Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Commercial Banks Profitability Indicators: Empirical Evidence from Latvia

The aim of the present article is to determine the impact of the external and internal factors of bank performance eon the profitability indicators of the Latvian commercial banks in the period from 2006 to 2011. On the basis of research conducted abroad on bank and macroeconomic profitability indicators, in order to obtain research results the authors evaluated return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) indicators of the Latvian commercial banks. The authors conducted the survey of scientific literature and analyzed profitability indicators of commercial banks using descriptive methods, as well as SPSS data analysis methods, data correlation and regression analysis. On the basis of the obtained results, the authors have concluded that profitability has had a positive effect on operational efficiency, portfolio composition and management, while it has had a negative effect on the capital and credit risks, as measured according to ROA, while according to ROE, positive influence is exerted on composition of the capital portfolio and negative – on operational efficiency and credit risk. With regard to macroeconomic indicators, the authors have revealed that GDP has a positive impact on profitability as measured by ROA and ROE. The methodology used in the present research can be applied to determine not only profitability indicators of some commercial bank in particular, but also to compare performance indicators of several banks. Having conducted the present research, the authors have obtained empirical evidence on interrelationship between microeconomic and macroeconomic indicators and their effect on the profitability indicators of the Latvian commercial banks.
Influence of plankton community structure on the sinking velocity of marine aggregates

About 50 Gt of carbon is fixed photosynthetically by surface ocean phytoplankton communities every year. Part of this organic matter is reprocessed within the plankton community to form aggregates which eventually sink and export carbon into the deep ocean. The fraction of organic matter leaving the surface ocean is partly dependent on aggregate sinking velocity which accelerates with increasing aggregate size and density, where the latter is controlled by ballast load and aggregate porosity. In May 2011, we moored nine 25 m deep mesocosms in a Norwegian fjord to assess on a daily basis how plankton community structure affects material properties and sinking velocities of aggregates (Ø 80–400 µm) collected in the mesocosms' sediment traps. We noted that sinking velocity was not necessarily accelerated by opal ballast during diatom blooms, which could be due to relatively high porosity of these rather fresh aggregates. Furthermore, estimated aggregate porosity (Pestimated) decreased as the picoautotroph (0.2–2 µm) fraction of the phytoplankton biomass increased. Thus, picoautotroph‐dominated communities may be indicative for food webs promoting a high degree of aggregate repackaging with potential for accelerated sinking. Blooms of the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi revealed that cell concentrations of ~1500 cells/mL accelerate sinking by about 35–40%, which we estimate (by one‐dimensional modeling) to elevate organic matter transfer efficiency through the mesopelagic from 14 to 24%. Our results indicate that sinking velocities are influenced by the complex interplay between the availability of ballast minerals and aggregate packaging; both of which are controlled by plankton community structure.
FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF UNSTEADY RADIATIVE MHD NATURAL CONVECTION COUETTE FLOW BETWEEN PERMEABLE PLATES WITH VISCOUS AND JOULE DISSIPATION

This paper discusses the unsteady magnetohydrodynamic free convection Couette flow of an incompressible viscous fluid between two infinite vertical permeable plates in the presence of thermal radiation with an exponentially decaying pressure gradient. A uniform magnetic field that is perpendicular to the plates, and uniform suction and injection through the plates are applied. The magnetic field lines are assumed to be fixed relative to the moving plate. The momentum equation takes buoyancy forces into consideration, while the energy equation considers thermal radiation effects and viscous and Joule dissipations. The fluid is considered to be a gray absorbing-emitting but nonscattering medium in the optically thick limit. The Rosseland approximation is used to describe the radiative heat flux in the energy equation. The coupled pair of non-linear partial differential equations is discretized using the Galerkin finite element method. This yields a system of non-linear algebraic equations which is solved using an iterative method to obtain the velocity and temperature distributions. The effects of suction parameter S, radiation parameter Rd, Received: May 15, 2014 c © 2015 Academic Publications, Ltd. url: www.acadpubl. eu Correspondence author 124 V.M. Job, S.R. Gunakala Grashof number Gr, magnetic parameter H, Prandtl number Pr and Eckert number Ec on the velocity and temperature distributions are investigated. AMS Subject Classification: 76R10, 76W05
Do submesoscale frontal processes ventilate the oxygen minimum zone off Peru?

The Peruvian upwelling system encompasses the most intense and shallowest oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) in the ocean. This system shows pronounced submesoscale activity like filaments and fronts. We carried out glider‐based observations off Peru during austral summer 2013 to investigate whether submesoscale frontal processes ventilate the Peruvian OMZ. We present observational evidence for the subduction of highly oxygenated surface water in a submesoscale cold filament. The subduction event ventilates the oxycline but does not reach OMZ core waters. In a regional submesoscale‐permitting model we study the pathways of newly upwelled water. About 50% of upwelled virtual floats are subducted below the mixed layer within 5 days emphasizing a hitherto unrecognized importance of subduction for the ventilation of the Peruvian oxycline.
Student's participation in social networking writing tasks

The rapid development of information and communication technologies has brought chances in various pedagogical and technological application and processes. Currently, social networking sites have been utilized for teaching and learning where students learn through social sites such as Facebook. This research investigates students’ participation when they have to carry out writing tasks for English Language subject through social networking site; Facebook. Results showed that students were actively participating in the writing tasks that involve greetings, describing character and text completion. However, their participation was influenced by factors such as motivation or accessibility problems. However, students’ are found to improve their day-to-day writing because they can get immediate feedback from the teachers as well as their friends. Students’ participation in social networking writing tasks. Available from: https://www.researchgate. net/publication/259756899_Students'_participation_in_social_networking_writing_tasks [accessed Sep 4, 2017].
Can the Updip Limit of Frictional Locking on Megathrusts Be Detected Geodetically? Quantifying the Effect of Stress Shadows on Near‐Trench Coupling

The updip limit of the seismogenic zone of megathrusts is poorly understood. The relative absence of observed microseismicity in such regions, together with laboratory studies of friction, suggests that the shallow fault is mostly velocity strengthening, and likely to creep. Inversions of geodetic data commonly show low to zero coupling at the trench, reinforcing this view. We show that the locked, downdip portion of the megathrust creates an updip stress shadow that prevents the shallow portion of the fault from creeping at a significant rate, regardless of its frictional behavior. Our models demonstrate that even if the shallowest 40% of the fault is frictionally unlocked, the expected creep at the fault tip is at most 30% of the plate rate, often within the uncertainties of surface geodetic measurements, and below current resolution of seafloor measurements. We conclude that many geodetic models significantly underestimate the degree of shallow coupling on megathrusts, and thus seismic and tsunami hazard.
Fuel Cell Health Monitoring Using Self Organizing Maps

The problem of durability of fuel cell technology is central for its spreading and commercialization. There is therefore a growing need to build accurate diagnosis tools which can give the operating state of the fuel cell during their use. When supervised machine learning approaches are used to build such diagnosis tools, they generally require a large amount of labeled data. Collection and annotation of data can be either difficult to perform or time consuming. In this paper, authors are interested in the monitoring of fuel cells in an unsupervised framework, meaning that no labels are required to learn the diagnosis model. The aim is to build a monitoring tool able to easily visualize the State Of Health of full cells from electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measures, showing thus its evolution from fault free case ("normal" behaviour) to defective classes such as drying or flooding. The proposed approach is based on Self Organizing Maps (SOM) which have shown their performance to solve fault detection and prediction in many industrial systems. By automatically visualizing the data into a two-dimensional space, the interpretation of the results have become easy and instinctive. The approach also allows the clustering of the data into different groups of classes, thus enabling the classification of new observations. Experimental results carried out on real data sets have shown the efficiency of the proposed approach with respect to standard supervised and unsupervised classification approaches.
The Relationship between Abuse during Pregnancy and Pregnancy Outcomes: An Overview of Meta –Analysis

Background Violence against women is a social, legal and health problem that poses a threat to mother and child in pregnancy. The present overview was conducted to review of Meta-analysis that assessed the line between the abuse on mother during pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes. Materials and Methods: This study reviewed all published articles from January 1996 to March 2018 by searching International databases such as Scopus, EMBASE, Medline (via PubMed), Google Scholar, Web of Sciences, and Cochrane library for related Meta-analysis. Also, along with international databases, national databases such as SID, Magiran, Medlib and Irandoc were searched. Two independent researchers screened articles and in the next step, full texts of probably relevant articles were read and summarized. There was not any language limitation. Results: Data from 5 Meta- were entered. A significant relationship was found between abuse during pregnancy and Low birth weight (LBW) (odds ratios [OR] ranged from 2.11 to 1.18; five Meta-analysis), and preterm birth (PTB) (OR ranged from 1.21 to 1.91). According to one Meta-analysis, intimate partner violence (IPV)was statistically marginally associated with small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infants (OR: 1.37, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.02 to 1.84; Heterogeneity I2: 84%; I2: 32%), but there was not any relationship between IPV with Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) (P>0.05). Conclusion Our overview showed that the pregnant women who expose to domestic violence are at increased risk of an adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth', low birth weight' and small for gestational age' infants. So, intervention such as screening and counseling for violence is needed for all pregnancy women especially previous victims of violence.
EVALUATION OF ANTIBACTERIAL POTENTIAL OF PLANT EXTRACTS USING RESAZURIN BASED MICROTITER DILUTION ASSAY

Results: Percent yields of petroleum ether and chloroform extracts of plant leaves was found to be in the range of 0.80 - 2.98%. Percent yields of acetone, methanol and water extract were found to ranging from 2.87- 5.77%. S. asoca extracts were found to be endowed with highest antimicrobial activity out of the ten plants used in the study. Leaves water extract of S. asoca showed lowest minimum inhibitory concentration (0.15 mg/mL) against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Conclusion: It was observed that leave water extracts of S. asoca could be potential reservoir of bioactive compounds. Post treatment analysis of proteome of test micro-organisms could explore potential anti-bacterial targets.
Recovering a lost baseline: missing kelp forests from a metropolitan coast

There is concern about historical and continuing loss of canopy-forming algae across the world's temperate coastline. In South Australia, the sparse cover of canopy-forming algae on the Adelaide metropolitan coast has been of public concern with continuous years of anecdotal evidence culminating in 2 competing views. One view considers that current patterns existed before the onset of urbanisation, whereas the alternate view is that they developed after urbanisation. We tested hypothe- ses to distinguish between these 2 models, each centred on the reconstruction of historical covers of canopies on the metropolitan coast. Historically, the metropolitan sites were indistinguishable from con- temporary populations of reference sites across 70 km (i.e. Gulf St. Vincent), and could also represent a random subset of exposed coastal sites across 2100 km of the greater biogeographic province. Thus there was nothing 'special' about the metropolitan sites historically, but today they stand out because they have sparser covers of canopies compared to equivalent locations and times in the gulf and the greater province. This is evidence of wholesale loss of canopy-forming algae (up to 70%) on parts of the Adelaide metropolitan coast since major urbanisation. These findings not only set a research agenda based on the magnitude of loss, but they also bring into question the logic that smaller metropolitan populations of humans create impacts that are trivial relative to that of larger metropolitan centres. Instead, we highlight a need to recognise the ecological context that makes some coastal systems more vulnerable or resistant to increasing human-domination of the world's coastlines. We discuss challenges to this kind of research that receive little ecological discussion, particularly better leadership and administration, recognising that the systems we study out-live the life spans of individual research groups and operate on spatial scales that exceed the capacity of single research providers.
Papadopoulos, Panagiotis N. and Milanović, Jovica V. (2017) Probabilistic framework for transient stability assessment of power systems with high penetration of renewable generation. IEEE Transactions

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Soil and vegetation responses to sewage sludge on a degraded semiarid broom snakeweed/blue grama plant community

Three rates of dried sewage sludge (22.5, 45.0, and 90.0 Mg (megagams) ha-t), were applied to a degraded semiarid grassland site on the Upper Rio Puerto Watershed in west-central New Mexico. Various soil and plant parameters were determined over 4 growing seasons. Most soil macronutrients, such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K), and micronutrients, such as copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), and zinc (Zn), increased linearly with increasing sludge amendment rates. Heavy metals (cadium (Cd) and lead (Pb)) did not change as a result of sludge amendment in the first 3 growing seasons. However, concentrations of soil Cu, Mn, and Cd were just above maximum acceptable standards in the heaviest sludge treatment after 4 growing seasons. Plant density, specks richness, and diversity all decreased with increasing sludge rates. However, total plant foliar cover and herbaceous yields increased significantly with the application of sludge. Blue grama (Boutelouu grucilfs (H.B.K.) Lag. ) cover and yields, in particular, increased 2 to 3 fold over the control as a result of sludge amendment, whereas broom snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae (Pursh) Britt. + Rusby) density decreased over 4 growing seasons. The most favorable soil and vegetation results were from the 22.5 and the 45 Mg ha-’ sludge applkation rates.
Comparison of different methods of determining b-lactam susceptibility in clinical strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Received 3 August 2008 Accepted 12 January 2009 One hundred and one randomly selected (2003–2005) clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa were used to assess the quantitative (MIC) and qualitative (susceptibility category) agreement between the microdilution broth reference method (RM) and disc diffusion (DD), Etest and the VITEK 2 automated susceptibility test system for determination of the susceptibility of P. aeruginosa to piperacillin (PIP), PIP–tazobactam (TZP), ceftazidime (CAZ), aztreonam (ATM) cefepime (FEP) and imipenem (IMP). The results obtained by the RM were compared with those obtained by the other methods. The RM and DD were performed according to CLSI criteria. Etest and VITEK 2 were according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The Advanced Expert System (AES), which interprets MICs generated by VITEK 2, was modified with new rules of interpretation. Overall, VITEK 2 showed the lowest MIC90 values for the six antibiotics. The RM categorical testing (susceptibility and resistance) rates with P. aeruginosa were 11.8 and 88.1 for PIP, 22.7 and 77.2 for TZP, 14.8 and 78.2 for CAZ, 12.8 and 54.4 for ATM, 16.8 and 75.3 for FEP, and 7.9 and 90.1 for IMP, respectively. Very major errors (false susceptible) were only detected for ATM and FEP with DD and for IMP with three methods. Major errors (false resistant) were generally acceptable for all antibiotics except TZP. VITEK 2 yielded a high level of minor errors (trends toward false susceptibility), mainly with CAZ and FEP. A good agreement was obtained for all antibiotics/methods assayed, thus highlighting the importance of the AES for categorization of b-lactam susceptibility in P. aeruginosa.
Leaf Morphological and Physiological Traits and Their Significance in Yield Improvement of Fifteen Cashew Varieties in West Coast Region of Karnataka

The effective display of leaves in a canopy is crucial for plant functioning because it determines the efficiency of the photosynthetic conversion of available light to assimilate and thus influences the potential growth of plants. The carbon assimilates necessary for yield improvement is produced via photosynthesis. Thus, total biomass accumulation depends on rate of biomass production and growth duration (Peng et al., 1991). In any crop system, biomass production is associated with physiological processes such as leaf area production, leaf area retention and net photosynthetic rate. Plant International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 7 Number 07 (2018) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
V. CENOZOIC SILICOFLAGELLATE AND COCCOLITH STRATIGRAPHY, SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN, DEEP SEA DRILLING PROJECT LEG 36

Leg 36 of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, March to May 1974, which began at Ushuaia, Argentina, and ended at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Figure 1), recovered 102 cores at six drilling sites, Sites 326-331. Light-microscope techniques were used to study the silicoflagellates and coccoliths of 115 samples of Cenozoic age. Most of my study time for Leg 36 sites was devoted to the very diverse silicoflagellate assemblages of the upper Paleocene at Site 327 and the upper Oligocene at Site 328. New species and subspecies of silicoflagellates from DSDP Leg 36 are Corbisema disymmetrica angulata, C. disymmetrica communis, C. falklandensis, C. glezerae, C. hastata cunicula, C. hastata globulata, C. inermis crenulata, C. neoparallela, Dictyocha fibula augusta, D. fischeri, D. precarentis, Distephanus crux darwinii, and D. raupii. New taxonomic combinations are Corbisema disymmetrica disymmetrica, C. inermis minor, Distephanus speculum triommata, and Naviculopsis ponticula.
The Impact of Reproductive and Birth Technologies on Health, Fertility and Labor Outcomes

Cesarean sections (C-sections) are the most commonly performed surgical procedures in industrialized countries. While they can be potentially lifesaving in cases of high-risk pregnancies, as with any surgical procedure, they can pose complications, and little is known about their long-term consequences for the mothers and children involved. In this paper, I use a sample of “at-risk” births—namely, breech births, in which the fetus is presented with its head upward instead of downward—to study the causal impact of C-sections on the health of infants and on the health, subsequent fertility, and labor market outcomes of mothers. Because selection into C-section may be endogenous, I exploit an information shock to doctors in 2000, in which a new study about the benefits of planned C-sections for breech births led to a sharp 23% increase in planned C-sections. This increase occurred across the board: I find no evidence of a shift in the composition of women receiving C-sections following the shock. I then use this information shock in a reduced form pre-post analysis and as an instrument for C-sections in a 2SLS analysis of Swedish birth, in-patient, and labor market register data associated with births taking place between 1997 and 2003. I find that an increase in C-sections among breech births led to strong improvements in child health originating from both shortand long-term improvements, as indicated by higher Apgar scores at birth and fewer nights hospitalized during ages 1-7. The estimates suggest that the medical intervention almost completely narrowed the gap in health between breech and cephalic (normal position) births. I find no significant impact on maternal health at birth or subsequent births, nor on maternal labor market outcomes. Though marginally insignificant, estimates suggest a potential negative impact on future fertility.
Under what conditions do end-users perceive high value of HR Shared Service Centers?: A Service-Dominant logic perspective.

The establishment of shared service centers (SSC) for the delivery of human resources (HR) originates from long-term and strategic benefits (Janssen & Joha, 2006). Resource bundling give business units control to develop HR services together in order to gain cost-efficiency and to enhance service quality (Meijerink, Bondarouk, & Looise, 2013b). However, to reap these benefits HR SSCs have to offer services that create value for the ones who make use them: the end-users (Meijerink & Bondarouk, 2013). A theoretical approach that addresses value creation is the Service-Dominant (S-D) logic. Within the S-D logic, value is created collaboratively and reciprocally in interactions between the supplier and customer through the integration of knowledge, technology, and/or other resources (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). The customer relies on his or her own knowledge (hu-man capital) and interacts with the supplier to acquire knowledge (intellectual capital) for creating value (Priem, 2007). The integration of these resources takes place at the time of usage and therefore value can only be created and determined by the customer through consumption. The purpose of this research was to explore the way in which the knowledge resources of the HR SSC and the end-user combine to achieve a high end-user’s value perception.