Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EXTERNAL AUDIT(OR) QUALITY AND ACCRUAL EARNINGS MANAGEMENT: FURTHER EVIDENCE FROM NIGERIA

Hinged on the quest for quality financial information, this study examined the influence of audit quality on restricting the incidence of accrual-based earnings management among 30 quoted non-financial firms in Nigeria, an emerging country which provides a rich institutional background and cultural setting different from developed nations. Secondary data were gathered from annual reports and audited financial statements for 11 years from 2008-2018. These firms were selected using stratified sampling technique. Thereafter, panel ordinary least square technique was used to estimate specified model for the study. While the descriptive statistics revealed the absence of accrualbased manipulation of earnings among quoted non-financial firms in Nigeria, the multivariate fixed effects ordinary least square depicted that audit quality variables adopted are mutually and statistically significant in explaining 49 percent changes in earnings management. Further, audit tenure and auditor independence exhibited positive and significant relationship, while total assets as the control variable, displayed a negative and significant influence on earnings management. Surprisingly, the size of audit firm appeared positive but statistically insignificant. Consequently, the relevant authorities and policy makers should not only sustain but improve on the current practice of audit engagement partner and/or auditor switch after certain years of continuous engagement to enhance their independence and reduce client-auditor engagement periods to avoid familiarity threat.
Dynamic return and volatility connectedness for dominant agricultural commodity markets during the COVID-19 pandemic era

ABSTRACT This paper explores the dynamic return and volatility connectedness for the three most relevant agricultural and livestock commodity indexes (Softs, Grains and Livestock) and a media sentiment index as the Coronavirus Media Coverage Index (MCI). To that purpose, we apply the fresh time-varying parameter vector autoregression methodology during the sample period between 1 January 2020 and 30 April 2021, that is, covering the three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Interesting results are found in this research. First, dynamic total return and volatility connectedness fluctuate over time, reaching a peak during both the first and the third waves of the global pandemic crisis. Second, in the dynamic connectedness TO the system, we observe significant differences between markets at the level of the return connectedness measure. However, in the dynamic volatility connectedness TO, there are very few differences between some elements of the system. The Coronavirus MCI appears as the less relevant receiver FROM the system, not only in terms of dynamic return connectedness but also in volatility. Finally, regarding the net dynamic total connectedness, the Coronavirus MCI shows the highest values in return and volatility, during most of the sample period analysed.
Influence of spacing on yield, quality and economics of watermelon

An experiment entitled “Influence of spacing on yield, quality and economics of watermelon” was undertaken at Instructional farm department of vegetable science college of horticulture Dr. PDKV, Akola during summer season of 2018-2019 to study the influence of spacing on yield quality and economics of watermelon. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with four replications and five treatments viz . T 1 (0.45 × 2.0 m) T 2 (0.60 m × 2.0 m), T 3 (0.75 m × 2.0 m), T 4 (0.90 m × 2.0 m) and T 5 (1.0 m × 2.0 m). As regard to yield parameter T 5 (1.0 m × 2.0 m) was found superior in respect of days required for edible maturity, number of fruits plant -1 , average fruit weight and fruit yield kg plant -1 . While yield kg plot -1 and yield ha -1 were found maximum in treatment T 1 (0.45 × 2.0 m). In respect of quality parameters, treatment T 5 (1.0 × 2.0 m) recorded maximum fruit diameter, fruit length, TSS 0 Brix, reducing sugar, non-reducing and total sugar percent. Highest gross, net monetary returns and B:C ratio were obtained with treatment T 1 (0.45 × 2.0 m). Therefore, treatment T 1 (0.45 × 2.0 m) was found to be most remunerative considering B:C ratio.
Testes de vigor em função de diferentes épocas de colheita de sementes de cevada ( Hordeum vulgare L.) - DOI: 10.5039/agraria.v3i4a354

The study was performed in the Seed Technology Laboratory at the Federal University of Pelotas (Pelotas – RS), with the purpose of evaluating the physiological quality of barley seeds ( Hordeum vulgare L.) harvested in different times. The experiment was carried out with seeds of barley varieties NM 721 and Scarlett. The seeds were harvested at 118, 129 and 140 days after sowing, when the relative humidity was below 30%. The seeds were dried in a forced circulated air oven to reach a moisture content of 13% and then stored in a cold room at 17 °C and 35% relative humidity for 18 days. The quality of seeds was assessed using the standard germination test, tetrazolium test, was thousand-seed weight, hectoliter weight and electrical conductivity test. These tests were performed at constant temperature of 20 °C in different soaking periods (1, 3, 6 and 24 h). The statistical procedure were in a completely randomized design, with four replications and a 2 x 3 factorial scheme. The results showed the higher performance of the heavier seeds in relation to the lighter seeds. Tests for germination, tetrazolium and hectoliter weight tended to decrease according to the delay in the harvest time. The use of the electrical conductivity test allowed identifying damages caused by the process of seed harvest in different times.
Evaluation of Chromophore and Assembly Design in Light-Driven Water Splitting with a Molecular Water Oxidation Catalyst

The water oxidation catalyst [Ru(bda)(4-O(CH2)3P(O3H2)2-pyr)2], 1, (pyr = pyridine; bda = 2,2′-bipyridine-6,6′-dicarboxylate) was investigated as the catalyst part of a series of chromophore–catalyst assemblies for light-driven water splitting in dye-sensitized photoelectrosynthesis cells (DSPECs). Both coloaded and layer-by-layer assemblies with phosphonate-Zr(IV) bridging were investigated on SnO2/TiO2 core–shell electrodes. Device performance was evaluated by both photocurrent and direct O2 measurements in collector–generator cells. The photoelectrodes displayed impressive photocurrents (0.72–1.5 mA/cm2) and Faradaic efficiencies for O2 generation (71–97%) under 1 sun illumination in pH 5.7, 0.1 M acetate buffer solutions and provided important mechanistic insights into the microscopic details for DSPEC water splitting.
Structural Equations Model in Negative Affection, Self- Forgiveness, and Procrastination

Procrastination is considered as a phenomenon of rational thought, to postpone essential tasks unnecessarily until specific a deadline or completed later. It refers to the behavioural tendency to action despite the external adverse outcomes and inevitable negative consequences of such a delay for start and/or completion of decisions or actions [29]. The effects of procrastination often include negative behavioural aspects such as gambling, over-spending, over-eating, sexual promiscuity; it could have resulted from selfregulation failure in the majority of people [1]. People who share procrastination behaviour tend to face at one point or another by ignoring unpleasant tasks. By avoiding unpleasant tasks with effort, self-kindness might increase towards oneself [2]. Indeed, to minimize the risk of making a mistake is a significant category of procrastinating people [3]. Procrastination is considered mostly a way of collecting thoughts to avoid failure in everyday life [4]. By establishing more motivational behaviours than avoidance, less avoidable behaviour is employed [2]. Besides to a positive self-image, which gives personal control perspective, self-deception straightens out cheats and reveal the cheaters [5]. In terms of precursors of procrastination, the evidence suggests that it is enough lucky to become a chronic habit [6]. Abstract: The current research was conducted to determine the mediating role of negative Affection toward selfforgiveness, and procrastination in male students of the University of Tabriz. Therefore, 361 male students between 18-22 were selected by a random cluster sampling method from three groups of Technical and engineering, basic science and human science faculties. The General Procrastination, Decisional Procrastination, Positive and Negative Affect, and Heartland Forgiveness inventories were used to gather the data. The theoretical model was tested within a structural equationmodelling framework to identify both direct and indirect effects. The results indicate an overall fit model. Although the direct effects of self-forgiveness on decisional and general procrastination behaviours were not significant, thus, an indirect impact of self-forgiveness on the decisional and general procrastination behaviours were fully mediated by negative affection. Also, the effect of self-forgiveness on negative affect and academic procrastination, the training was essential for students.
Dinâmica da mudança do uso e cobertura da terra em uma paisagem da Caatinga protegida e sua zona de amortecimento

(1). Os estudos voltados a dinâmica dos usos e coberturas da terra no domínio Caatinga ainda são insuficientes, principalmente quando voltados ao entendimento de como esse fenômeno ocorre dentro das paisagens protegidas e seus entornos. Portanto, com base nesta premissa a seguinte pesquisa objetivou diagnosticar mudanças dos usos e cobertura da terra em uma paisagem de Caatinga protegida e sua zona de amortecimento levando em conta o período pré e pós criação da UC; (2) Logo, lançou-se uso do método híbrido de classificação, a fim de se obter as classes de cobertura da terra ao longo do espaço e tempo da paisagem do Parque Estadual Mata da Pimenteira, Pernambuco, Nordeste do Brasil; (3) Os resultados permitiram perceber aumento das principais classes indicativas de vegetação arbustiva e arbóreo-arbustiva, crescendo em aproximadamente 1.718,1 ha para a zona de amortecimento e 225.3 ha na área protegida; (4) A partir deste trabalho pode ser constatado que a criação da UC auxiliou no restabelecimento da composição da paisagem, promovendo a recuperação de áreas degradadas. Além disso, permitiu perceber que apesar do aumento da vegetação sobre a paisagem ocorreu uma intensificação do uso das áreas do entorno, com o aumento de áreas com solo Exposto.
Teachers' Participation in Students' and Staff's Discipline in Secondary Schools as Determinants of Teachers' Morale in Imo State

The study investigated the extent of teachers' Participation in Students' and Staff's Discipline in secondary schools as determinants of teachers' Morale in Imo State.n The population of this study consisted of all 5047 teachers in the 275 public secondary schools in Imo State under the six (6) Education Zones. The study adopted Correlational Survey Design while simple random sampling technique was used in selecting the respondents. Data was obtained using a research questionnaire tagged “Participation in School Governance Questionnaire (PSGQ) and Teachers Morale Questionnaire (TMQ. Data obtained from the respondents was analysed using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) while Pearson Product Moment Correlation analysis was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 alpha levels. It was concluded that there is no significant relationship between teachers' participation in staff's discipline and morale of teachers in Imo State Secondary Schools. On the other hand, it was observed that there is significant relationship between teachers' participation in students' discipline and morale of teachers, in Imo State Secondary Schools. One of the recommended was that teachers should be allowed to participate in maintaining discipline among students and teachers, so that there will be a conducive environment for teaching and learning which will boost their morale as well as improving and promoting effective learning
An Interpretable Framework for Stock Trend Forecasting

Stock trend forecasting plays a critical role when investing in the stock market. Comparing with traditional technical analysis and fundamental analysis, deep learning models own better forecasting performance. However, the poor interpretability of deep learning models brings lots of limitations to its practical application since the lack of interpretability increases the investment risk. In this paper, we propose a graph-based framework, which owns good interpretability while maintaining forecasting performance. Specifically, the framework explains the stock returns by dividing the returns into multiple parts: 1) the part related to individual stock; 2) the part related to company business; 3) the part related to the corresponding industry; 4) the part associated with the whole market. Extensive experiments on real-world Chinese stock market data have demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed framework for stock trend forecasting. Afterward, we try to illustrate the interpretability of our framework.
Optimization of spray drying process of Sargassum muticum color extract

ABSTRACT Sargassum muticum is categorized as a brown seaweed species which has been used as a dye fabric colorant in certain regions of Asia. The brown extracts of S. muticum also have antioxidant properties, which could enhance the color and nutrients in food products. However, the color extract is unstable, and also limits the application. This study was performed to encapsulate the color extract with maltodextrin and stabilize the color extract by spray drying technique using combinations of various levels of inlet temperature and feed flow rate. Initially, S. muticum powder was analyzed for moisture content, water activity, solubility, and color properties for optimization purposes. This study showed that the optimum inlet temperature and feed flow rate of the spray drying process to produce good-quality, stable, and acceptable powder properties were at 140°C and 3 rpm, respectively, with 4% of maltodextrin. Then, the powder was analyzed for density, compressibility index, hygroscopicity, particle size, and antioxidant properties. This study represents an interesting food additive to be incorporated in functional food due to the attractive brown colorant and the presence of antioxidants.
The Effect Of Quality Of Higher Education System On The Compatibility Between The Skills Of Graduates And The Requirements Of The Labour Market In Egypt

Research to date has addressed that there is incompatibility (gap) between the skills of university graduates and the labour market requirements in Egypt. The factors that affect this gap, as well as HOW to bridge the gap, have not been surveyed in previous studies in Egypt. The purpose of this research is to identify the key factors in the Egyptian higher education (HE) system which affect the quality of the public universities, and to explore the changes that must be made by the Egyptian HE Management (Ministry of HE) within the boundaries factors to achieve significant and real improvements in the quality of the Egyptian HE system; thus the skills gap will then be bridged and the mismatch between skills of the university graduates and the skills needed by market will be decreased. This study develops a new model (system dynamics model) of the factors that leads to the gap between the skills of the Egyptian university graduates and the requirements of the labour market. Particular focus is on identification of the key structural changes that need to be made to reduce this gap and their effects, using public Egyptian universities as a case study. The initial influence diagram is built based on relationships identified by semi-structured interviews with the administrative and academic staff members from various public universities in Egypt; all these staff members have experience in the quality of the HE system. This initial structure has been validated by using two groups of standard system dynamics tests, namely the structural validation and behavioural validation tests and empirical tests using a group of administrative and academic staff members with experience that exceeds 15 years in the HE system. The model contains more than90 variables that are associated with the quality of Egyptian HE system. PowerSim Studio 10 Academic® is used as system dynamics software to build a stocks-and-flows diagram from the influence diagram. Many scenarios have been made to test the effects of different variables in order to find the dominant variables. The model is simulated over a five-year period from the academic year 2012-2013 till the academic year 2016-2017.As shown in this study, there are seven key variables that influence the quality of the Egyptian HE system and thus affect the skills gap. Some of these factors have instant and rapid effects, while others take time for their effects to appear on the quality of services provided by Egyptian universities. The increase of these variables leads to increase the quality of services provided by the Egyptian universities. Therefore, this increase will lead to an uptake of the skills of graduates and then a decrease of the skills gap. This achieves the compatibility between the skills of university graduates and the requirements of the labour market in Egypt.
Stratospheric Air Sub-sampler (SAS) and its application to analysis of Δ 17 O(CO 2 ) from small air samples collected with an AirCore

Abstract. We present the set-up and a scientific application of the Stratospheric Air Sub-sampler (SAS), a device to collect and to store the vertical profile of air collected with an AirCore (Karion et al., 2010) in numerous sub-samples for later analysis in the laboratory. The SAS described here is a 20 m long 1/4 inch stainless steel tubing that is separated by eleven valves to divide the tubing into 10 identical segments, but it can be easily adapted to collect smaller or larger samples. In the collection phase the SAS is directly connected to the outlet of an optical analyzer that measures the mole fractions of CO2, CH4 and CO from an AirCore sampler. The stratospheric part (or if desired any part of the AirCore air) is then directed through the SAS. When the SAS is filled with the selected air, the valves are closed and the vertical profile is maintained in the different segments of the SAS. The segments can later be analysed to retrieve vertical profiles of other trace gas signatures that require slower instrumentation. As an application, we describe the coupling of the SAS to an analytical system to determine the 17O excess of CO2, which is a tracer for photochemical processing of stratospheric air. For this purpose the analytical system described by Mrozek et al. (2015) was adapted for analysis of air directly from the SAS. The performance of the coupled system is demonstrated for a set of air samples from an AirCore flight in November 2014 near Sodankyla, Finland. The standard error for a 25 mL air sample at stratospheric CO2 mole fraction is 0.56 ‰ (1σ) for δ17O and 0.03 ‰ (1σ) for both δ18O and δ13C. Measured Δ17O(CO2) values show a clear correlation with N2O in agreement with already published data.
Structural and immunological characterization of an epitope within the PAN motif of ectodomain I in Babesia bovis apical membrane antigen 1

Background Bovine babesiosis caused by Babesia bovis (B. bovis) affects the cattle industry worldwide with high mobility and mortality. Live-attenuated vaccines are currently used in some of the endemic countries, but their wide use is limited due to various reasons. Although recombinant vaccines have been proposed as an alternative to the live vaccines, such vaccines are not commercially available to date. Apical membrane antigen-1 (AMA-1) is one of the leading candidates for vaccine development against diseases caused by apicomplexan parasite species. In this study, we predicted an epitope from the plasminogen, apple and nematode (PAN) motif of domain I in the B. bovis AMA-1 (BbAMA-1) using a combination of linear and conformational B-cell epitope prediction software. The selected epitope was bioinformatically analyzed, synthesized as a peptide (sBbAMA-1), and then used to immunize a rabbit. Results The anti-sBbAMA-1 serum obtained was evaluated for its growth- and invasion-inhibitory effects on B. bovis merozoites in vitro. Our results demonstrated that the predicted BbAMA-1 epitope, which is located on surface-exposed α-helix of PAN motif in domain I at the apex area, elicits antibodies capable of recognizing the native BbAMA-1 in immunoassays. Importantly, as compared to the control groups, the rabbit anti-sBbAMA-1 serum at dilution of 1:5 significantly inhibited (p < 0.05) the growth of B. bovis merozoites by approximately 50–70% on day 3 and 4 of cultivation and the invasion of merozoites by approximately 60% within 4 h of incubation. Conclusion Our results indicate the epitope predicted from the PAN motif of BbAMA-1 domain I is neutralization-sensitive and may serve as a target antigen for vaccine development against bovine babesiosis caused by B. bovis.
Forecasting future corn and soybean prices: an analysis of the use of textual information to enrich time-series.

The commodities corn and soybean are products consumed on a large scale in the world. Fluctuations in market prices have far-reaching effects on consumers, farmers, and grain processors. Thus, forecasting the prices of these grains has attracted significant attention from researchers. Forecasting models generally use quantitative time-series data. However, external qualitative factors can influence data in time-series, such as political events, economic crises, and the foreign exchange market. This information is not explicit in the time-series data, and these factors can influence the prediction of the variable values. Textual data extracted from news, forums, and social networks can be a source of knowledge about external factors and potentially useful for time-series forecasting models. Some studies present text mining techniques to combine textual data with time-series. However, the existing representations have some limitations, such as the curse of dimensionality and ineffective attributes. This work applies pre-processing methods in time-series and uses representations combined with textual data to predict the future price of corn and soybeans. The results indicate that the methods used can be an alternative to improve forecasting performance in regression tasks. CCS Concepts: • Computing methodologies → Supervised learning by regression.
Analysis of archaeological birch bark pitches

Dark lumps, thought to be pitch or resin used for caulking wooden funerary vessels, were excavated from four graves in Finland (dated between 1900 and 2200 BC). Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry was used to analyze distillates from both the archaeological samples and reference samples of bark pitch from various trees. There was a close similarity between results for the archaeological samples and those for birch ( Betula verrucosa (B. pendula) ) bark pitch.