Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ACCOUNTING CONSERVATISM, FINANCIAL CRISES AND STOCK PRICE CRASH RISK

ACCOUNTING CONSERVATISM, FINANCIAL CRISES AND STOCK PRICE CRASH RISK 1Makkiyeh Gharibi and 2Karim Nemati ABSTRACT Conservatism which implies using prudence in recognition and measuring income and assets is one of the most important limiting conventions of financial statements. In fact conservatism can be known as the product of ambiguity which accountants use in ambiguous situations. The major purpose of this research is studing the relationship between accounting conservatism, financial crisis and stock price crash risk. We have used regression model to examine this relationship, Basu's model (1997) to measure accounting conservatism, Altman's Z model to evaluate financial crisis and negative coefficient skewness to calculate stock price crash risk. The hypothesis of this research have been determined considering this issue. Hence, the impact of other variables such as return on total assets, changes in cash variance of return of company and risk-free rate of return have been controlled. We have used the information derived from financial statements of 93 companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange since 2007 to 2014. Conclusions show that the relationship between accounting conservatism and financial crises is negative and financial crises will decrease by using accounting conservatism.in this way financial statements will be more suitable and they will fulfill different types of users froms company's clients to creditors.it will result in high absorption of capital. There is also the same negative relationship between accounting conservatism and stock price crash risk that is using accounting conservatism will lower stock price crash risk.
Buying green and social from abroad : Are biomass-focused voluntary sustainability standards useful for European public procurement ?

European public procurement is becoming more sustainable. However, for goods with global supply chains, sustainable procurement faces several challenges. This paper highlights the sustainability challenges for biomass-based products, discusses the suitability of biomass-focused voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) to address them, and identifies experiences and knowledge gaps in the use of VSS in European public procurement. The paper is based on a comprehensive literature review and a case study. Biomass-based products can have major negative environmental and social impacts in their global supply chains. Biomass-focused VSS using third-party certification, contribute to avoiding such hazards. VSS are used by public procurers to (i) establish sustainability criteria for tender offers, (ii) minimize risks, and (iii) verify compliance with their criteria. Large knowledge gaps exist with respect to increasing sustainability of procurement. The impact of sustainably procured goods as well as of more recently created biomass-based VSS is uncertain. The strictness level of VSS necessary to deliver the desired sustainability effects is not clear. Large data gaps exist, e.g., how frequently which type of VSS is used for which products and for what reasons, and where procurers compromise between desired traits and limited market offers. This information would support a dialogue between procurers, business, and policy makers to stimulate markets towards more sustainable products.
MASONRY BUILDING DESIGN IN SEISMIC AREAS: RECENT EXPERIENCES AND PROSPECTS FROM A EUROPEAN STANDPOINT

The recent development of a new Italian seismic code, conceived as a transition towards the final adoption of Eurocodes, has been an occasion to reconsider thoroughly the current criteria for seismic design of masonry buildings, their experimental and theoretical basis, their consequences on practice. Drawing from this experience, a critical discussion of design criteria is presented, with specific attention to the definition of behaviour factors to be used in elastic analysis and more generally on methods and models for the seismic performance verification of masonry buildings. Necessary and possible developments of design/assessment procedures and code provisions are presented, and research needs are outlined.
Does ownership affect bank profitability? Some international evidence

This paper analyzes how bank profitability varies depending on the type of bank ownership. We compare stock banks, mutual banks, state-owned banks and saving banks organized as foundations, using country-level panel data from eight OECD countries to correct for unobserved country heterogeneity. Our results indicate that mutual and state-owned banks have higher interest margins and higher profit before taxes than commercial stock banks after adjusting for risk. Whereas the higher profit before taxes of state-owned banks is based on their lower risk-taking, the use of provisions for income smoothing seems to explain the same result in mutual banks.
MEASURING CONSUMER EMOTIONS IN SERVICE ENCOUNTERS: AN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS

Consider the range of emotions that make up the experience of life, emotions such as love, anger, excitement and joy. Yet by all accounts there is only one emotion that we experience as consumers, satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the second most measured index in Australian business after net profit (James, 1997), and of course no one would argue that trying to achieve customer satisfaction is what we are all about. Customer satisfaction is one of those terms that is so ubiquitous however, that we rarely stop to consider what the word actually means, especially when we can ‘measure’ it so easily with commonly used Likert type rating scales. Recently however there have been a number of criticisms of satisfaction rating measures. Peterson & Wilson (1992) address the inherent skewness of satisfaction rating distributions; Iacobucci, Grayson & Ostrom (1994) question the received wisdom of exceeding customer expectations; Jones & Sasser, (1995) in an article in the Harvard Business Review discuss why “satisfied” customers defect; and Stewart, (1997) argues that “a satisfied customer isn’t enough”. This paper presents the results from an ongoing empirical study by the author into consumer emotions. By focusing on the service encounter specifically, it argues for the need to move beyond the satisfaction construct as a measure of the consumer experience.
Intercultural Communication Competence of Nurses Providing Care for Patients from Different Cultures

Introduction: This study was performed with nurses who provide c are for an intercultural population with the objective of determining intercultural communication competence of nurses wh o provide care for patients from different cultures. Material and Method: Data were collected from 204 nurses using a Nurse Identification Form, the Intercultural Awareness Scale, Intercultural Sensit ivity Scale and Intercultural Effectiveness Scale. As part of the study, nurses’ introductory characteris ics were presented as percentile, mean or median values. A regression analysis and manova test were used to review the intercultural awareness, sensiti vity and effectiveness levels according to the descripti ve characteristics of the nurses. Result: Nurses’ had high Intercultural Awareness, Intercul tural Sensitivity and Intercultural Effectiveness scale scores. It was found that the s core obtained from the Intercultural Awareness, Intercultural Sensitivity and Intercultural Effecti veness scales do not show a difference according to the descriptive characteristics of the nurses. Conclusion: Within the scope of intercultural communication co mpetence, high scores received from the intercultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity and intercultural effectiveness scales demonstrated that the working nurses had good intercultural communica tion competence.
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR BENDING FATIGUE BEHAVIOUR OF GLASS-EPOXY COMPOSITE MATERIALS

The paper presents results obtained by bending fatigue tests of specimens obtained from composites plates of ortogomal glass fibers woven and epoxy resin . The samples from plates obtained by hand lay-up method were tested by using a bending fatigue testing machine built in university lab. As a degradation parameter was considered the relative reduction of Young modulus values. The test results revealed a samples fatigue behaviour better as the proportion of fiber oriented along with sample longitudinaral direction is higher. Also from tests results can be pointed out that on the degradation firsts stages have been observed cracks in samples which have fibers with orientation different to longitudinal one, cracks which we consider are related to the inherent defects due to the used fabrication method for composite plates, too.
Marketing Mix and Service Quality Effect on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty of Toyota Cars 1 )

This study aims to test and empirical analysis the marketing mix and service quality effect on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, research was conducted in 26 branches in Sulawesi a population of about 16 212 customers of PT. HadjiKalla in Sulawesi who purchase Toyota cars for 2015 with a sample of 390 customers. The results of the analysis of structural equation modelusing AMOS version 20 provide evidence that marketing mix has a positive and significant effect on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Service quality is positive and significant effect on customer satisfaction, but insignificant effect on customer loyalty. Customer satisfaction has a positive and significant effect on customer loyalty. Marketing mix and service quality has a significant on customer loyalty as a mediated customer satisfaction. The practical implication of this study provide increased knowledge and understanding of the customer and the company's management in Sulawesi in increasing customer loyalty through marketing mix, service quality and customer satisfaction. Limitations of this study on a sample size using only the customers car brands Toyota and just carried on Sulawesi area that may limit generalizability of the research findings. Originality of this study provide the basis for the development configuration modeling using structural equation model and conceptual models that prove marketing mix and service quality on customer loyalty as a mediated customer satisfaction in previous research done separately. The mediating role of customer satisfaction is proven to increase customer loyalty to the highway.
A S ] 2 0 A ug 2 01 9 Semi-supervised Sequence-to-sequence ASR using Unpaired Speech and Text

Sequence-to-sequence automatic speech recognition (ASR) models require large quantities of data to attain high performance. For this reason, there has been a recent surge in interest for unsupervised and semi-supervised training in such models. This work builds upon recent results showing notable improvements in semi-supervised training using cycle-consistency and related techniques. Such techniques derive training procedures and losses able to leverage unpaired speech and/or text data by combining ASR with Text-to-Speech (TTS) models. In particular, this work proposes a new semi-supervised loss combining an end-to-end differentiable ASR→TTS loss with TTS→ASR loss. The method is able to leverage both unpaired speech and text data to outperform recently proposed related techniques in terms of %WER. We provide extensive results analyzing the impact of data quantity and speech and text modalities and show consistent gains across WSJ and Librispeech corpora. Our code is provided in ESPnet to reproduce the experiments.
BTT_A_207246 139..178

Richard Melsheimer 1 Anja Geldhof 1 Isabel Apaolaza 1 Thomas Schaible 1Medical Affairs, Janssen Biologics BV, Leiden, the Netherlands; 2Medical Affairs, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Horsham, PA, USA Abstract: On August 24, 1998, Remicade (infliximab), the first tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF) inhibitor, received its initial marketing approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Crohn’s disease. Subsequently, Remicade was approved in another five adult and two pediatric indications both in the USA and across the globe. In the 20 years since this first approval, Remicade has made several important contributions to the advancement of science and medicine: 1) clinical trials with Remicade established the proof of concept that targeted therapy can be effective in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases; 2) as the first monoclonal antibody approved for use in a chronic condition, Remicade helped in identifying methods of administering large, foreign proteins repeatedly while limiting the body’s immune response to them; 3) the need to establish Remicade’s safety profile required developing new methods and setting new standards for postmarketing safety studies, specifically in the real-world setting, in terms of approach, size, and duration of follow-up; 4) the study of Remicade has improved our understanding of TNF’s role in the immune system, as well as our understanding of the pathophysiology of a range of diseases characterized by chronic inflammation; and 5) Remicade and other TNF inhibitors have transformed treatment practices in these chronic inflammatory diseases: remission has become a realistic goal of therapy and long-term disability resulting from structural damage can be prevented. This paper reviews how, over the course of its development and 20 years of use in clinical practice, Remicade was able to make these contributions.
A ug 2 01 9 A new McKean-Vlasov stochastic interpretation of the parabolic-parabolic Keller-Segel model : The two-dimensional case

In Talay and Tomasevic [20] we proposed a new stochastic interpretation of the parabolicparabolic Keller-Segel system without cut-off via a McKean-Vlasov stochastic process. The latter was defined through an original type of interaction kernel which involved, in a singular way, all its past time marginals. In the present paper, we study this McKean-Vlasov representation in the two-dimensional case. In this setting, there exists a possibility of a blow-up in finite time for the Keller-Segel system if some parameters of the model are large. Indeed, we prove the global in time well-posedness of the McKean-Vlasov process under some constraints involving a parameter of the model and the initial datum. Under these constraints, we also prove the global well-posedness for the Keller-Segel model in the plane.
The Effect of Blended Learning on EFL Learners’ Reading Proficiency

The present study aimed at determining the effect of blended learning on the reading proficiency of Iranian EFL learners. A quasi-experimental design was adopted to reach this goal. Sixty intermediate-level Iranian EFL learners were randomly assigned to two groups. The control group received conventional classroom instruction in General English, whereas the experimental group received classroom instruction in General English including blended instruction in the reading skill. The blended learning material was developed by the researcher. Both groups were tested for their reading skills before and after the treatment using the reading section of the Preliminary English Test (PET) and their scores were compared through an independent t test. The SPSS software was utilized in order to analyze the data. The results indicated that blended learning has a statistically significant positive effect on the reading proficiency of Iranian EFL learners. Blended learning can be adopted in the English language classes, in order to facilitate the learning process especially that of the reading skill.
Carbon dioxide in pollucite , a feldspathoid with the ideal composition ( Cs , Na ) 16 Al 16 Si 32 O 96 · n H 2

We report a single-crystal Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) study of a sample of pollucite from Maine, USA. Prior to our work, the sample had been characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, neutron diffraction and electron-probe microanalysis. It is cubic Ia3̄d, with a crystal-chemical formula Na1.93(Cs10.48Rb0.31K0.04)S=10.83(Al14.45Si33.97)S=48.42O96·3.92H2O, and an H2O content, determined by thermogravimetric analysis, of 1.6 wt. %. The single-crystal FTIR spectrum has a doublet of intense bands at 3670 and 3589 cm , which are assigned to the n3 and n1 stretching modes of the H2O molecule, respectively. A very intense and sharp peak at 1620 cm 1 is assigned to the n2 bending vibration. In the near-infrared region there is a relatively intense peak at 5270 cm , which is assigned to a combination (n2 + n3) mode of H2O, and a weak but well defined doublet at 7118 and 6831 cm , which is assigned to the first overtones of the fundamental stretching modes. A relatively weak but extremely sharp peak at 2348 cm 1 shows that the pollucite contains CO2 molecules in structural cavities. Mapping the sample using FTIR indicates that both H2O and CO2 are homogeneously distributed. Secondary ion mass spectrometry yielded an average CO2 content of 0.09 0.02 wt. %. On the basis of this value, we determined the integrated molar absorption coefficient for the spectroscopic analysis of CO2 in pollucite to be eiCO2 = 11,000 3000 l mol 1 cm ; the linear molar absorption coefficient for the same integration range is elCO2= 1600 500 l mol 1 cm .
Budding Female IT Entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia : Impact of IT and Institutional Environment Completed Research

IT entrepreneurs represent a valuable source to any society. They prompt socio-economic growth, innovation and job creation. In this regard, there has been a growing recognition of the lack of women’s IT entrepreneurial activities. Despite this recognition, a comprehensive literature shows a paucity of research in women’s IT entrepreneurship. More specifically, innovation, technology and female entrepreneurs are rarely studied in the same context though each has a vital value for human and economy development. Consequently, a conceptual model that will affect women’s IT entrepreneurial intention and decisionmaking processes is proposed. Hypotheses have been developed. Data has been collected in different Saudi female public universities as well as technology incubators, and entrepreneurship programs. Partial Least Square approach has been applied to analyze the data. The findings provide key factors affecting women’s IT entrepreneurial intention to perform IT entrepreneurial behaviors.
SKEW-FIT: STATE-COVERING SELF-SUPERVISED RE-

In standard reinforcement learning, each new skill requires a manually-designed reward function, which takes considerable manual effort and engineering. Selfsupervised goal setting has the potential to automate this process, enabling an agent to propose its own goals and acquire skills that achieve these goals. However, such methods typically rely on manually-designed goal distributions or heuristics to force the agent to explore a wide range of states. We propose a formal exploration objective for goal-reaching policies that maximizes state coverage. We show that this objective is equivalent to maximizing the entropy of the goal distribution together with goal reaching performance, where goals correspond to entire states. We present an algorithm called Skew-Fit for learning such a maximum-entropy goal distribution, and show that under certain regularity conditions, our method converges to a uniform distribution over the set of possible states, even when we do not know this set beforehand. Our experiments show that, when combined with existing goal-conditioned algorithms, Skew-Fit can learn a variety of manipulation tasks from images, including opening a door with a real robot, entirely from scratch and without any manually-designed reward function.
EYE MOVEMENTS IN A VIRTUAL LAPAROSCOPIC TRAINING ENVIRONMENT

Computer simulations are a promising alternative to traditional surgery training methods especially in minimally-invasive procedures such as laparoscopic surgery. In minimally-invasive surgery (MIS), eye-hand coordination is important because the surgical site is viewed on a monitor with limited depth cues and a restricted field of view. Thus, the emphasis has been on training tools that effectively prepare novices for the eye-hand coordination difficulties in MIS. How people interact with the system is of interest to those developing surgical training tools. This thesis compares the eye movements of novice and experienced subjects who performed a task in a virtual laparoscopic training environment. The eye movements in skilled performance were found to be different from those with less experience. In addition, the eye movements of novices after training became more similar to the experienced subjects. iii To mom and dad iv Acknowledgments Thanks to my senior supervisor, Dr. Stella Atkins, for her support and encouragement. This topic would not be possible without her enthusiasm of inter-disciplinary research. Thanks to my supervisor Dr. Ted Kirkpatrick for his insight and patience. He was also an important training subject while I learned how to calibrate and adjust the eye tracker on him. Also thanks to my other supervisor Dr. Alan Lomax for his surgery expertise which was invaluable and for arranging the hospital visit. use of the Immersion Laparoscopic Impulse Engine and the lab for my experiments. Thanks to Dr. Christine MacKenzie for her valuable input on the thesis and for her time as examiner. Thanks to Dr. John Dill for chairing my defence and for his comments on the thesis. Also thanks to Graham Wilson for supplying the code that my application was based on. Thanks to all the friends and colleagues here at SFU. It made life at this school a great place to live and study. Thanks to the volunteers who got through my experiments. They unselfishly gave up their time so I could proceed with my studies.
DETECTING AND RESOLVING METRICAL AMBIGUITY

This study examined listeners’ detection and resolution of metrical ambiguity in the song ‘Murder by Numbers’ by The Police over the course of five hearings. In the extended opening of the song, a syncopated pattern in the drums ostensibly projects a triple meter that clashes with a duple meter played by the instruments that enter later. A tapping task was used to examine changes in listeners’ perception of the ambiguous segment on multiple rehearings. All participants first heard the whole song (Trial 1). In the remaining four trials participants were divided into two experimental groups receiving different instructions. Participants in the natural condition continued to tap the beat they spontaneously perceived in the subsequent presentations of the 80-second-long target segment. Participants in the coherent condition were asked to find one coherent way of tapping that would fit the whole segment. The majority of listeners processed the musical signal primarily in a bottom-up fashion, interpreting the song as containing a change of meter even during the later trials. Only in a few cases did participants recognize the garden path nature of the segment and inhibit their initial hearing, reinterpreting the meter by applying some type of top-down listening strategy. This study provides initial evidence on how interpretation of ambiguous meter changes upon rehearing. Although the findings suggest that the coherence (global stability) of metrical structure is not of primary importance for many average listeners, nonetheless there are trends toward greater coherence over repeated listening, particularly for some listeners.