Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Global Financial Crisis and other Determinants on Intellectual Capital Disclosure in UAE Banks

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of global financial crisis, market structure and other factors on the disclosure level of intellectual capital by UAE Banks over the period 2005-2009. The Multiple Regression Analysis is used to test the relationship between the level of intellectual capital disclosure as a dependent variable and global financial disclosure, market structure and other independent variables. The results show that global financial crisis and market structure variables, which have not been considered in previous studies, have a significant impact on the level of intellectual capital disclosure. In addition, the results show that bank risk, role duality and bank age have a significant impact on the level of intellectual capital disclosure. This paper adds to the literature on the determinants of the level of intellectual capital disclosure in banks. In particular, it tests the new theories that the global financial crisis and market structure have impact on the level of intellectual capital disclosure.
Prenatal diagnosis on fetal cells obtained from maternal peripheral blood: Report of 66 cases

The potential use of fetal cells circulating in maternal blood for a non‐invasive prenatal diagnosis has been widely described. Several authors have developed different methods for the enrichment of fetal cells from maternal peripheral blood. The aim of this study was to make a practical valuation of this new prenatal diagnosis technique, using those methods described as efficient and easy to carry out in a prenatal diagnosis unit. These methods consist of the double‐density gradient and the positive selection by magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS) of the fetal erythroblasts, and the posterior study of the cells applying the FISH interphasic technique. Once the technique was ready, we obtained results from the study of 66 venous blood samples from women coming for prenatal diagnosis. Using a specific staining for fetal haemoglobin, fetal cells were identified in 63 cases. Fetal sex was well determined in 56 cases, 23 females and 33 males; in 7 cases the sex determination failed. All the aneuploidies found in a previous prenatal diagnosis were confirmed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
From CR‐psychopaths to responsible corporations: waking up the inner Sleeping Beauty of companies

Many large companies seem to fulfil the psychiatric criteria for psychopaths in their corporate responsibility (CR) practices. Are they really incurable psychopaths, or is it possible that they could be counselled into accepting their responsibilities? CR studies have so far paid little attention to the variations in the CR emphases between different companies. This article, based on a conference paper (Ketola, 2005b), presents a CR emphasis model, pinpointing eight different approaches to corporate responsibility. Some companies do not voluntarily take any responsibilities. Companies acting like psychopaths need a Prince of Virtues to kiss awake their inner Sleeping Beauty from its 100-year irresponsibility sleep. All companies could take advantage of virtue ethics, which present the values shared by all humans, and hence exemplify the natural law (lex naturae). Counselling top managers and key individuals on their personal and professional values enables all personnel to integrate virtues into the company's CR practices. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Apparel manufacturing: a strategy for productivity improvement

The apparel industry is truly global in nature. Apparel manufacturing being labour intensive has been migrating from the high wage developed world to developing countries. However, the developing countries will need to have efficient manufacturing operations if they are to retain their competitiveness in the apparel industry. This paper attempts to evaluate the productivity levels achieved by Indian apparel manufacturers vis‐a‐vis their counterparts from the rest of the world; to ascertain factors associated with productivity performance; and to recommend strategies for productivity improvement.
Credit Ratings and the Pricing of Seasoned Equity Offerings

This paper examines how firm credit ratings affect SEO pricing and announcement-period abnormal stock returns. We find that firms with credit ratings are underpriced less and have larger announcement-period abnormal stock returns than those experienced by firms without credit ratings. Firms with high credit ratings also have announcement-period abnormal stock returns that are larger than those experienced by firms with low credit ratings. These results suggest that credit ratings reduce information asymmetry in equity offerings. They are also consistent with the notion that SEO-related wealth transfers from shareholders to bond holders are negatively related to rating levels.
A New Method of Interpolation and Smooth Curve Fitting Based on Local Procedures

A new mathematical method is developed for interpolation from a given set of data points in a plane and for fitting a smooth curve to the points. This method is devised in such a way that the resultant curve will pass through the given points and will appear smooth and natural. It is based on a piecewise function composed of a set of polynomials, each of degree three, at most, and applicable to successive intervals of the given points. In this method, the slope of the curve is determined at each given point locally, and each polynomial representing a portion of the curve between a pair of given points is determined by the coordinates of and the slopes at the points. Comparison indicates that the curve obtained by this new method is closer to a manually drawn curve than those drawn by other mathematical methods.
Trade credit and bank information monopoly: an empirical evidence from portuguese small medium size enterprises

According previous studies, a bank can set up a higher interest rate for small company by establishing a lending relationship since information asymmetry limits competition between banks. Therefore, the bank can acquire monopoly rents from small company. However, not only banks, but also suppliers of trade credit acquire information of buyers ́ creditworthiness. This paper investigates how serious is monopoly information for Portuguese SMEs. We investigate if the informed non-financial companies can extend trade credit in order to decrease the monopolistic power of lenders that might lead to hold-up problems, by analyzing companies that obtain funds from just one bank and those who obtain funds from several banks. By using a panel data of 468 Portuguese SMEs for the period of 1998-2006, our results strongly suggest that high interest rates are associated to an increase in the use of trade credit. Furthermore, the findings support the existence of a link between suppliers and customers that take time to build and leads to suppliers help their customers who experience temporary liquidity shocks. Thus, the provision of trade credit alleviates the problem of monopolies information
Characterization of pig vasa homolog gene and specific expression in germ cell lineage

The vasa gene is known to be an important factor for germ cell development in both invertebrates and vertebrates. In the present study, we cloned the porcine vasa homolog (Pvh, 2,172 bps) and investigated its expression at mRNA and protein levels. The isolated cDNA had deduced 724 amino acid residues with significant homology to mouse (85%) and human (91%) vasa. In adult tissues, Pvh transcript was restricted to the ovary and testis, and was undetectable in somatic tissues. During preimplantation embryo development, Pvh was transcribed in oocytes and fertilized 2‐cell embryos, but not in other preimplantation embryos. In fetal stage, the transcript of Pvh gene was expressed in all fetal stage, except in day 17–18. Immunohistochemical analysis of fetal and adult gonad revealed that the Pvh protein was localized in oocytes and spermatocytes, consistent with mRNA expression. Interestingly, Pvh protein was also observed in proliferating primordial germ cells (PGCs) and freshly isolated PGCs, but not in embryonic germ cells. Our results suggest that Pvh gene can be a useful marker for germ cell development in pigs. Mol. Reprod. Dev. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Speech Perception in Children with Specific Reading Difficulties (Dyslexia)

Many experimental studies over the last two decades have suggested that groups of children who suffer significant delay in reading also show a weakness in phoneme discrimination and identification. In order to look further at the relation between type of reading deficit, auditory acuity, and speech discrimination, a group of 13 children with specific reading difficulty (SRD), 12 chronological-age controls, and 12 reading-age controls were tested on a battery of speech-perceptual, psychoacoustic, and reading tests. A sub-group of children with Specific Reading Difficulty (SRD) were poor at speech discrimination tests, whereas the rest of the SRD group performed within norms. For this sub-group, discrimination performance was particularly poor for consonant contrasts differing in a single feature that was not acoustically salient, and problems were encountered with nasal and fricative contrasts as well as with stop contrasts. These children did not differ from controls in their performance on non-speech psychoacoustic tasks. An evaluation is made of the reported phonemic awareness skills of beginning readers with regard to speech-processing issues which may help in understanding what factors are important in reading development.
Chaotic Encryption Algorithm Against Chosen-Plaintext Attacks in Optical OFDM Transmission

We propose and demonstrate a physical-layer encryption algorithm against chosen-plaintext attacks (CPAs) in optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OOFDM) transmission, where the cyphertexts are dynamically generated for the first time by incorporating the random feature of the input data. The multiple-fold encryption algorithm consists of chaotic subcarrier allocation scrambling in time/frequency domains, chaotic phase rotation of subcarriers, as well as chaotic training sequence, which creates a total huge key space of 10194 by using a 4-D hyperdigital chaos. The transmission of 8.9-Gb/s 16-QAM encrypted OOFDM data is demonstrated over 20-km standard single-mode fiber. The proposed encryption scheme provides excellent confidentiality of OOFDM transmission against the brute-force attacks and CPAs.
Conventional vs Islamic Bond Announcements: The Effects on Shareholders' Wealth

In this study the impact of Islamic bond and conventional bonds announcement on shareholder wealth was investigated. Data was employed from firms that listed in Bursa Malaysia for the period 2001 to 2006. A standard event study methodology with beta refinement using Blume’s method is employed to achieve the objective. The results indicate that there is a wealth effect by the announcement of Islamic bond issues. This is consistent with Mikkelson & Partch (1986) that states certain types of debts lead to abnormal return. The bond offering size appears to have a mild negative impact on the cumulative abnormal return.
Strategy making as iterated processes of resource allocation

Capitalizing on the Bower-Burgelman process model of strategy making in a large, complex organization, we investigate the multilevel managerial activities that lead firms facing similar new business opportunities to respond with different strategic commitments. Our field-based data provide evidence on (I) the role of ‘corporate contexts’ that reflects top managers' crude strategic intent in shaping strategic initiatives of business-unit managers; (2) the critical influence of early business development results on increasing or decreasing middle managers' enthusiasm to the new businesses and top managers' confidence in these middle managers in a resource allocation; (3) the escalation or deescalation of a firm's strategic commitment to the new businesses as a consequence of iterations of resource allocation. We conclude that it is useful to conceptualize strategy making in a large, complex firm as an iterated process of resource allocation.
Technical Advance: Monitoring the trafficking of neutrophil granulocytes and monocytes during the course of tissue inflammation by noninvasive 19F MRI

Inflammation results in the recruitment of neutrophils and monocytes, which is crucial for the healing process. In the present study, we used 19F MRI to monitor in vivo the infiltration of neutrophils and monocytes from the onset of inflammation to the resolution and healing phase. Matrigel, with or without LPS, was s.c. ‐implanted into C57BL/6 mice. This resulted in a focal inflammation lasting over a period of 20 days, with constantly decreasing LPS levels in doped matrigel plugs. After i.v. administration of 19F containing contrast agent, 19F MRI revealed a zonular 19F signal in the periphery of LPS containing matrigel plugs, which was not observed in control plugs. Analysis of the 19F signal over the observation period demonstrated the strongest 19F signal after 24 h, which decreased to nearly zero after 20 days. The 19F signal was mirrored by the amount of leukocytes in the matrigel, with neutrophils dominating at early time‐points and macrophages at later time‐points. Both populations were shown to take up the 19F contrast agent. In conclusion, 19F MRI, in combination with the matrigel/LPS model, permits the noninvasive analysis of neutrophil and monocyte infiltration over the complete course of inflammation in vivo.
The Shaping of Bank Incentive Structures by Strategic Factors Relating to the Drivers of Long-term Value Creation and Sustainability: A Stakeholder Perspective

The role of bankers’ perverse incentives in contributing to the global financial crisis that started in 2007 has increased the need for empirical evidence on the efficacy of bank incentive structures to adequately align the interests of stakeholders. This qualitative study investigated the bonus phenomenon, targeting the financial services industry, and explored what the drivers are for sustainable value creation from the perspective of bank employee stakeholders who contribute to such value creation. The study presented the following strategic factors which enhance the efficacy of a bank incentive structure: (1) the alignment of incentives structures with the long-term objectives of the firm; (2) defining the governing objective of incentive structures as maximization of the long-term value of the firm; (3) risk-adjustment of incentive structures; and (4) alignment of incentive structures with the interests of all relevant stakeholders.
Is the central corneal thickness of diabetic patients thicker than that of non-diabetics’ eyes?

The purpose of the study was to evaluate central corneal thickness in diabetic patients and to compare the results with controls without diabetes mellitus. Sixty-five diabetic patients (65 eyes) constituted the study group, and 50 eyes were from the healthy control group (50 non-diabetic patients). The study group was subdivided into group 1 (no diabetic retinopathy, n = 35), group 2 (mild to moderate nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy, n = 20), and group 3 (proliferative diabetic retinopathy, n = 10). Central corneal thickness measurements in microns were determined using ultrasound pachymetry. The mean central corneal thickness was significantly greater in the study group (567.14 μm ± 14.63 μm) than in the control group (531.14 μm ± 5 μm). In addition, the mean central corneal thickness was found to be greater in group 3 (577 μm ± 12 μm) than in groups 1 (562 μm ± 13 μm) and 2 (566.86 μm ± 15 μm), but the difference did not reach statistical significance. We found that the mean central corneal thickness for diabetic patients was thicker than that of the healthy controls. Thicker central corneas associated with diabetes mellitus should be taken into consideration when obtaining accurate intraocular pressure measurements in diabetics.
Multiple roles of brands in business‐to‐business services

Purpose – The paper seeks to investigate the role of branding in a B2B service context.Design/methodology/approach – This paper focuses on a particular B2B service industry, namely leasing mall space to retail tenants. A quantitative study is undertaken of 201 mall tenants using SEM analysis.Findings – The main finding was that brand attitudes were the most important influence on the contract renewal. Another major finding was that brand attitudes were mainly explained by service quality. Branding also played another, albeit minor role, in building trust between the supplier and the customers.Practical implications – The results can be used by industrial firms to build stronger brands and, in turn, to use these brands to maximize customer retention.Originality/value – This is one of the first studies to examine service B2B brands. It is also one of the first studies to examine the multiple roles that brand can play in B2B marketing.
Accounting records keeping practices of SMEs in Ghana: Evidence from Sunyani Municipality

The incessant poor performance of small and medium scale entities can be attributed to hosts of factors of which poor accounting record keeping cannot be over emphasized. This study therefore explores the accounting practices of SMEs in Ghana using the Sunyani Municipality as a case study. The study uses stratified sampling and snow balling techniques to gather data from SME owner/managers of various sectors in the municipality. The research findings are based on a survey of the accounting record practices of one hundred and four SMEs in the Municipality. The study revealed that a majority of SMEs do not keep complete accounting records as a result of numerous factors such as lack of book keeping skills on the part of owners/managers and the high cost involved in adopting a good accounting system. Several recommendations have been outlined by this paper amongst which includes periodic training on proper accounting records keeping by regulatory bodies and educational institutions in the municipality and Ghana as a whole.
Ferret Lung Transplant: An Orthotopic Model of Obliterative Bronchiolitis

Obliterative bronchiolitis (OB) is the primary cause of late morbidity and mortality following lung transplantation. Current animal models do not reliably develop OB pathology. Given the similarities between ferret and human lung biology, we hypothesized an orthotopic ferret lung allograft would develop OB. Orthotopic left lower lobe transplants were successfully performed in 22 outbred domestic ferrets in the absence of immunosuppression (IS; n = 5) and presence of varying IS protocols (n = 17). CT scans were performed to evaluate the allografts. At intervals between 3–6 months the allografts were examined histologically for evidence of acute/chronic rejection. IS protects allografts from acute rejection and early graft loss. Reduction of IS dosage by 50% allowed development of controlled rejection. Allografts developed infiltrates on CT and classic histologic acute rejection and lymphocytic bronchiolitis. Cycling of IS, to induce repeated episodes of controlled rejection, promoted classic histologic hallmarks of OB including fibrosis‐associated occlusion of the bronchiolar airways in all allografts of long‐term survivors. In conclusion, we have developed an orthotopic lung transplant model in the ferret with documented long‐term functional allograft survival. Allografts develop acute rejection and lymphocytic bronchiolitis, similar to humans. Long‐term survivors develop histologic changes in the allografts that are hallmarks of OB.
Linking credit risk premia to the equity premium

Although the equity premium is - both from a conceptual and empirical perspective - a widely researched topic in finance, there is still no consensus in the academic literature about its magnitude. In this paper, we propose a different estimation method which is based on credit valuations. The main idea is straigtforward: We use structural models to link equity valuations to credit valuations. Based on a simple Merton model, we derive an estimator for the market Sharpe ratio. This estimator has several advantages. First, it offers a new line of thought for estimating the equity premium which is not directly linked to current methods. Second, it is only based on observable parameters. We do neither have to calibrate dividend or earnings growth - which is usually necessary in dividend/earnings discount models - nor do we have to calibrate asset values or default barriers - which is usually necessary in traditional applications of structural models. Third, it is robust to model changes. We examine the model of Duffie/Lando (2001) - which is one of the most sophisticated structural models currently discussed in the literature - to show this robustness. In an empirical analysis we have used CDS spreads of the 125 most liquid CDS in the U.S. from 2003 to 2007 to estimate the equity premium. We derive an average implicit market Sharpe ratio of appr. 40%. Adjusting for taxes and other parts of the credit spread not attributable to credit risk yields an average market Sharpe ratio below 30%. This confirms research on the equity premium, which indicates that the historically observed Sharpe ratio of 40-50% - corresponding to an equity premium of 7-9% and a volatility of 15-20% - was partly due to one-time effects. In addition, our research can be used to explain empirical findings about credit risk premia, which are usually measured as the ratio of risk-neutral to actual default probabilities. We show that the behavior of these ratios can be directly inferred from a simple Merton model and that this behavior is robust to model changes.
The Link Between Marketing Instruments and Customer Perceptions

Measuring marketing effectiveness is a major challenge for marketing academics and practitioners. An investigation that uses dependence analysis to examine the link between objective marketing instruments and subjective customer perceptions of them is missing from existing approaches. In examining this link, the present article redresses this deficit. A conceptual model is developed in order to structure and explain the effects of instruments on perceptions for 3 marketing instrument categories (value, relationship, and brand). The links are analyzed in an empirical study with bank customers. Instruments are measured by using objective internal data. Perceptions are measured based on a customer survey. The relationships between instruments and perceptions are examined using regression analysis. Most of the effects of instruments on perceptions are significant, signaling that the activities conducted are perceived as intended. In particular, some interesting results become evident, such as the negative effect on relationship perceptions of follow-up calls subsequent to direct mail services.
The influence of mall environment on female fashion shoppers' value and behaviour

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how the shopping mall environment influences the shopping experience and approach behaviour of female fashion shoppers.Design/methodology/approach – Female shoppers were first clustered along the fashion orientation of the stores they patronise. Shoppers' response and behaviour was modelled in an invariant multigroup latent structural path analysis. Paths were initially constrained and then released as required. A total of 286 usable questionnaires were administered using a mall intercept survey method in a regional shopping centre. Participants were probed on their shopping activities, shopping mall perception, product perception, shopping value and approach behaviour toward the mall.Findings – A favourable perception of the mall atmosphere elicits a positive perception of the merchandise offering and triggers hedonic shopping experiences. The effect of the mall environment, mediated by product perception, significantly impacts the shopping objectives of .