant doses of P and K (25 kg, 1 5 kg acre, respectively). It was found that effect of all th e fertilizers on increase of plant height, plant ca nopy, fresh tea leaves yield and made tea yield was non significant at 5% probability, however ammonium sulphate produced the highest increase in plant height (63.95 cm), plant canopy (3763.3 cm ), fresh tea leaves yield (1695.50 kg acre ) and made tea yield (339.30 kg acre) compared to the other fertilizer treatments. Rega rding made tea yield, the response of other fertili zers was in the order of nitrophos (327.40 kg acre ), urea (322.80 kg acre ) and calcium ammonium nitrate (314.16 kg acre ) r spectively. Minimum made tea yield (253.40 kg acre ) was recorded in control. Ammonium sulphate as a s ource of nitrogen (100 kg acre) along with P (25 kg acre ) and K (15 kg acre ) is recorded for the best growth and yield of tea under the agroclimatic condition of Mansehra, Pakistan.
Effect of microencapsulation on functional and technological features of probiotic and starter cultures

Microencapsulation is currently described as the technique that permits the physical containment into functional matrices of several categories of compounds that can benefit from this procedure. Vitamins, polyphenols, bacteriocins, living cells and other many sensitive compounds can be efficiently protected, delivered, released and easier handled when in microencapsulated form during their utilization and storage. Microencapsulation of living cells has gradually become an important area of intense research and industrial development within the wider field of microencapsulation. First applications of encapsulated microorganisms in the food sector were mainly confined to fermentation processes in which a higher recovery of enzymes, ethanol, lactic acid or antimicrobial peptides alongside a higher cell density were obtained with the use of encapsulated microorganisms. More recently, the encapsulation of probiotic bacteria has gained a great attention because of the undoubted potentiality of this technology to provide protection toward probiotics by enhancing their capability to cope with different stress factors. Probiotics are defined as live microorganisms able to confer health benefits to the host when administered in adequate amounts and, in order for probiotics to preserve their expected health-promoting effects, they need to survive during passage through the gastrointestinal tract. Accordingly, the most investigated area in the field of probiotic encapsulation is the one dealing with the development of microcapsule systems able to protect bacteria against gastrointestinal barriers and to efficiently mediate their delivery to the intestine, their target site of action. Furthermore, because probiotics are becoming an important resource for the maintenance and restoration of the normal intestinal microbiota, and in general for the human wellbeing, a great attention is currently given to the extension of the categories of foods carrying probiotics. At this regard, microencapsulation is also regarded as a valid strategy for the improvement of probiotic viability against technological and food-related hurdles in order to i) increase their survival during the manufacturing and the storage of foods and iii) to contribute to the development of innovative probiotic food carriers. Despite the relevant improvements toward the useful application of microencapsulation technology to probiotic microorganisms, some challenges still exist and need to be addressed to enable wider industrial acceptance of cell microcapsules in various production processes. Typical examples are the development of easy to use, stable and cheap microcapsules suitable for food applications, the monitoring of cell stability along the entire food production including a real storage period and the assessment of the effect of new micro-environment created within the capsules on cell metabolism. This PhD thesis deals with this context.
Antibiotic Susceptibility and Sequence Type Distribution of Ureaplasma Species Isolated from Genital Samples in Switzerland

ABSTRACT Antibiotic resistance in Ureaplasma urealyticum/Ureaplasma parvum and Mycoplasma hominis is an issue of increasing importance. However, data regarding the susceptibility and, more importantly, the clonality of these organisms are limited. We analyzed 140 genital samples obtained in Bern, Switzerland, in 2014. Identification and antimicrobial susceptibility tests were performed by using the Mycoplasma IST 2 kit and sequencing of 16S rRNA genes. MICs for ciprofloxacin and azithromycin were obtained in broth microdilution assays. Clonality was analyzed with PCR-based subtyping and multilocus sequence typing (MLST), whereas quinolone resistance and macrolide resistance were studied by sequencing gyrA, gyrB, parC, and parE genes, as well as 23S rRNA genes and genes encoding L4/L22 ribosomal proteins. A total of 103 samples were confirmed as positive for U. urealyticum/U. parvum, whereas 21 were positive for both U. urealyticum/U. parvum and M. hominis. According to the IST 2 kit, the rates of nonsusceptibility were highest for ciprofloxacin (19.4%) and ofloxacin (9.7%), whereas low rates were observed for clarithromycin (4.9%), erythromycin (1.9%), and azithromycin (1%). However, inconsistent results between microdilution and IST 2 kit assays were recorded. Various sequence types (STs) observed previously in China (ST1, ST2, ST4, ST9, ST22, and ST47), as well as eight novel lineages, were detected. Only some quinolone-resistant isolates had amino acid substitutions in ParC (Ser83Leu in U. parvum of serovar 6) and ParE (Val417Thr in U. parvum of serovar 1 and the novel Thr417Val substitution in U. urealyticum). Isolates with mutations in 23S rRNA or substitutions in L4/L22 were not detected. This is the first study analyzing the susceptibility of U. urealyticum/U. parvum isolates in Switzerland and the clonality outside China. Resistance rates were low compared to those in other countries. We hypothesize that some hyperepidemic STs spread worldwide via sexual intercourse. Large combined microbiological and clinical studies should address this important issue.
Retail Employeesâ€™ Image on Shopping Destination: Itâ€™s Impact on Their Behavioural Intention

The current development in retail industry shows that there is an intense competition between shopping destinations. In this competitive environment, an imperative strategy to endure and succeed is by developing a unique and favourable destination image. This study examines retail employee image on shopping destination model and its impact on their behaviour intention. This study uses 333 samples of retail employees collected from Bandung, Indonesia. The results verify the cognitive and affective component of image are critical drivers of shopping destination overall image. However, this study suggests that the overall image is not the determinant of behaviour intention. The cognitive image is the only important factor in determining retail employee behaviour intention. Further, this study shows that the differences between staff and manager on the destination image model are insignificant. The implication for retail business managers as part of the supply chain system in retail industry is discussed.
The Effect of Previous Resident Interactions on the Assessment of Interpersonal and Communication Skills by Teaching Faculty: Are We the Best Evaluators?

BACKGROUND Evaluating resident interpersonal and communication skills (ICS) presents a significant challenge. Unlike the In-Training-Exam, an objective measure of knowledge, the evaluation of ICS is subjective. Previous interactions could influence how teaching faculty evaluate this competency leading to inaccurate assessment of resident ICS. Faculty groups from other residencies and non-physicians were enlisted to compare assessments with those by teaching faculty. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted comparing how different evaluator groups assessed the ICS of anesthesiology residents. Nine residents participated each in two Standardized Patient (SP) encounters that were video-recorded. The recordings were viewed by eleven evaluators representing four different evaluator groups, one non-blinded teaching faculty group, two blinded anesthesiology faculty groups from separate programs and one blinded non-physician group. They scored each encounter using a modified SEGUE framework evaluation form graded on a Likert scale. RESULTS The mean score for each resident ICS encounter by evaluator group were as follows: non-blinded teaching faculty (57.89), non-physician group (57.42), and the blinded anesthesiology faculties (53.00) and (53.83) respectively. There was significant difference in how the evaluator groups scored the resident performances (p<0.001). Analysis of ranks showed excellent correlation comparing teaching faculty with the other anesthesiology faculty groups (r=0.764, p=0.017 and r=0.765, p=0.016, respectively). The highest ranked resident overall ranked high across all evaluator groups and the lowest ranked resident was ranked lowest across most evaluator groups. CONCLUSIONS Though potential for biases from previous interactions exist, teaching faculty assessments of resident ICS are similar to the assessments of other anesthesiology faculty evaluator groups.
Tumour necrosis factor alpha blocking agents in refractory adult Still's disease: an observational study of 20 cases.

BACKGROUND Consensus is lacking on treatment for corticosteroid resistant adult onset Still's disease (ASD). OBJECTIVE To assess anti-TNFalpha efficacy and tolerance in refractory ASD. METHODS All departments of rheumatology and internal medicine in France were contacted by mail to identify cases of refractory ASD for which anti-TNFalpha had been used. Medical information was collected using a standardised questionnaire. RESULTS Of 20 patients with mean age 40.7 years (range 18-74) at treatment start and mean disease duration 8.5 years (range 2-21), the clinical expression of ASD was predominantly systemic in five patients and polyarticular in 15. Response to corticosteroids and methotrexate had been considered inadequate in all patients. Infliximab was used to treat 15 patients, and etanercept used for 10; five had received both drugs consecutively. Steroids were concurrently used in 18 patients and an immunosuppressant in 17. At a mean (SD) follow up of 13 (14) months, complete remission had occurred in five cases (of 25 treatment sequences): one receiving etanercept and four infliximab. Partial response was observed in 16 cases (seven etanercept and nine infliximab). Treatment failed in four cases (two with each anti-TNFalpha). At the last visit, anti-TNFalpha therapy was discontinued in 17 cases, 11 times because of lack (or loss) of efficacy, four times because of a side effect, and twice for other reasons. CONCLUSION Anti-TNFalpha therapy may be helpful for some patients with refractory ASD. However, most patients achieve only partial remission. Additional information is thus needed to evaluate more precisely the risk-benefit ratio of this treatment.
Ventilatory responses during wakefulness in children with obstructive sleep apnea.

The pathophysiology of the obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is not fully understood. In children, airway obstruction secondary to tonsilloadenoidal hypertrophy is the leading cause of OSAS. However, not all children with tonsilloadenoidal hypertrophy develop OSAS. Thus, other factors, including abnormalities in ventilatory control, may contribute to the etiology of OSAS. To test this, we performed polysomnography and hypercapnic and hypoxic ventilatory response testing in 20 children and adolescents with OSAS (mean age, 8 +/- 3 [SD] yr) and 19 control subjects. Only two children with OSAS were obese. Children with OSAS had an apnea index of 16 +/- 20, peak PETCO2 of 54 +/- 5 mm Hg, and SaO2 nadir of 84 +/- 13% during polysomnography. Ventilatory responses were performed by rebreathing techniques. The slope of the hypercapnic ventilatory responses, corrected for body surface area, was 1.74 +/- 0.79 L/min/m2/mm Hg PETCO2 in children with OSAS and 1.45 +/- 0.58 L/min/m2/mmHg PETCO2 in control subjects (NS). Hypoxic ventilatory responses, corrected for body surface area, were -0.94 +/- 0.49 L/min/m2/% SaO2 in children with OSAS and -0.95 +/- 0.45 L/min/m2/% SaO2 in control subjects (NS); however, the sample size was small. There was a weak inverse correlation between the slope of the hypercapnic ventilatory response and the duration of hypoventilation during polysomnography (r = -0.44, p < 0.05). We conclude that children with OSAS have normal ventilatory responses to hypercapnia, and they may have normal ventilatory responses to hypoxia. We speculate that abnormal central ventilatory drive plays little if any role in the pathogenesis of pediatric OSAS. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Internal Quality Assurance : Enhancing higher education quality and graduate employability

Higher education systems and institutions are exposed today to constant changes. As the sector has rapidly expanded, institutions and programmes have become more diversified. Many institutions have been privatized. Within this context, there has been a growing concern about the quality of higher education institutions (HEIs) and their programmes. A growing number of individual HEIs have responded to quality concerns by setting up internal quality assurance (IQA) mechanisms for monitoring and management. With the international spread of this reform movement, IQA policies, structures, and processes can differ significantly, depending on national and institutional contexts. Some institutions focus on employability in IQA, others on integrating academic or management processes into IQA, still others on using information generated from IQA as the basis for a dialogue on quality. IQA practices and effects consequently vary greatly from one context to another.
Robust Automatic Modulation Classification Technique for Fading Channels via Deep Neural Network

In this paper, we propose a deep neural network (DNN)-based automatic modulation classification (AMC) for digital communications. While conventional AMC techniques perform well for additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels, classification accuracy degrades for fading channels where the amplitude and phase of channel gain change in time. The key contributions of this paper are in two phases. First, we analyze the effectiveness of a variety of statistical features for AMC task in fading channels. We reveal that the features that are shown to be effective for fading channels are different from those known to be good for AWGN channels. Second, we introduce a new enhanced AMC technique based on DNN method. We use the extensive and diverse set of statistical features found in our study for the DNN-based classifier. The fully connected feedforward network with four hidden layers are trained to classify the modulation class for several fading scenarios. Numerical evaluation shows that the proposed technique offers significant performance gain over the existing AMC methods in fading channels.
Semi-supervised vision-language mapping via variational learning

Understanding the semantic relations between vision and language data has become a research trend in artificial intelligence and robotic systems. The lack of training data is an essential issue for vision-language understanding. We address the problem of image and sentence cross-modal retrieval when paired training samples are not sufficient. Inspired by recent works in variational inference, in this paper, the autoencoding variational Bayes framework is novelly extended to a semi-supervised model for image-sentence mapping task. Our method does not require all training images and sentences to be paired. The proposed model is an end-to-end system, and consists of a two-level variational embedding structure where unpaired data are involved in the first level embedding to give support to intra-modality statistics so that the lower bound of the joint marginal likelihood of paired data embeddings can be better approximated. The proposed retrieval model is evaluated on two popular datasets, i.e. Flickr30K and Flickr8K, producing superior performances compared with related state-of-the-art methods.
Drug-induced hypo- and hyperprolactinemia: mechanisms, clinical and therapeutic consequences

Introduction: The altered profiles of prolactin secretion in the anterior hypophysis, generated by pathological, pharmacological or toxicological causes, have special consequences on multiple functions in both genders. Areas covered: This selective review presents the main mechanisms controlling prolactin secretion, focusing on the interplay of various neurotransmitters or xenobiotics, but also on the role of psychic or posttraumatic stress. A detailed analysis of several pharmacotherapeutic groups with hyperprolactinemic effects emphasize on the relevance of the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic mechanisms and the clinical significance of the long term administration. Expert opinion: Accurate monitoring and evaluation of the hyperprolactinemia induced by xenobiotics is strongly recommended. The typical antipsychotics and some of the atypical agents (amisulpride, risperidone, paliperidone), as well as some antidepressants, antihypertensives and prokinetics, are the most important groups inducing hyperprolactinemia. The hyperprolactinemic effects are correlated with their affinity for dopamine D2 receptors, their blood–brain barrier penetration and, implicitly, the requested dose for adequate occupancy of cerebral D2 receptors. Consequently, integration of available pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic data supports the idea of therapeutic switch to non-hyperprolactinemic agents (especially aripiprazole) or their association, for an optimal management of antipsychotic-induced hyperprolactinemia. Possible alternative strategies for counteracting the xenobiotics-induced hyperprolactinemia are also mentioned.
Big Data in Finance

The question of Big Data technologies, not only in the financial sector, but in general, is a logical pattern of technical and scientific progress of the last decades. The change of paradigms has led to the fact that today’s managers and economists have to work not only with large volumes of information, but also with new types of data. Processing the new format files allows managers to make more accurate and effective financial decisions. It is necessary to say, why these decisions are important for business. They make it possible to achieve the goals that modern organizations set for themselves: increasing the value of the enterprise, increasing investment attractiveness, improving the quality of forecasting. This situation in a well-functioning world system has led to the emergence and development of new trends in education, in particular, in the field of education of financial professionals. Focusing on Russian achievements and Western researches of fundamental and applied disciplines, it should be noted that the modern financier is increasingly integrated into the Big Data technology environment. He needs knowledge of the construction of wording of requests to manage competently. For this, the skills of working with search programs, the use of search operators, work with search robots are important. At the theoretical level the future financier must study strategic, statistical, mathematical, systemic, stochastic, probabilistic and other types of analysis.
The CN-12: A Brief, Multidimensional Connection With Nature Instrument

In recent decades, there has been increasing interest in (re)connecting people with nature to foster sustainability outcomes. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting a relationship between connection with nature and pro-environmental behaviors. Connection with nature has often been conceptualized as a unidimensional construct, and although recent evidence suggests that it is multidimensional, there is ongoing debate regarding the dimensions that make up connection with nature. Existing multidimensional connection with nature instruments capture similar dimensions, yet they are lengthy and may not have practical application in real-world contexts. This research sought to clarify the dimensions of connection with nature and to develop and validate an abbreviated yet multidimensional connection with nature instrument—the CN-12. Analyses of two large datasets revealed three dimensions of connection with nature—identity, experience, and philosophy. Results suggested that the CN-12 and its three dimensions are positively correlated with: (1) environmental and altruistic values; (2) time spent in nature; and (3) a range of pro-environmental behaviors. Results also suggested that the CN-12 and its three dimensions are stable over time and are positively correlated with two existing multidimensional connection with nature instruments, the Nature Relatedness (NR) Scale and Environmental Identity (EID) Scale. The utility of the CN-12 for exploring human connections with nature and the role of fostering connection with nature to increase engagement in pro-environmental behaviors are discussed.