Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financial Development and Growth: A Positive, Monotonic Relationship? Empirical Evidences from South Africa

The objective of this article is to investigate the relationship between development of the financial sector and economic growth for South Africa. For this purpose, we data for 1965-2007 and set the estimation strategy under the ARDL framework. Importantly, four indicators for the financial developments are utilized to accomplish our tasks. We find a positive monotonic relationship between financial development and economic growth for South Africa. Trade openness and per capita real capital are found as the other important determinants of economic growth in South Africa.
Factors Affecting Fatigue in Chronic Renal Failure Patients under Hemodialysis Treatment at Qena University Hospital in Upper Egypt

Fatigue is one of the most frequent complaints of haemodialysis patients and is associated with impaired health related quality of life. Fatigue is documented as a negative symptom experienced by a large number of patients with end stage renal disease undergoing hemodialysis. Fatigue is a distressing symptom, and the consequences of fatigue can be over whelming . The person with fatigue need more efforts to perform activities, physical and cognitive, compared with the effort required before the onset of fatigue. The purpose of this study was to investigating the factors affecting fatigue in patients under hemodialysis treatment. In this descriptive study, 59 patients with chronic renal failure treated with hemodialysis at Qena University Hospitals in Upper Egypt . Data collection tool was a personal information questionnaire based on demographic characteristics (age, sex, marital status, education, number of children, occupation, income and income sufficiency, type of therapeutic support and duration of reaching the hospital) and also information regarding the duration of illness, history of hemodialysis psychedelic drugs, levels of hemoglobin, urea, creatinine, systolic blood pressure and dry weight. The second data collecting tool was the fatigue severity scale. Inclusion criteria were the medical diagnosis of chronic renal failure according to patients’ medical records, continuous and regular visit for treatment, having some degree of fatigue based on the fatigue severity index questionnaire, willingness to participate in the study, age of 19years and older, auditory and speech ability and an having enough consciousness for answering the questions. In this study there was no significant difference in terms of fatigue, between different age groups and the most fatigue was observed in the age group of 19-28 and above 69years. In this study fatigue showed an increase with the increase of dialysis history but this was significant only in terms of disease history. The frequency of fatigue is high in hemodialysis patients. Overall, men have more fatigue than women when treated with hemodialysis designing and developed illustrated booklet about interventions that can be tailored to meet individual needs should be available and distributed for each patient admitted to hemodialysis unit. Further research is needed to study associated factors with fatigue in the hemodialysis population. Keywords: Fatigue, Chronic Renal Failure, Hemodialysis
Call center satisfaction and customer retention in a co‐branded service context

Purpose – This paper aims to examine call center satisfaction in an escalated call center context where callers are organization members of the primary/leveraged brand and have purchased additional co‐branded services as part of their membership. It also aims to examine the relationship between call center satisfaction and actual retention of both the co‐branded service offered and the primary brand (call center operated by the membership organization). Design/methodology/approach – The survey data used in the analyses involve a sample size of 88 respondents, all members of a large, national nonprofit organization in the USA. Factor analysis and logistic regression were used to test the propositions.Findings – The results indicate that caller satisfaction has four dimensions similar to those found in SERVQUAL. Although call center satisfaction dimensions are not significant for co‐branded service retention, the empathy dimension is most important to primary/leveraged brand retention.Research limitations/im.
Why We Need Megareserves in Amazonia

Abstract: Brazilian Amazonia faces one of the greatest threats and opportunities for tropical biodiversity conservation of our times. I consider several large‐scale issues in biodiversity conservation planning (e.g., resource extraction, large areas needed for top predators, species migration, fire, and carbon sequestration) in light of our severely deficient understanding of basinwide patterns of species distribution and little‐known Amazonian biota. The long‐term persistence of this biota is best served by strictly protected and sustainable development forest reserves that are both embedded in a benign forest matrix and sufficiently large to support a full complement of species and landscape‐scale ecological processes. Given rapidly accelerating trends in agricultural frontier expansion into previously unclaimed public lands, protection and controlled development of forests is urgent.
Thermal expansion behaviour of long-period stacking ordered (LPSO) phase

El coeficiente lineal de expansion termica de la fase LPSO con estructura cristalografica 18R se determino en el intervalo entre temperatura ambiente y 400 °C mediante dilatometria y difraccion de radiacion sincrotron. Los resultados muestran claramente que el coeficiente lineal de dilatacion termica de las fases magnesio y LPSO son similares y, por tanto, no se generan tensiones termicas en su intercara durante el procesado termomecanico de aleaciones bifasicas Mg-Y-Zn.
Assessing the Quality of Hospitality Services: A Study on Hotels in Chittagong

Service quality is considered as an important aspect to the success of hospitality industry, the importance of evaluating service quality provided to guests becomes apparent. Assessing service quality provides with the necessary information needed to manage service delivery operations appropriately. Considering the importance, the study aims to evaluate the service quality of two five star hotels in Chittagong using random sampling. The study applied SERVQUAL model consisting of five dimensions namely tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Based on a questionnaire survey of 68 customers (guests), frequency analysis, gap analysis between perceptions and expectations, reliability tests of items were conducted. The results of the reveal that the overall service quality of sample hotels is rated as -0.24. The perception of service delivery was less than expectations of guests in all the dimensions of SERVQUAL. The sample hotels have not fulfilled the expectations of their guests. The findings of the study imply that the management of selected hotels should understand the guests’ expectation and standardize their relevant services with expectation, set proper standards and support them with necessary resources to minimize the gaps between perception and expectation. Keywords : quality, hospitality services, customers.
The Power of Mandatory Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the German Housing Market

Numerous countries have introduced energy performance certificates to mitigate the information asymmetry with respect to the thermal quality of houses. Motivated by a stylized theoretical model and drawing on comprehensive data on real estate advertisements in the German housing market, this paper investigates the causal effect of disclosing energy information on the asking prices of houses. Employing within-variation from panel data, augmented by an instrumental variable approach to isolate effects among policy compliers, our analysis demonstrates the power of mandatory disclosure rules to increase market transparency and to align prices with the energy performance of the house. Among our key results, we find that house owners reduce offer prices in response to the disclosure of energy efficiency information. Furthermore, this effect is particularly pronounced for owners who would not disclose in the absence of the mandatory disclosure policy.
Design , Analysis and Optimization of a Solar Dish / Stirling System Seyyed

Design, Analysis and Optimization of a Solar Dish/Stirling System Seyyed Danial Nazemia and Mehrdad Boroushakib aMaster of Science Student in Energy Systems Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, P.O. Box 14565-114, Iran bAssociate Professor of Department of Energy Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, P.O. Box 14565-114, Iran ABSTRACT: In this paper, a mathematical model by which the thermal and physical behavior of a solar dish/Stirling system was investigated, then the system was designed, analysed and optimized. In this regard, all of heat losses in a dish/Stirling system were calculated, then, the output net-work of the Stirling engine was computed, and accordingly, the system efficiency was worked out. These heat losses include convection and conduction heat losses, radiation heat losses by emission in the cavity receiver, reflection heat losses of solar energy in the parabolic dish, internal and external conduction heat losses, energy dissipation by pressure drops, and energy losses by shuttle effect in displacer piston in the Stirling engine. All of these heat losses in the parabolic dish, cavity receiver and Stirling engine were calculated using mathematical modeling in MatlabTM software. For validation of the proposed model, a 10 kW solar dish/Stirling system was designed and the simulation results were compared with the Eurodish system data with a reasonable degree of agreement. This model is used to investigate the effect of geometric and thermodynamic parameters including the aperture diameter of the parabolic dish and the cavity receiver, and the pressure of the compression space of the Stirling engine, on the system performance. By using the PSO method, which is an intelligent optimization technique, the total design was optimized and the optimal values of decision-making parameters were determined. The optimization has been done in two scenarios. In the first scenario, the optimal value of each designed parameter has been changed when the other parameters are equal to the designed case study parameters. In the second scenario, all of parameters were assumed in their optimal values. By optimization of the modeled dish/Stirling system, the total efficiency of the system improved to 0.60% in the first scenario and it increased from 21.69% to 22.62% in the second scenario of the optimization, while the system variables changed slightly.
Coupling news sentiment with web browsing data predicts intra-day stock prices

The new digital revolution of big data is deeply changing our capability of understanding society and forecasting the outcome of many social and economic systems. Unfortunately, information can be very heterogeneous in the importance, relevance, and surprise it conveys, aecting severely the predictive power of semantic and statistical methods. Here we show that the aggregation of web users’ behavior can be elicited to overcome this problem in a hard to predict complex system, namely the nancial market. Specically, we show that the combined use of sentiment analysis of news and browsing activity of users of Yahoo! Finance allows to forecast intra-day and daily price changes of a set of 100 highly capitalized US stocks traded in the period 2012-2013. Sentiment analysis or browsing activity when taken alone have very small or no predictive power. Conversely, when considering a news signal where in a given time interval we compute the average sentiment of the clicked news, weighted by the number of clicks, we show that for more the 50% of the companies such signal Granger-causes price returns. Our result indicates a \wisdom-of-the-crowd" eect that allows to exploit users’ activity to identify and weigh properly the relevant and surprising news, enhancing considerably the forecasting power of the news sentiment.
Deformation parameters of permeable media

Summary Using the static form of a system of equations for seismic waves (de la Cruz & Spanos 1989), we show how various compressibilities can be calculated in a straightforward manner. The results obtained have many points of contact with those found in the literature. In particular, we verify all identities among drained compressibilities given in, e.g., Zimmerman (1991), thus providing an alternative route towards them. The undrained compressibility is described within the context of this work and its relation to the various drained compressibilities (Gassmann 1951) is verified. For greater experimental flexibility, we introduce a one-parameter family of compressibilities which includes the drained and the undrained compressibilities as members. The family of compressibilities is also used to obtain an expression for the pore-pressure build-up coefficient. In this work we also address the problem of macroscopic shearing. Experiments are proposed for the determination of the macroscopic shear modulus, leading to natural expressions for ‘Young's modulus’ and ‘Poisson's ratio’ for the porous medium under drained conditions. We also establish connections with Biot's (1956a) parameters.
The Impact of Participation in Cooperatives on the Success of Small Farms

This study identifies and analyzes factors that contribute to the success of small farms. Particular attention is given to the effect of participation in marketing and supply cooperatives on the success of small farms. Using modified net farm income per dollar of assets and operator’s labor and management income as measures of success, results show participation in marketing and supply cooperatives is positively correlated with success. Further, analysis findings indicate farm size, controlling for variable and fixed costs, type of ownership, management strategies used, working off the farm, and age of the operator are important factors that influence profitability (modified net farm income per dollar of assets and operator’s labor and management income) and success. Farmers routinely face considerable risk of income variability, and that income variability affects the financial performance of many farms. Particularly vulnerable are marginal operations with low production efficiency and small farms (farms with farm sales of $250,000 or less). During the past several decades, small family farms have frequently experienced difficulties in maintaining profitability. Local patterns of production, distribution, and consumption of food have been increasingly replaced by global operations and interests. Small family farms are regularly squeezed out of business by high input costs, low prices for their products, and limited access to markets. Small farm operators face a number of problems (such as limited purchasing power, availability of markets, access to resources, etc.) as they attempt to develop and operate profitable farm businesses. Some of the limitations facing small farm operators may be overcome by participation in cooperatives (supply or marketing) through a sharing of goals, activities, and objectives of the members of the group. There are many important benefits to membership in a cooperative. For example: (a) members
Characterizations of Probability Distributions with Completely Monotone Hazard Functions

In this article, we characterize the classes of absolutelycontinuous distributions concentrated on $(0, \infty)$ anddiscrete distributions concentrated on $\{0,1,2, . \}$, with(non-vanishing survivor functions having) completely monotonehazard functions; in the latter case, we refer to the hazardfunctions also as the hazard sequences. These provide us withcharacterizations of the certain specialized versions of mixturesof exponential and geometric distributions with mixingdistributions, satisfying some further criteria, which by theGoldie-Steutel theorem and a result of Kaluza are seen to bespecialized versions of infinitely divisible distributions. Weshed light on the implications of our findings, giving somepertinent examples and remarks.
Efficiency Assessment of Transit-Oriented Development by Data Envelopment Analysis: Case Study on the Den-en Toshi Line in Japan

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is an urban planning approach that encourages a modal shift from private to public transportation. This shift can generate additional benefits from a sustainability perspective. This study aims to assess the efficiency of TOD by applying the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. The ridership of public transportation is considered as the direct output characteristic of TOD efficiency, and nine indicators of ridership are selected as inputs on the basis of the core concepts of TOD. These concepts include density, diversity, and design (3Ds). The Tokyu Den-en Toshi Line in Japan is presented as a typical case of TOD because this line includes TOD and non-TOD stations. Assessing and comparing the results of all railway stations reveal that almost all indicator values of non-TOD stations are higher than those of TOD stations. The results suggest that TOD planning and programs are inefficient in terms of ridership generation. This implication, however, may be attributed to the inadequacy of the selected indicators for TOD assessment. The results obtained after adding operation year as input indicators and removing transfer station show that TOD stations perform efficiently and in accordance with expectations. This response indicates that the inclusion of influential factors is necessary for equitable TOD assessment. Therefore, other influential factors must be considered when evaluating the efficiency of TOD-based stations with different inherent attributes. In addition, the design input with the largest impact on all inefficient units was identified, suggesting that management of bus service and railway system should be well enhanced.
Essential factors that affect students’ choices to study computer science: gender differences

In this paper, an essential aspect regarding the multilateral issue of under-representation of women in Computer Science (CS) is presented. It is based on research conducted with a sample of 77 students aged 17, 52 of which were girls. These students were about to decide on their future undergraduate studies. The goal of this study was to determine the factors affecting the decisions of both girls and boys whether or not to pursue undergraduate computer courses. Questionnaires were used, addressing issues in the following 4 main categories: a) the reasons students chose/chose not to study CS, b) the way students’ family and friends, the media and the school environment contribute to their decision, c) the students’ perception of their prospective future after studying CS and d) the students’ perception of the gender that better fits the profile of a Computer Scientist. The results were quite illuminating: a) more boys than girls choose to study CS. Boys and girls choose/choose not to study CS because they find/don’t find it an interesting subject and because of the employment opportunities rate of the CS industry. Motivation in choosing to study CS differs between boys and girls: the former are motivated by their former experience in using computers whereas the latter are mainly motivated by the employment opportunities of the CS industry: b) the surrounding social environment in terms of family, school, friends and media seemed to affect student choice of undergraduate studies in CS. The ways the social environment influence student choice are: communication, infrastructure and living examples. Families urge girls more than boys to study CS, because of the employment opportunities rate with CS. Boys and girls suggested that school is unable to provide them with the necessary infrastructure. Media and friends seem to influence mostly girls, the basic argument being that CS provides them with job security: c) boys imagine themselves as Computer Scientists in a competitive and profitable job in the industry whereas girls emphasized that they would prefer permanency in their future jobs and are not overly concerned about the payment: d) regarding the profile of a Computer Scientist, a small percentage of boys expressed the opinion that men more than women suit this kind of profession, whereas almost all the girls stated that they find both men and women suitable .
On the superparamagnetic—stable single domain transition for magnetite, and frequency dependence of susceptibility

SUMMARY Sediments and soils often contain superparamagnetic (SP) magnetite or maghemite grains that cause a frequency dependence of low-field susceptibility X fd which does not exceed 15 per cent/decade of frequency. Present models predict very diVerent volume distributions for samples with the largest observed frequency dependence of susceptibility. While Stephensons’ (1971) power-law model predicts most grains to be smaller than the stable single domain (SSD) threshold, the phenomenological model of Dearing et al. (1996) suggests that most grains are between 10 and 25 nm in diameter. Finally, the recent calculations of Eyre (1997) indicate very broad volume distributions. This study reviews the nature of the superparamagnetic‐stable single domain (SP‐SSD) transition. The change of AC susceptibilities with grain size (or temperature) at the SP‐SSD boundary is more gradual than commonly assumed. When distributions of particle coercivities and volumes are also considered, X fd values are much smaller than those calculated by Eyre (1997). Nonetheless, X fd can be larger than 15 per cent, and a larger frequency dependence has indeed been measured for some samples. The question whether the observed limited X fd of soils and sediments is a result of a broad distribution or of a bimodal distribution, where SP and SSD grains are restricted to a certain relative abundance, can potentially be answered by susceptibility determinations at more than two frequencies and by measurements of the temperature dependence of susceptibility.
A comparative assessment of attitudes, knowledge and self-perceived barrier to the practice of evidence based medicine in Japan and Indonesia

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the process of sys tematically reviewing, appraising and using clinical research findings to aid the delivery of o ptimum clinical care to the patients. EBM plays a crucial role for physicians as a tool to integrate best research evidence into clinical practices, but there has been little information about its applica tion in daily practices among resident physicians in Japan and Indonesia. The purpose of this study w as to assess and compare the attitude towards and knowledge of EBM among resident physicians in t wo teaching hospitals and their self-perceived barrier to its implementation. A cro ss-sectional study, self-administered anonymous questionnaire was distributed to 60 resident staff at Saga University Hospital, Japan and 183 staffs at Cipto Mangunkusumo teaching hospital, Indonesia. Significant findings from this study are each respondent have individual tendencies when selectin g suitable sources of information during clinical problem solving; there was an overall posi tive attitude towards EBM; Knowledge and skills are fairly sufficient though they reported the two factors as barrier to implement EBM. Other barriers in implementing EBM are lack of time and r esources in native language. Several factors influencing each group’s responses were noted and d iffering attitudes towards EBM application identified.