Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE IMPACT OF AUDIT COMMITTEE ON AUDIT FEES IN MALAYSIAN PUBLIC-LISTED COMPANIES

This study extends the literature on the quality of corporate governance and audit by examining the influence of audit committee on audit fees. The sampling frame consists of Malaysian non-financial public-listed companies from 2003 to 2012. The sample consists of 4,570 observations. The study applies pooled ordinary least square (OLS) to test the hypotheses and model. We use audit committee independence, audit committee expertise, number of audit committee meetings, and audit committee size as proxies for the quality of corporate governance and audit fees as proxy for audit quality. The findings show that the audit committee attributes are not significantly related to audit fees, which suggests that audit committee attributes have no influence on the audit fees. To extend this research, we recommend the inclusion of other attributes, such as communication between audit committee and the board, communication among the audit committee, and the extent of their understanding of the company’s risk and control systems. These additional variables complement the quantitative approach of this study using a qualitative research method. These variables can provide insights into the functions of audit committee to verify its efficacy as an internal governance mechanism. Keywords: audit committees, audit fees, proxy for audit quality, internal governancemechanism, Malaysian public-listed companies
Bank Regulation and Financial Stability

Financial stability is one of the main objectives of bank regulations globally. Over the past decades, several rules and policy measures have been implemented to mitigate the propagation of risks in the financial system. However, these regulations can have a multitude of effects at the bank and system-wide levels. The aim of this thesis is to enhance our understanding of bank regulations and their implications on the financial system. The thesis makes substantial contributions to the literature by providing new findings on the desirable and undesirable effects of recent regulations in Australia and the US in three separate studies. Using a simulation technique, the first study quantifies the size of capital buffers required to reduce system-wide losses of Australian banks. The results suggest that a moderate increase in bank capital buffers is sufficient to maintain financial system resilience, even after taking economic downturns into consideration. Furthermore, while banks benefit from paying a lower cost of debt when they have a higher capital buffer, lending volumes are lower indicating that credit supply may be hampered if bank capital levels are too high within a financial system. The second study presents a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the Federal Reserve crisis liquidity programs using US bank holding company data. The main finding is that the liquidity programs were ex-ante efficient as they targeted illiquid banks with low core stable funding sources, and participants experienced an increase in liquidity creation and loan growth. However, there was a pervasive shift in bank risk taking that increased their stock return synchronicity following liquidity support. Most importantly, while there is strong evidence of an increase in loan supply by banks that accessed the programs that supported short-term funding, these banks are subject to greater stigma effect, and thus pose higher crash risk relative to other banks. The third study examines the effect of banning proprietary trading by banks (the Volcker Rule) on financial stability. There are three channels through which the Volcker Rule impacts bank-level and systemic risks: revenue diversification, bank similarity, and proprietary trading activity. While the reduction in proprietary trading lowers the directly targeted banks’ systemic risk, an unintended consequence is that greater similarity between banks increases the risk that they default at the same time and thus raises the probability of a systemic default. Banks that were not engaged in proprietary trading are also affected by the Volcker Rule through this similarity channel.
Improving availability, access and use of climate information.

Climate variability and change are serious challenges to sustainable development in Africa. The current famine crisis in Somalia and the surrounding region is yet another reminder of how fluctuations in the climate can destroy lives and livelihoods. Building resilience against the negative impacts of climate and maximizing the benefits from favorable conditions will require designing and implementing effective climate risk management strategies. Climate data are critical for this. However, lack of sufficient climate data has been one of the major constraints for integrating climate into development planning and practice in Africa. The distribution of weather stations over many parts of Africa is very sparse, and it has been declining. The available stations are unevenly distributed with most of them located along the main roads. The available observations suffer from gaps and poor quality. Besides, the available data are not easily accessible outside the national meteorological services. Even when accessible, the data are not in userfriendly formats. Thus, there is an immediate need for improving data availability, access and use in Africa. Data availability could be improved significantly by combining station measurements with global products such satellite proxies. Access could be improved by making data, tools, and targeted products available through the Internet. Training of users at different levels will facilitate better use of climate information in development practices. The National Meteorology Agency of Ethiopia has been implementing these approaches in collaboration with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). This paper describes the main components of the Ethiopian experience.
External Factors Causing Students’ Difficulties in Listening

To become a good speaker, one has to be a good listener because naturally people cannot speak properly before listening first. Listening is an important requirement, and also a basic competence to be a good speaker in English. Listening is not an easy process since one who listens must be able to distinguish between sounds, understand the vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as interpret the meaning at the same time. Listening in English requires focus and attention yet, in fact, many students tend to have several difficulties to focus in listening practice. The article aims to show the external factors affecting the students’ difficulty within each process of listening comprehension. The external factors include the speaker, the context of material, and the physical setting. By adopting qualitative design, it is found that the external factors have the higher potential to influence the students’ focus negatively than the students’ physical condition and behavior which are known as internal factors. Moreover, through several findings based on the library research, it is revealed that the external factors are linked to each process of listening. Suggestions with the effective ways to resolve the difficulties in listening are provided.
Using interpersonal process recall to understand empowerment processes in a collaborative care intervention for people with a diagnosis of psychosis

ABSTRACT Evaluation of recovery-focused interventions for people with psychosis may be enhanced by the use of Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR). The aim of this study was to examine whether the inclusion of IPR alongside semi-structured interviews in the formative evaluation of a novel collaborative care intervention increased understanding about both practitioner and service user experiences. It also explored the impact of the IPR process on participants. Four service users and the practitioner delivering the intervention participated in semi-structured interviews and an adapted IPR process. The themes identified from different data sources were systematically compared using framework analysis. Semi-structured interviews indicated that the intervention was operating as intended but IPR data revealed exceptions. Practitioner IPR interviews identified practitioner barriers to delivery and fostered critical self-reflection. Service user IPR interviews facilitated critical feedback but also caused some distress. Interviews gave more information about organisational level contextual factors. IPR increased understanding of how the intervention was being delivered and experienced. IPR should be used alongside other forms of qualitative data collection. The potential of IPR to impact on intervention delivery should be taken into account. Further research is needed to establish for whom IPR is likely to be most effective.
Sim2Real image translation to improve a synthetic dataset for a bin picking task

The use of synthetic data is a promising solution to the problem of the availability of real data needed for the development of robotic systems. However, the precision of the systems trained on synthetic data tends to decrease when they are deployed in the real-life scenarios, which happens due to the disparities between the artificial data and the real world. Therefore, efficient methods for Sim2Real translation are much needed for further progress in robotics. In our study, we use Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to generate more photorealistic data from the synthetic data created for training deep neural networks to handle a bin picking task. As a result, object detectors trained on the images improved with the GANs with the optimal approach to image translation demonstrate better performance than their counterparts trained on the original synthetic data.
FROM MANAGING BEES TO SCHEDULING LIFE VIA DAY SIGNS: THE LOG HIVE AS A WINDOW FOR COMMUNICATION IN PRE-HISPANIC MAYA SOCIETY

Mayas from the pre-Hispanic period documented important facts and life experiences via a writing system consisting of hieroglyphs. To timetable these events, they used time units such as the so-called day signs, whose origins are largely unknown. Classic Maya civilization included a tradition of keeping native stingless bees in horizontally oriented, hollowed-out logs for the production of honey and wax. The legacy and value of this stingless-bee keeping, also called meliponiculture, can be found in their culture and religion. The most commonly kept species was Melipona beecheii , which the Mayas knew by the name of Xunan-kab . The principal way for Mayan beekeepers to access nest interiors and extract honey and wax was via the ends of the rustic log hives. Here I argue that the day signs Imix , Kib’ , Kab’an , Kawak and Ajaw represent cross sections of log hives that are visible when opened at their sides. The signs' interiors reflect extant but stylized bee nest elements that are important to beekeeping, such as food stocks, brood content, adult bees, and nest entrances. Similar to all other day signs and nearly all variants, their roundish, outer frames imitate a hollow log’s solid wall. In those cases where numerous hives were densely stacked together in bee sheds, Maya beekeeping must have become more complex in its organization. To tackle increasing complexity in bee management and sustain colony growth and optimize honey and wax production, Mayan beekeepers likely administered their work based on written figures related to beekeeping details. The five day signs were probably derived from a mnemonic system that originally was intended to identify individual log hives, to keep records of colonies and to share information with others involved in this activity.
The Sampling and use of Traffic Flow Statistics

In this article Dr Garwood discusses two main sampling problems arising in road traffic flow statistics. The first is that of the accuracy with which trends from year to year in the total amount of travel on the road can be estimated from continuous counts at a sample of points on the road system. The second is concerned with sampling in time at particular points and the effect of geographical factors on sampling efficiency. One application of this concerns the concept of the economic capacity of the road, the formula for which involves the coefficient of variation of the hourly flows. Values of the latter are given for some typical roads.
Drivers of continuance intention with mobile banking apps

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the drivers of continuance intention with mobile banking apps, in a Thai context. The secondary objective is to examine if there are underlying segments that differ meaningfully in this regard. Design/methodology/approach A structural equation model based on the European Customer Satisfaction Index is estimated. The data were obtained by conducting an online survey of mobile banking users in Thailand (n=399). Findings The top 3 factors directly affecting continuance intention toward mobile banking are satisfaction, trust and expectancy confirmation. Image and perceived risk also have an impact, although studies have reported that the latter is less impactful than the prior. One latent segment is more influenced by observable performance characteristics like confirmation and perceived quality, the other more by credence factors like trust and image. Practical implications The study confirms the important role of satisfaction and expectancy confirmation in driving continuance. Somewhat unexpected is the high relative prominence of trust as a driver, at least in the Thai context. This is a “soft” variable managers should not dismiss. The identification of segments also points to potentially different treatment and actionable advice for managers. Originality/value This paper adds to the scant body of empirical work on continuance intention with mobile banking. In light of the large investments in mobile banking capabilities being made, this is an under-researched area. This paper to the authors’ knowledge is the first to study consumer heterogeneity in this context.
UTILIZATION OF PUMICE OF BURDUR REGION AND ZEOLITE OF BIGADIC, BALIKESIR REGION AS FINE AGGREGATE IN CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS

Volcanic originated pumice and zeolite aggregates have low density owing to their considerable porous structure. Porosity is usually correlated with insulation properties. In order to examine the effects of this lightweight aggregates on dead load of structure and insulation properties of standard construction materials, samples were produced by using pumice and zeolite at varying percentages by volume and control samples were manufactured with crushed sand. The samples were exposed to normal (standard) curing, hot water curing and steam curing to observe the effect of different curing regimes on their behavior. Bulk density and thermal conductivity tests were carried out on samples. Both bulk density and thermal conductivity values of the lightweight mortar samples were smaller than those of control sample. Besides, chemical compositions of aggregates and cement, analyses were also performed. Silica content of pumice and zeolite were %54.09 and %75.14 by mass respectively.
Orthodox Jewish Mothers’ Lived Experiences of Perinatal Loss: An Interpretive Phenomenological Study

The current study explored the lived experiences of Orthodox Jewish mothers whose baby was stillborn or died shortly after birth, within the context of their religion, families, and community. Within the framework of a qualitative, interpretive phenomenological research design, semistructured interviews with seven Orthodox Jewish women were carried out to obtain a rich, detailed description of their perinatal loss experiences. As well, interviews were conducted with three Orthodox Jewish rabbis to provide further background for the information obtained from mothers. Thematic analysis of data collected from interviews with mothers yielded eight major themes: 1) Context Shapes the Evolving Story, 2) Engulfed with Awareness of Loss, 3) Mourning within a Framework of Halacha (Jewish law), 4) Relinquishing the Illusion of Control, 5) Conceptualizing the Baby as Holy Brings Meaning, 6) Acknowledgement Brings Comfort, 7) Diverse Challenges Intensify Grieving, and 8) Religious, Spiritual, and Personal Transformation. These themes and their relationship to relevant literature and to each other are discussed, followed by a consideration of research strengths, limitations, and practice implications. In addition to advancing the present understanding of cultural influences on perinatal loss in a theoretical sense, a planned outcome was that the findings obtained would contribute to the development of culturally sensitive perinatal bereavement care.
Do Sociology Courses Make More Empathetic Students? A Mixed-Methods Study of Empathy Change in Undergraduates

Assessing course goals is often challenging; assessing an abstract goal, like empathy, can be especially so. For many instructors, empathy is central to sociological thinking. As such, fostering empathy in students is a common course goal. In this article, we report the initial findings of a semester-long assessment of empathy change in undergraduate students (N = 619). We employ a mixed-methods research design that utilizes qualitative instructor data to determine independent instructor-level variables and student surveys to measure student empathy change. We compare empathy change between students enrolled in introductory sociology classes to students not enrolled in sociology classes and test which student and instructor variables predict empathy change. We find that students taking sociology classes have positive empathy change compared to those who do not. We interpret these findings as evidence that study of sociology promotes empathy development and discuss implications for the classroom and further research.
Investor Rewards to Climate Responsibility: Evidence from the 2016 Climate Policy Shock

Donald Trump's election and his nomination of Scott Pruitt, a climate skeptic, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency drastically downshifted expectations on US climate-change policy. We study firms' stock-price reactions and institutional investors' portfolio adjustments after these events. As expected, carbon-intensive firms benefited. Should not companies with responsible strategies on climate change have lost value, since they were paying for actions that were now less urgent? In fact, investors actually rewarded such firms. The premium the firms received resulted, at least in part, from the move into climate-responsible stocks by long-horizon investors presumably expecting a post-Trump rebound to green policy.
Twenty-first century supply chain management: a multiple case study analysis within the UK aerospace industry

In recent years, to stimulate the development of Lean Supply Chain Management (SCM) in SMEs, the UK aerospace industry has developed a change programme named ‘Supply Chains for the twenty-first century’ (SC21). This programme promotes the use of a simple standard improvement framework, which defines performance goals and standardises the approaches and tools for continuous sustainable improvement. However, its effective impact on Lean SCM and performance measurement systems (PMS) has not been widely covered in the literature. Adopting a qualitative research methodology approach, this study investigates five significant organisations to explore and contribute to knowledge on Lean SCM and PMS challenges related to the adoption of the SC21 programme. From an academic point of view, the paper highlights the key role of SC21 in accelerating the competitiveness of the aerospace industry by fostering managerial development of supply chain partners. In particular, it highlights the importance of PMS as well as collaboration between supply chain partners for efficient and effective SCM. From a practitioner’s perspective, the SC21 performance award is highlighted as a very successful approach in bridging the gap of differing agendas between supply chain partners. SMEs, with support from their larger supply chain partners, can embrace performance measurement practices to improve their performance. More established SMEs with a headcount of more than 50 employees are capable of developing and documenting strategic plans and more sophisticated PMS.
Perceptions of fairness in common-pool resource access: farmer responses to new agricultural water use restrictions in Idaho

ABSTRACT This study examines farmers’ perceptions of fairness regarding an agricultural water use policy change in Idaho: the 2015 settlement agreement, a compromise between ground- and surface water farmers in Idaho’s Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer (ESPA) that requires reductions in groundwater withdrawals of about 13% for all groundwater farmers. We characterize the agreement as an attempt to solve a common-pool resource social dilemma and draw on Elinor Ostrom’s seven ‘design principles’ as a conceptual framework. Using data from 43 interviews and 265 mail surveys, we find a split between farmers who grudgingly accept the agreement as necessary to keep the region’s agricultural productivity sustainable, and those who consider it unnecessary, unfair, or even illegal. A belief in the importance of protecting groundwater resources and support for local control was cited by farmers backing the agreement, whereas dissenting farmers believed outside interests had exerted too much influence throughout the negotiation process and generally mistrusted the state’s groundwater data. Given that residents of the American West are likely to continue having to address declining water availability in the future due to climate change, our findings can help policymakers design effective and equitable water policies in a way that advances rural environmental justice.
Longing for Independence, Yet Depending on Family Support: A Qualitative Analysis of Psychosocial Adaptation of Iranian International Students in Hungary

International students experience psychosocial changes in response to their new environment, and their psychosocial adaptation is facilitated or hindered by various factors. This study aimed to examine the intercultural experiences of Iranian international students in Hungary. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 Iranian students in Budapest, Hungary, and a thematic analysis employed to discern and interpret themes within the data. The thematic analysis identified three overarching themes: (1) Sojourn’s Experience as Self-Growth, (2) Uncertainty in Intercultural Interactions, and (3) Striving for Autonomous-Related Self. The data reported that Iranian students experienced more happiness in Hungary than sadness, and their motivation to live independently in Hungary while depending on family support acted as buffers against any negative psychological feelings. The findings of this study underline the significance of independence and family support as the influencing factors for psychosocial adaptation of Iranian students.