Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determinants of Qardhul Hassan Financing Acceptance Among Malaysian Bank Customers: An Empirical Analysis

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that determine Qardhul Hassan financing acceptance among Malaysian bank customers. Explained in more detail, the main objectives of the study are twofold. First is to test the applicability of conventional theory, notably theory of reasoned action (TRA) to the Qardhul Hassan financing acceptance. Second is to examine the effect of pricing to Qardhul Hassan financing acceptance. TRA was employed in order to examine its applicability to the context of Qardhul Hassan financing. Besides the original constructs of the model, the pricing construct is added in order to justify further the determinants of the Qardhul Hassan financing. As such, this study used survey approach in order to investigate the objectives of the study. The study found that "attitude", "subjective norm" were important determinants to influence bank customers' perception of accepting Qardhul Hassan financing. These results, on the other hand, proved the suitability of the determinants to the context. of Qardhul Hassan financing. Besides "attitude" and "subjective norm" constructs, this study, on the other viewpoint, contributes to the existing body of knowledge by proving that the pricing factor was also an important as a key determinant of Qardhul Hassan financing acceptance. Although this study proved the importance of "attitude," "subjective norm" and "price of Qardhul Hassan financing" factors, there still exists an opportunity for the future research relevant in this area in which it is due to limitations embedded in the current study. This study, however, is useful for Islamic banks in order to beautify Qardhul Hassan financing facility.
Diseases – Drug Targets ( 2009 ) in silico studies on DARC

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. In Silico Studies on DARC. Alexandre De Brevern, Ludovic Autin, Yves Colin, Olivier Bertrand, Catherine Etchebest
When Are Cash Transfers Transformative

Author(s): Wydick, Bruce | Abstract: Cash transfers have emerged over the last two decades as one of themost widespread and highly researched poverty interventions. The use ofcash transfers to create a Basic Minimum Income (BMI) has become animportant policy debate. Extensive research has been carried out on theimpact of both conditional and unconditional cash transfers. Some of thisevidence finds that cash transfers can lead to long-term, transformativeeffects on economic well-being, while in other contexts, the effects appear tobe limited to increases in short-term consumption. This paper reviews theliterature on the impacts of cash transfers. It then presents a simple modelthat seeks to understand when we can expect cash transfers to havetransformative effects in which the income of recipients transitions to asignificantly and sustainably higher level. Behavioral extensions to themodel show how responses to cash transfers may change when we accountfor endogenous discount rates, cognitive ability, and aspirations.
AN EXPANDED ACCOUNTING FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH : FOCUS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A FOCAL FIRM AND ITS STAKEHOLDERS

In contrast to current accounting principles, which have focused on financial information about the reporting entity, this study suggests that attention should be paid to the information about relationships between a focal firm and its stakeholders. That is, we could more accurately assess the sustainability of a firm’s profit and growth by considering both its financial outcomes and business relationships. The rationale of the suggestion is that firms which facilitate mutual profitability between themselves and their stakeholders are more likely to achieve cooperative relationships and consequently enjoy better financial performance and sustainable growth than those who pursue their profitability in an exclusive way. This study therefore suggests that principles of accounting should embrace not only the incomes of a firm and its consolidations (subsidiaries, associates and joint arrangements) but also those of its stakeholders, such as suppliers.
Large Powerful Shareholders and Cash Holding

We study the relationship between liquid asset holding and the pattern of share ownership and control structures within the firm. We explore these issues using a data set of Belgian firms that is particularly well suited to studying the institutions of control oriented finance. The data include information on ownership concentration, voting alliances, managerial ownership, membership in family groups, institutional cross-share holdings, and coordination centers which under Belgian law permit consolidation of earnings and cash flow for a group of firms. We show that financial structures in Belgium are strongly control oriented as evidenced by the very high levels of observed ownership concentration and the prevalence of pyramids, voting alliances, and participation in family groups. We find that the level of liquid asset holding is positively associated with ownership concentration and that this effect is particularly marked for family firms. Given the difficulties of family firms in achieving effective wealth diversification we interpret these results as indicating liquid asset holding is largely motivated by risk aversion. Cash holding is negatively associated with institutional cross share holdings, suggesting that these cross holdings facilitate an effective internal capital market. We find little evidence that managers have an independent influence on cash holdings.
Determinants of Private Credit in OECD Developed, BRIC's and LAC Countries

The paper studies the determinants of private credit in three groups of countries between 2004 and 2010. It provides subsidies for public policy formulation, based on the argument of heterogeneity between regions. The panel regression models indicate that for the OECD group (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), private consumption was the most relevant determinant, positively correlated with private credit, and its rise of 1 percentage point resulted in a 4.8 percentage points increase in the Credit/GDP ratio. For BRICs group (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and LAC group (Latin America and Caribbean), the Balance of Current Account was the most relevant element and with greater impact on the Credit/GDP ratio. Every negative change of 1 percentage point resulted in a positive change of 2.07 and 0.61 percentage points in the ratio Credit/GDP for each group, respectively, indicating the dependence on foreign savings. These results and others are analyzed in the study.
Bayesian Method for Causal Inference in Spatially-Correlated Multivariate Time Series

Measuring the causal impact of an advertising campaign on sales is an important problem for advertising companies interested in modeling consumer demand at stores in different locations. This paper proposes a new causal inference method that uses a Bayesian multivariate time series model to capture the spatial correlation between stores. Control stores which are used to build counterfactuals over the causal period are chosen before running the advertising campaign. The novelty of this method is to estimate causal effects by comparing the posterior distributions of latent variables given by the observed data and its counterfactual data. We use one-sided Kolmogorov-Smirnov distance to quantify the difference between the two posterior distributions. We found that this method is able to detect smaller scale of causal impact as measurement errors are automatically filtered out in the causal analysis compared to a commonly used method. A two-stage algorithm is used to estimate the model. A G-Wishart prior with a given graphical structure on the precision matrix is used to impose sparsity in spatial correlation. The graphical structure needs not correspond to a decomposable graph. We model the local linear trend by a stationary multivariate autoregressive process to prevent the prediction intervals from being explosive. A detailed simulation study shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach to causal inference. We apply the proposed method to a real dataset to measure the effect of an advertising campaign for a consumer product sold at stores of a large national retail chain.
Bacterial meningitis: epidemiology, herd protection, clinical characteristics, and risk assessment

This thesis studied the epidemiology of community-acquired bacterial meningitis after the nationwide implementation of paediatric conjugate vaccines, as well as the long-term epidemiology of invasive meningococcal disease and neonatal group B streptococcal disease in the Netherlands. Furthermore, clinical features of adult community-acquired bacterial meningitis after the introduction of adjunctive dexamethasone therapy and routine paediatric conjugate vaccines were investigated in a prospective nationwide cohort. Predictors of severe illness were found, both in adults with bacterial meningitis as well as in patients presenting with cerebrospinal pleocytosis and a negative cerebrospinal fluid gram stain. A risk score was developed that identifies adults with cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis and a negative cerebrospinal fluid Gram stain at low risk of an urgent treatable cause, and an external validation study of nine risk scores that predict adverse clinical outcome in bacterial meningitis was performed. Risk scores were identified through a systematic review of the literature. We found that bacterial meningitis is still a formidable disease with high mortality and morbidity, but progress has been made over the last decades. Outcome has been improved substantially by the introduction of adjunctive dexamethasone. Conjugate paediatric vaccines have greatly reduced the incidence of meningococcal, pneumococcal and H. influenzae type b meningitis. These vaccines have been unexpectedly effective against colonization and transmission, thereby making it possible to protect infants, immunocompromised patients, and the elderly by vaccinating healthy carriers. High quality and long-term surveillance studies will remain essential for vaccine development, implementation and evaluation.
Ageing of innate immunity in health and vasculitic diseases by Qi Wang

Reuscel-arteriitis (RCA) is een ontstekingsziekte van de grote bloedvaten, die alleen voorkomt bij mensen ouder dan 50 jaar. Een ernstig gevolg van deze ziekte is blindheid of beroerte veroorzaakt door afsluiting van bloedvaten in de slaap regio. De oorzaak van de ziekte is nog onbekend. Algemeen wordt aangenomen dat infecties van de luchtwegen voorafgaan aan de ziekte bij genetische gevoeligheid voor de ontwikkeling van RCA. De beginsymptomen zijn vaak algemeen van aard, zoals koorts en afvallen. RCA heeft geen ziektespecifieke biomarker waardoor de diagnose vaak te laat gesteld wordt. Tevens is er slechts een behandeloptie en dat is een behandeling met hoge doses prednisolon. In dit proefschrift is gevonden dat veroudering een belangrijke bijdrage heeft aan ernst van de geinduceerde vaatwandonsteking in een diermodel. Daarnaast werd een belangrijke rol aangetoond voor het afweersysteem. Dit verandert ongunstig met ouder worden. Met name de verouderde monocyt (een bepaald type witte bloedcel) speelt een belangrijke rol in deze ziekte. Verouderde monocyten komen verhoogd voor bij oudere mensen en lijken goed te kunnen plakken aan de binnenzijde van bloedvaten. Ze kunnen hierdoor gemakkelijk de bloedvatwand in bewegen en schade veroorzaken. Ze zijn ook belangrijk voor het stimuleren van andere, meer gespecialiseerde, witte bloedcellen die een rol spelen bij RCA. Kennis verkregen uit dit onderzoek kan bijdragen aan het vinden van biomarkers voor RCA om de diagnose tijdig te kunnen stellen. De nieuwe gegevens kunnen tevens aangrijpingspunten opleveren voor nieuwe behandelingen met minder bijwerkingen dan prednisolon.
The potential role of herbal medicines in the treatment of chronic stable angina pectoris: a review of key herbs, and as illustration, exploration of the Chinese herbal medicine approach

Herbal medicines have been used for centuries within different cultures to treat cardiovascular disease, including stable angina pectoris. However, the use of herbs varies within traditions of natural medicine, and how they are understood to work in systems such as Chinese medicine, for example, is vastly different from the pharmaceutical model that seeks to reduce herbs to their active constituents. This review first discusses, individually, key herbs used within Western, Indian, and Chinese herbalism to treat stable angina pectoris and their main active constituents and pharmacological actions. The second part of the paper then specifically explores how angina is treated traditionally with Chinese herbal medicine, a unique approach to the understanding of health and illness underpinned by philosophies and theories that describe the physiological functioning and pathological changes in the body in terms very different from those of biomedicine. A foundational account of the guiding theories of Chinese medicine is followed by a description of the cardiovascular system and the etiology and pathogenesis of angina from the Chinese medical perspective. This forms the basis for understanding the rationale for construction of Chinese herbal medicinal formulae for treating angina pectoris. The scientific evidence of the efficacy of some Chinese herbal formulae is discussed.
Auditing employee ownership in a neo‐liberal world

Purpose – Employee ownership has attracted much attention across the globe. Whether affected by the global financial crisis (GFC), or not, this paper seeks to canvass what is known about employee ownership in neo‐liberal political economies.Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a literature review, cross cultural analysis and critique.Findings – The findings indicate future research directions.Research limitations/implications – The paper suggests a reconsideration of organizational configurations for possible greater application in the future.Social implications – The paper hightlights the re‐regulation of neo‐liberal markets.Originality/value – The paper focuses on employee share ownership schemes.
A modeling case for high atmospheric oxygen concentrations during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic

Changes in atmospheric oxygen concentration over Earth history are commonly related to the evolution of animals and plants. But there is no direct geochemical proxy for O2 levels, meaning that estimations rely heavily on modeling approaches. The results of such studies differ greatly, to the extent that today's atmospheric mixing ratio of 21% might be either the highest or lowest level during the past 200 m.y. Long-term oxygen sources, such as the burial in sediments of reduced carbon and sulfur species, are calculated in models by representation of nutrient cycling and estimation of productivity, or by isotope mass balance (IMB)—a technique in which burial rates are inferred in order to match known isotope records. Studies utilizing these different techniques produce conflicting estimates for paleoatmospheric O2, with nutrient-weathering models estimating concentrations close to, or above, that of the present day, and IMB models estimating low O2, especially during the Mesozoic. Here we re-assess the IMB technique using the COPSE biogeochemical model. IMB modelling is confirmed to be highly sensitive to assumed carbonate δ13C, and when this input is defined following recent compilations, predicted O2 is significantly higher and in reasonable agreement with that of non-IMB techniques. We conclude that there is no model-based support for low atmospheric oxygen concentrations during the past 200 m.y. High Mesozoic O2 is consistent with wildfire records and the development of plant fire adaptions, but links between O2 and mammal evolution appear more tenuous.
Hard-to-Manipulate Combinatorial Auctions

Mechanism design provides a framework to solve distributed optimization problems in systems of self-interested agents. The combinatorial auction is one such problem, in which there is a set of discrete items to allocate to agents. Unfortunately, recent results suggest that it is impossible to implement reasonable approximations without losing robustness to manipulation. Furthermore, the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism is known to be vulnerable to manipulation when agents can bid under multiple false names. In this paper we relax incentive constraints and require only that useful manipulation be NP-hard. We prove that any tractable approximation algorithm can be made to produce a hard-to-manipulate (VCG-based) mechanism, providing a useful counterpoint to these negative results. We also show that falsename bid manipulation in the VCG is NP-hard. ∗Harvard College, ssanghvi@post.harvard. edu †Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, parkes@eecs.harvard. edu
Some hematological and biochemical parameter levels in healthy Van cats at different age and gender

Materials and Methods: In this study, 60 healthy Van cats having different age and gender were used. The cats in both genders divided into 3 different groups among them according to their ages. The cats 6 to 12 months were taken to the study as 1st group, 12 to 24-month cats were taken to the 2nd group, and 24 to more-month cats were taken to the 3rd group. From blood samples received, hematological and biochemical parameter values were identified.
Momentum profits and time varying unsystematic

This study assesses whether the widely documented momentum profits can be attributed to time-varying risk as described by a GJR-GARCH(1,1)-M model. We reveal that momentum profits are a compensation for time-varying unsystematic risks, which are common to the winner and loser stocks but affect the former more than the latter. In addition, we find that, perhaps because losers have a higher propensity than winners to disclose bad news, negative return shocks increase their volatility more than it increases those of the winners. The volatility of the losers is also found to respond to news more slowly, but eventually to a greater extent, than that of the winners.
Financial Capacity and Adoption of E-government for Improved Service Delivery in Kajiado County, Kenya

Many governments, globally, have in the last two decades started adopting E-government to improve efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery. However, the implementation of E-government is capital intensive and hence requires adequate financial resources. The purpose of this study was to establish the influence of financial capacity on the adoption of E-government in Kajiado County in Kenya. The study was based on pragmatic paradigm. Descriptive survey was used in this study. A sample of 335 respondents was drawn from the target population of 2660 employees from the devolved 10 ministries in Kajiado County using Cochran (2007) formulae. Quantitative data was collected through open and closed-ended questionnaires while qualitative data was collected through an interview guide. Regression models and correlation were used to analyze inferential data and test hypotheses. Qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis. The study found that Financial capacity had a strong positive influence on adoption of E-government (r= 0.595, p-value=0.000). The study concludes that financial capacity has a significant influence on the adoption of E-government in the County Government of Kajiado. The availability of financial resources helps to enhance or build organizational IT infrastructure, which is one of the strongest predictors of innovation. Therefore, the study recommends that the County government of Kajiado should increase its budget allocation to facilitate the implementation of E-government. Keywords: Financial Capacity, adoption of Technology, E-government, internet.
Dynamics of Poverty in Ethiopia

This paper addresses issues related to the dynamics of income poverty using unique household panel data for urban and rural areas of Ethiopia covering the period 1994-97. The percentage of households that remained in poverty was twice as large in urban areas as in rural areas. This suggests that income variability is a serious problem in rural areas, while the persistence is a key feature of urban poverty. The paper also discusses household characteristics that are correlated with the incidence of chronic poverty as well as vulnerability to poverty. A strategy that promotes consumption smoothing through say access to credit can work well in rural areas, while income or employment generation are required for poverty alleviation in urban areas.
One-dimensional models of shear wave velocity for the eastern Mediterranean obtained from the inversion of Rayleigh wave phase velocities and tectonic implications

SUMMARY On a SW‐NE profile from the Libyan coast towards central Turkey phase velocity curves of the fundamental Rayleigh mode were measured using a two-station method. The inversion of phase velocity curves yields 1-D models of shear wave velocity down to approximately 200 km depths that may be interpreted as estimates of average models between neighbouring stations on the profile. Strong lateral variations in the shear wave velocity structure are imaged along the profile. The subducted oceanic African mantle lithosphere is indicated in 1-D models for the region around Crete by significantly enlarged shear wave velocities. It is also imaged by an average model of the structure between stations on Crete and Santorini. On a path crossing the Libyan Sea south of Crete the resulting model is slower than a model expected for 110 Myr old oceanic lithosphere. The passive African margin is thus assumed to extend northwards beneath the Libyan Sea. Anomalous low shear wave velocities are found for the uppermost mantle beneath central Turkey down to a depth of approximately 130 km. Using two stations on Crete the average depth of the oceanic Moho within the subducting slab is estimated to be at approximately 50 km beneath Crete. For this arc-parallel path, an enlarged standard deviation of the measured phase velocities of approximately 0.2 km s −1 between 10 and 30 mHz is observed that is probably caused by strong lateral heterogeneity related to the subducting slab. In addition, in this frequency range an anomalous propagation of the fundamental Rayleigh mode is detected that is indicated by measured phase velocities that are approximately one standard deviation faster than phase velocities expected from a great-circle approximation. An average shear wave velocity of approximately 3.5 km s −1 is observed above the oceanic Moho. In order to explain the recent lithospheric structure of the Hellenic subduction zone a tectonic model is assumed for the NE‐SW striking profile considered. It is based on the calculated 1-D models, tectonic reconstructions and on a model derived from the metamorphic history of rocks exposed on Crete. The suggested model summarizes the tectonic development at a lithospheric scale starting in the Late Cretaceous. Accretion of crustal material of two microcontinents to Eurasia is assumed, while continuous subduction of the oceanic lithosphere of different ocean basins and possibly of the mantle lithosphere of the microcontinents resulted in a single slab. The length of the oceanic lithosphere that was subducted south of Crete is estimated to be not greater than approximately 550 km.