Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Subjective Norm, and Experience Toward Student’s Intention to Use Internet Banking

The development of internet in Indonesia is quite fast and the majority of users are students. Internet growth made every fields include banking provided internet based service that called internet banking. The purpose of this research is to explore the factors that affect student’s intention to use internet banking by used the combination model of TAM (Technology Acceptance Model). Independent variables used in this research are Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Subjective Norm, and Experience. While the dependent variable is Student’s Intention to Use Internet Banking. The results show that perceived ease of use and experience are significantly influence students to use internet banking and perceived usefulness and subjective norm are unsignificantly influence students to use internet banking. The usefulness of internet banking did not make the students feel interested to use internet banking, one of the reasons is usefulness of internet banking is limited to non-cash transaction Keywords : Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Subjective Norm, Experience, TAM, internet banking
Comparison of four different categories of prosthetic feet during ramp ambulation in unilateral transtibial amputees

Background: Comparative effectiveness of prosthetic feet during ramp ambulation in unilateral transtibial amputees, who function at different Medicare Functional Classification Levels, has not been published. Objective: To determine differences in symmetry in external work between four categories of prosthetic feet in K-Level-2 and K-Level-3 unilateral transtibial amputees during ramp ascent and descent. Study design: Randomized repeated-measures trial. Methods: Ten subjects completed six testing sessions during which symmetry in external work was calculated using F-scan in-sole sensors. Between testing sessions 1 and 2, subjects received standardized functional prosthetic training. In Sessions 3–6, subjects tested four feet—solid ankle cushion heel, stationary attachment flexible endoskeleton, Talux (categories K1, K2, and K3, respectively), and Proprio-Foot (microprocessor ankle)—using a study socket and had a 10- to 14-day accommodation period with each foot. Results: During ramp descent, K-Level-2 subjects demonstrated higher symmetry in external work values with Talux and Proprio-Foot compared to the solid ankle cushion heel foot. K-Level-3 subjects also had higher symmetry in external work values with the Talux foot than the solid ankle cushion heel foot. Ramp ascent symmetry in external work values were not significantly different between feet. Conclusions: Prosthetic foot category appears to influence symmetry in external work more during decline walking than incline walking. K-Level-2 unilateral transtibial amputees achieve greater symmetry from K3 dynamic response prosthetic feet with J-shaped ankle and microprocessor ankles while descending ramps. Clinical relevance The findings suggest that K-Level-2 unilateral transtibial amputees benefit from K3 dynamic response prosthetic feet with J-shaped ankle. These results support the prescription of K3 feet for K-Level-2 amputees who frequently negotiate ramps.
The relationship between female body size and survival rate of the malaria vector Anopheles arabiensis in Ethiopia

Abstract. The relationship between female mosquito body size and survival rate was studied in field populations of Anopheles arabiensis in the Awash valley, central Ethiopia. Body size was quantified by measuring the wing‐length. Highly significant correlations were found between size, parousness and insemination. It was concluded that larger An.arabiensis females have a higher probability of survival, being inseminated and producing more egg batches than smaller adults. Implications for vectorial capacity and vector competence of mosquitoes are discussed.
No evidence of tumor necrosis factor‐α release in blood of patients with chronic urticaria

sensitization (4). Thus, very high reactivity to indoor allergens of asthmatic patients from west Siberia (Russia) seems to be a man-made problem and could be partly avoided by reducing risk allergen concentration at homes by frequent ventilation and cleaning of flats. This is the first report on allergic sensitization in asthmatic patients from Russia. It shows the importance of cat, dog and dust mite allergens in maintaining the manifestations of asthma. Our data can serve as a baseline for future studies of risk factors in asthma development in Russia. This work was supported by grants GACR 310/03/H147 and AVOZ50520514.
Screening CT colonography in an asymptomatic average-risk Asian population: a 2-year experience in a single institution.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of our study was to report the results of screening CT colonography (CTC) in an asymptomatic average-risk Asian population. MATERIALS AND METHODS In 2005 and 2006, 1,015 Korean adults (609 men and 406 women; mean age, 51 years) underwent screening CTC using a 16-MDCT scanner and an automated CO2 delivery system. During the study period, the protocols were changed to use less vigorous purgation and lower radiation doses; fecal tagging (n = 890) and primary 3D interpretation (n = 966) were generally used. CTC results were categorized as C0, inadequate; C1, no significant polyp; C2, one or two 6- to 9-mm polyps; C3, polyps > or = 10 mm or > or = three 6- to 9-mm polyps; and C4, mass. Patients with positive CTC results were referred to gastroenterologists for follow-up or management planning. RESULTS Categories C0-C4 were assigned to 21 (2.1%), 916 (90.2%), 54 (5.3%), 23 (2.3%), and one (0.1%) patients, respectively. Fifty-four patients with C4 (n = 1), C3 (n = 20), or C2 (n = 33) underwent subsequent optical colonoscopy: complete (n = 53) and incomplete (n = 1). Per-patient positive predictive values (PPVs) for categories C3-C4 and C2-C4 were 90% (18/20) and 74% (39/53), respectively. Per-polyp PPVs at 10- and 6-mm thresholds were 92% (22/24) and 69% (45/65), respectively. The diagnostic yield for advanced neoplasm was 1.5% (15/1,015). CONCLUSION Our results seem comparable to Western experiences, showing that a successful screening CTC program can be reproduced in an Asian population.
Leisure time emotional excitement increases endothelin-1 and interleukin-6 in cardiac patients

Objectives. Emotional excitement may trigger serious cardiovascular (CV) events. Our objective was to compare the changes in potential surrogate markers of CV events in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) during emotional excitement and exercise. Design. Fifty-three enthusiastic ice-hockey spectators with stable CAD attended the Finnish national ice-hockey play-off matches and a maximal bicycle exercise. Plasma catecholamines, endothelin-1, interleukin-6, and markers of platelet activation and blood coagulation were determined before and during the match and before and after the exercise. Results. Plasma endothelin-1 (2.82 ± 0.21 vs. 2.94 ± 0.25 pg/mL, p < 0.0001), noradrenaline (4.38 ± 1.79 vs. 4.77 ± 1.75 nmol/L, p = 0.009) and interleukin-6 (2.04 ± 1.98 vs. 2.90 ± 2.41 pg/mL, p < 0.0001) increased during the match, but markers of platelet activation and coagulation remained unchanged. Endothelin-1 did not change during exercise (2.73 ± 0.17 vs. 2.72 ± 0.19 pg/mL, p = 0.593) but noradrenaline (2.70 ± 1.08 vs.10.6 ± 5.5 nmol/L), adrenaline (0.23 ± 0.13 vs. 0.52 ± 0.37 nmol/L), interleukin-6 (1.77 ± 1.59 vs. 2.43 ± 1.78 pg/mL) and markers of platelet activation and blood coagulation increased significantly (p < 0.0001 for all). Conclusions. The responses of surrogate markers of acute CV events to emotional excitement and physical exercise are partly different. Emotional excitement causes concomitant increases in markers reflecting vulnerability to atherosclerotic plaque complications while physical exercise causes more prominent changes in markers of coagulation.
Developing customer feedback process in the construction supply chain

Customer feedback provides valuable information to companies and supports their effort to improve quality. In a competitive market, companies should use multiple tools to make the voice of the customer heard inside the organisation. In construction, the extent of customer satisfaction is only known late in the project when most of the customer’s money has already been spent. The development of multiple customer feedback tools allows problems to be identified early on, before conflicts develop. A natural response to this is to create a feedback system, which takes into account the customer’s perceptions of the contractor’s performance during the project and after the completion of the facility. This paper concentrates on developing common satisfaction measurement tools and procedures in connection with the construction process. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the existing Finnish construction feedback system and to explore how the customer feedback system can be further developed to answer to the needs of the construction supply chain.
Audit report qualification/modification: Impact of financial variables in Tunisia

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of financial variables and especially profitability, loss in current year, loss in previous year, leverage and liquidity in predicting audit report qualifications (qualified audit opinion) and audit report modifications (qualified opinion or unqualified but with an explanatory paragraph). Design/methodology/approach The authors used hand-collected data from financial statements and from auditors’ general reports of 76 non-financial publicly traded companies over a period of 11 years (2005-2015). A total of 545 audit reports were analyzed. Findings The results of panel logistic regression reported a positive relationship between liquidity, loss in the current year, loss in the previous year and a qualified audit report. A positive relationship was found between leverage and audit report modification. Also, the findings show that the Tunisian revolution did not affect the qualification or the modification of the audit report but qualifications decreased significantly during the period of the financial crisis. Practical implications The research has practical implications and can help auditors in identifying factors motivating audit report qualification or audit report modification, mainly in periods of instability. Originality/value This study contributes to auditing research, since the authors know very little about the determinants of audit opinion in emerging and African markets. It constitutes an addition to previous knowledge about audit opinion in the context of Tunisia during two important periods: the financial crisis and revolution. This research is one of the rare studies analyzing qualifications and audit report modifications by considering both qualifications and explanatory paragraphs.
The Theory and Practice of Strategic Management in Smaller Rapid Growth Firms

This article contrasts the theory of strategic planning with actual practice in smaller rapid growth companies. The literature on strategic planning in general and smaller organizations in particular is synthesized into a normative planning structure and framework. The resulting model is then contrasted with actual planning practice within the 500 fastest growing privately held companies (ranked according to percentage of sales increases) in the United States.
Dexamethasone induction of osteoblast mRNAs in rat marrow stromal cell cultures

We have examined the ability of dexamethasone, retinoic acid, and vitamin D3 to induce osteogenic differentiation in rat marrow stromal cell cultures by measuring the expression of mRNAs associated with the differentiated osteoblast phenotype as well as analyzing collagen secretion and alkaline phosphatase activity. Marrow cells were cultured for 8 days in primary culture and 8 days in secondary culture, with and without 10 nM dexamethasone or I μM retinoic acid. Under all conditions, cultures produced high levels of osteonectin mRNA. Cells grown with dexamethasone in both primary and secondary culture contained elevated alkaline phosphatase mRNA and significant amounts of type I collagen and osteopontin mRNA. Addition of 1,25‐dihydroxyvitamin D3 to these dexamethasone‐treated cultures induced expression of osteocalcin mRNA and increased osteopontin mRNA. The levels of alkaline phosphatase, osteopontin, and osteocalcin mRNAs in Dex/Dex/VitD3 cultures were comparable to those of 1,25‐dihydroxyvitamin D3‐treated ROS 17/2.8 osteosarcoma cells. Omitting dexamethasone from either primary or secondary culture resulted in significantly less alkaline phosphatase mRNA, little osteopontin mRNA, and no osteocalcin mRNA. Retinoic acid increased alkaline phosphatase activity to a greater extent than did dexamethasone but did not have a parallel effect on the expression of alkaline phosphatase mRNA and induced neither osteopontin or osteocalcin mRNAs. In all conditions, marrow stromal cells synthesized and secreted a mixture of type I and III collagens. However, dexamethasone‐treated cells also synthesized an additional collagen type, provisionally identified as type V. The synthesis and secretion of collagens type I and III was decreased by both dexamethasone and retinoic acid. Neither dexamethasone nor retinoic acid induced mRNAs associated with the chondrogenic phenotype. We conclude that dexamethasone, but not retinoic acid, promotes the expression of markers of the osteoblast phenotype in cultures of rat marrow stromal fibroblasts.
Buyout Transactions in the German‐Speaking Region: Determinants of Abnormal Performance and Unlevered Returns

This is one of the first comprehensive studies of drivers of private equity performance in the German‐speaking region known as the DACH, made up of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It contributes three things to private equity research: First, it explains how operational value drivers affect operational performance (operational alpha) and unlevered rates of return. Second, it whether the same relationships hold across different kinds of private equity business models (those with either organic or inorganic growth strategies; or whether PE investments are small‐cap or mid‐to‐large‐cap). Third, it distinguished between the periods before and after the global financial crisis of 2008. The authors found that (1) annualised benchmark‐adjusted EBITDA margin growth (i.e. improvement in EBITDA margin) is the most significant determinant in abnormal operational performance and unlevered returns, regardless of the business model; (2) private equity firms executing a buy‐and‐build strategy generate lower unlevered returns than those executing an organic growth strategy when the benchmark company is clearly outperformed, most likely because of limited PE managerial resources; (3) mid‐to‐large‐cap private equity firms generate higher unlevered returns and operational alphas than small‐cap private equity firms when the benchmark company is clearly outperformed, because, we believe, larger companies have a higher fixed cost leverage than smaller ones; and we have found that (4) buyout transactions exited during or after the financial crisis yield higher operational alphas but lower unlevered returns compared to buyout transactions exited before the crisis, when the portfolio company underperforms its benchmark company.
Business funding sources during the financial crisis: supply-side and demand-side factors. Case study of Greece

The objective of this study is to present the evolution of the financing of Greek enterprises during the years of crisis, and in particular analyze the impact of the crisis on companies' access to external financing. The deep economic crisis that hit Greece is reflected, inter alia, in the main macroeconomic ratios, like Gross Domestic Product and unemployment and some indicators of the banking sector, like deposits, total loans and non-performing loans. Greece is characterizes today by borrowing problems, high public debt, serious lack of competitiveness, unsustainable social security system, particularly poor public administration and a large and wasteful public sector. Economic crisis decreased firms' profitability and increased their needs for external sources of financing. In the situation when internal sources are limited external capital is the main source allowing to finance firm's investment projects. Insufficient availability of external capital can restrict future firm's growth opportunities and its competitiveness. In this paper we analyze two main sides of the problem of business financing: the supply and demand of external capital. The extreme reluctance of banks to lend Greek companies because of the strict financing constrains due to the national debt crisis exacerbates the cycle of economic recession and seriously undermines the efforts of Greek companies to continue their activities. In new circumstances banks try to limit risk. But in the current environment they have trouble finding creditworthy borrowers. As a result the credit market is very constrained. On the other side economic crisis decreased firms' profitability and increased needs in finding ways to gain funds. The analysis shows that small and medium enterprises have been particularly affected by tighter credit conditions and financial instability. Debt financing has become more expensive and difficult to obtain. JEL Classification Code: G2, G32.
The Impacts of Mergers, Acquisitions, and Joint Ventures on Agribusiness and Resource Firms

This research is an empirical study of effects of mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures (MAJV) on the acquiring and participating firms’ long term ex-post performance and idiosyncratic risk. The results show that acquirers from the food and pharmaceutical industries enjoy positive abnormal returns following M&A while acquirers from industries such as recreational products, entertainment, nonmetallic mining, construction, and real estate lose their wealth following the M&A. Acquiring firms enjoy lower idiosyncratic risk following the M&A compared to other firms in their industries that did not engage in M&A. The study of joint ventures reveals that firms that form joint ventures gain positive abnormal returns following the joint venture formation and their idiosyncratic risk is significantly lower than the firms that did not engage in joint ventures but are in the same industry. The results support the findings of previous literature which suggests that joint ventures create synergy.
Local Sparsity Based Online Dictionary Learning for Environment-Adaptive Speech Enhancement with Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

In this paper, a nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF)-based speech enhancement method robust to real and diverse noise is proposed by online NMF dictionary learning without relying on prior knowledge of noise. Conventional NMF-based methods have used a fixed noise dictionary, which often results in performance degradation when the NMF noise dictionary cannot cover noise types that occur in real-life recording. Thus, the noise dictionary needs to be learned from noises according to the variation of recording environments. To this end, the proposed method first estimates noise spectra and then performs online noise dictionary learning by a discriminative NMF learning framework. In particular, the noise spectra are estimated from minimum mean squared error filtering, which is based on the local sparsity defined by a posteriori signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimated from the NMF separation of the previous analysis frame. The effectiveness of the proposed speech enhancement method is demonstrated by adding six different realistic noises to clean speech signals with various SNRs. Consequently, it is shown that the proposed method outperforms comparative methods in terms of signal-to-distortion ratio (SDR) and perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) for all kinds of simulated noise and SNR conditions.
A battery of toxicity tests as indicators of decontamination in composting oily waste.

Heterogeneous oily waste from an old dumping site was composted in three windrows constructed from different proportions of waste, sewage sludge, and bark. The objectives of this pilot study were to examine the usefulness of composting as a treatment method for this particular waste and to study decontamination in the composting process by using a battery of toxicity tests. Five samples from the windrow having intermediate oil concentrations were tested with toxicity tests based on microbes (Pseudomonas putida growth inhibition test, ToxiChromotest, MetPLATE, and three different modifications of a luminescent bacterial test), enzyme inhibition (reverse electron transport), plants (duckweed growth inhibition and red clover seed germination), and soil animals (Folsomia candida, Enchytraeus albidus, and Enchytraeus sp.). The luminescent bacterial tests were used as prescreening tests. Chemical analyses of samples were carried out simultaneously. Both toxicity and oil concentration, including those of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), were reduced during composting and soil quality improved significantly. The total oil hydrocarbon concentration decreased from 90,000 to 19,000 mg/kg, measured with the IR method, in 4 months, and from 86,000 to 1400 mg/kg, measured with GC method. The concentration of PAHs decreased from 135 to 23.5 mg/kg. During the fourth month of composting (stabilization stage), the proportion of the heaviest oil fractions (asphaltenes) became dominant. Toxicity varied between different samples and between different bioassays; however, the first sample was significantly more toxic than the others, and most of the tests revealed a decrease in toxicity during the composting process.
The macroeconomic forces that drive REIT returns in Australia

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) represent a viable alternative to direct property investments. They offer enhanced liquidity and risk diversification. In addition, the securitisation process provides a level of governance not typically offered in direct property markets. However, as an openly traded security, it experiences risk exposures inherent to equities such as interest rate risk, default risk, inflation and so on. This study explores the nature and magnitude of various macroeconomic risk factors that drive REIT performance.Utilising data from the Australian market over a 20 year period spanning multiple economic cycles, REITs were found to have an adverse relationship to unexpected inflation and default risk suggesting that REITs are not an effective hedge against inflation. On the other hand, increasing spreads in the yield curve and changes to expected inflation and were found to correlate positively with fund performance. The latter effect possibly being due to higher expected rents. These effects are greater for highly leveraged funds and those that adopt a stapled trust structure. This is expected given their greater reliance on debt and the wider set of operating activities which compound exposures to market and financial risk. These funds also exhibited a greater overall exposure to market risk. Size risk was also considered with small cap funds exhibiting greater exposure to the risk factors than medium and large funds.The practical implications for asset allocation strategies is that portfolio managers and other investors seeking to take a long position may select highly leveraged funds with a stapled trust structure operating in a low interest environmental with higher expected inflation; whole those wishing to adopt a more defensive stance may consider less heavily geared funds with external management.