Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Total Quality Management Practices and Performance of Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) in Nigeria

This study examined the effect of total quality management practices on performance deposit money banks in Nigeria. The study focused on selected deposit money banks in Makurdi metropolis, Benue State, Nigeria. The study specifically examined the effect of top management commitment, employee involvement, customer focus and process management on performance of deposit money banks in Nigeria. A survey design was adopted for the study and questionnaire was used for data collection. The population of the study consists of 32 management staff of Makurdi metropolis and a census sampling method was adopted. Regression analysis was used for test of hypotheses at 0.05 significance level. Findings of the study revealed that all the independent variables (top management commitment, employee involvement, customer focus and process management) have significant effect on performance of deposit money banks in Nigeria. It recommended that management of deposit money banks should develop policies that require senior management to be involved in quality improvement efforts since this ensures success of the efforts and improved bank performance.
DETERMINANTS OF AGRICULTURE-RELATED LOAN DEFAULT: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA

This paper investigates agriculture-related loan default in 2002–2009 through a largedata set from a leading Chinese state-owned bank. Using logit regression, we findthe default rate on agriculture-related loans is significantly higher than that on non–agriculture-related loans. We find that base interest rates, loan maturity, the typeof collateral, firm size, ownership structure, and managerial quality rating have asignificant impact on agriculture-related loan default, but this also depends on howagriculture-related loans are defined. The results provide insight into the real impactof monetary policy on agriculture-related lending.
Impacts of climate change on livelihood of the fishersˊ at the Meghna, Laukhati and Galachipa river in Bangladesh

Climate change is a global threat to the world especially for Bangladesh, due to its geographical location. The present study was carried out to the impacts of climate change on livelihood of the fishers at the Meghna, Laukhati and Galachipa river in Bangladesh. The study was assessing the effects of climate change on fishersˊ community in the Meghna, Laukhati and Galachipa rivers near Chandpur and Patuakhali districts. The data on fishersˊ livelihood were collected by using a well-developed questionnaire from the selected areas. The average temperature was recorded as 30.5±0.90°C, 27.1±1.05°C and 27.4±0.60°C and the dissolved oxygen was as 6.37±1.11 mg/L, 5.63±0.33 mg/L and 6.33±0.51 mg/L in the Meghna, Laukhati and Galachipa rivers, respectively. The pH was as 8.3±0.59, 8.03±0.50 and 7.8±0.50 and the salinity was as 0.10±0.10, 0.23±0.13 and 1.2±0.15 ppt in the Meghna, Galachipa and Laukhati rivers, respectively. In the present study, it was found that most of the fishers were belonged to the age groups of 41 to 60 years (45%), represented by 75% muslim and joint family type (61%) was the predominant among the fishers. The highest annual income of fishers was found 20,080 and 24,000 BDT per year at Chandpur and Patuakhali districts, respectively. There has not been conducted much empirical research about the impacts of climate change in the present research areas. Therefore, Government and NGOs should take proper steps by taking various need based projects and providing some sorts of management policy to rescue the vulnerable communities from climate change impacts.
Webinar: A Strategy to Enhance Speaking Skill of Non-native English Speakers

Low competence in speaking for the students of Non-native English speakers has been crucial challenge so far for the teachers in language teaching in Indonesia. This study attempts to explore the effect of webinar applied in teaching speaking on Students of Non-native English Speakers at one of Business schools in Surabaya. There are three classes observed in this study. Before the webinar was applied, the groups were given test to check their proficiency. After conducting the webinar class, the post-test was given to the groups. The instruments to get the data was the oral test. The results reveal that there is an improvement on post test score in the two out of three classes observed. In contrary, the last class has no improvement on their post test score. Moreover, barriers found during the implementation of webinar in speaking class will be explored.
Conic Optimization for Quadratic Regression Under Sparse Noise

This paper is concerned with the quadratic regression problem, where the goal is to ﬁnd the unknown state (numerical parameters) of a system modeled by a set of equations that are quadratic in the state. We focus on the setting when a subset of equations of ﬁxed cardinality is subject to errors of arbitrary magnitudes (potentially adversarial). We develop two methods to address this problem, which are both based on conic optimization and are able to accept any available prior knowledge on the solution as an input. We derive suﬃcient conditions for guaranteeing the correct recovery of the unknown state for each method and show that one method provides a better accuracy while the other one scales better to large-scale systems. The obtained conditions consist in bounds on the number of bad measurements each method can tolerate without producing a nonzero estimation error. In the case when no prior knowledge is available, we develop an iterative-based conic optimization technique. It is proved that the proposed methods allow up to half of the total number of measurements to be grossly erroneous.The eﬃcacy of the developed methods is demonstrated in diﬀerent case studies, including data analytics for a European power grid.
Genre-Based Approach: Can It Improve the Informatics Engineering Students’ Writing Skill?

Because instructional process in English for Specific Purpose (ESP) context is oriented to students’ academic and professional settings within discourse community, challenges appear. Learning language and learning language are directed to improving students’ language skills to survive the 21st century. On the other hand, score-documentations proved that the students performed low skills; especially writing skill. This study aimed at improving the students’ skill in writing explanation text by using Genre-Based Approach (GBA) to Informatics Engineering students of a private university in South, Indonesia. Classroom Action Research (CAR) was conducted to the third semester students of the university within two cycles. To validate the findings, writing test, observation and questionnaire were employed. The test result proved implementing GBA improved the classroom’s average score from 54 to 59.95 in cycle 1. This improvement was supported by the students’ engagement and enthusiasm to the instructional process as suggested by questionnaire and observation respectively. Further, the implementation of cycle 2 revealed the average score improved from 59.5 to 70.5. This score improvement is followed by the students’ agility and cooperativeness during the instructional process. This concludes that implementing GBA can improve the students’ skill in writing explanation text. This finding is expected to give insight for teachers to undoubtedly using GBA in English for specific purposes context. HIGHLIGHTS: The instructional practice of teaching English for informatics engineering students in the private university still focuses on form-based mastery. The informatics engineering students are eager and high-determinate to learn language skills especially writing in collaborative framework.
DYNAMICS AND VOLATILITY AT STOCK MARKET INDEXES OF PACIFIC ALLIANCE COUNTRIES

The Latin American Integrated Market agreement between Peru, Chile, Colombia and Mexico was signed within the framework under the Pacific Alliance, following the experiences of the European Union and integrated Asian and Middle Eastern markets. This agreement was aimed at diversifying markets and attracting global investors. Due to this, through the application of correlation and cointegration analyses, and using the impulse response function of vector autoregression (VAR), we identify the impacts on returns and volatility at the main stock indexes for each of MILA member countries.
Effects of soy milk on physical, rheological, microbiological and sensory properties of cake

The aim of the present work was to produce a new soy milk-based cake. Soy milk was added at different percentages (0, 25, 50, 75, and 100%) during cake making to replace milk. Nutritional composition, batter characteristics, physical, and sensory properties, as well as the stability of cake during storage, were investigated. Sensory results indicated that cake with 50% soy milk had the most favourable acceptance scores with the highest score in the aroma, colour, and taste attributes. The addition of soy milk up to 50% produced a cake with higher protein content and lower carbohydrate content, along with lower density and higher specific volume compared to control. Cake with 50% soy milk addition had lower microbial counts as compared to control. Therefore, soy milk has the potential to act as a milk replacer in cake production.
The effect of Fusarium culmorum on yield and grain characteristics of winter wheat cultivars

The response to Fusarium culmorum infection was studied in winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars differing in baking quality. Deoxynivalenol (DON) content, grain yield and characteristics: test weight, thousand kernel weight, falling number, crude protein content, sedimentation index, wet gluten content and gluten index, were evaluated in wheat grown in field trials, established within two distinct environments in three successive harvest years. There were significant differences in the level of DON content between the locations, harvest years and cultivars. Considering the entire data set from the whole trial, F. culmorum infection systematically influenced all the considered variables, except for wet gluten content, with significant interactions with other factors in most cases. Results of the experiment confirmed the multi-factorial nature of Fusarium head blight disease and emphasized the fact, that although currently there is no fully resistant winter wheat cultivar available, there are substantial differences in susceptibility among the currently grown ones. Because of the multi-factorial nature of Fusarium head blight disease, protection measures should rely on more factors as well. The choice of less susceptible cultivar should be one of them.
Financial, Macroeconomic and Corporative Management Indicators to Predict the Insolvency of B3 Companies

How to Cite (APA)_________________________________________________________ Bezerra, E.S. , Lagioia, U.C. T. , Pereira, M.L. (2019). Financial, Macroeconomic and Corporative Management Indicators to Predict the Insolvency of B3 Companies. Journal of Accounting, Management and Governance, 22 (3), 405-422. http://dx.doi. org/10.21714/1984-3925_2019v22n3a6 _____________________________________ Received: February 14, 2019 Revised: July 29, 2019 Accepted: September 16, 2019 Published: December 16, 2019 ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze the effect of financial, macroeconomic and descriptive (qualitative) corporative management indicators to predict insolvency of Brazil, Bolsa, Balcão (B3) (Brazil, Stock market, Bench) companies, between the years of 2006 and 2016. Method: Logistic regression was estimated according to unbalanced panel data, after choosing the best predictive variables for the model, utilizing the backward stepwise model. The sample is based on 55 publicly-traded non-financial corporations. Originality/Relevance: When macroeconomic and corporative management variables are inserted, the expectation is that the company’s insolvency condition have another explanatory alternative in order to cut down on the negative aspects that such a condition imposes upon the concerned parts. Results: The number of the model’s correct classifications was 89.5% and pseudo R-squared = 0.4872. Results show that the financial indicators, just as verified by other works, are fine predictors of company insolvency. Moving onto the corporative management indicators utilized, p-value results do not dismiss the theoretical relationship that management elements might be linked to corporation insolvency. Regarding macroeconomic factors, only one variable (among 5) showed a value of statistical significance according to the definitions. Theoretical/Methodological contributions: Results may justify why only the variable gross domestic product (among the macroeconomic ones) has presented a significant statistical relationship with the predictive model, as organization management may overcome issues caused by macroeconomic variables.
DynaMast: Adaptive Dynamic Mastering for Replicated Systems

Single-master replicated database systems strive to be scalable by offloading reads to replica nodes. However, single-master systems suffer from the performance bottleneck of all updates executing at a single site. Multi-master replicated systems distribute updates among sites but incur costly coordination for multi-site transactions. We present DynaMast, a lazily replicated, multi-master database system that guarantees one-site transaction execution while effectively distributing both reads and updates among multiple sites. DynaMast benefits from these advantages by dynamically transferring the mastership of data, or remastering, among sites using a lightweight metadata-based protocol. DynaMast leverages remastering to adaptively place master copies to balance load and minimize future remastering. Using benchmark workloads, we demonstrate that DynaMast delivers superior performance over existing replicated database system architectures.
People’s Perception on Climate Change, its Impact and Adaptive Strategies in Kaligandaki Rural Municipality, Syangja, Nepal

Climate change is the major, overriding environmental issue of our time, and the single greatest challenge facing decision makers at many levels. Without drastic action today, adapting to the impacts in the future will be more difficult and costly. Key informant interview, focus group discussion (n=7) and household survey (n=150) were undertaken to assess local peoples’ perception on Climate Change, its impact and adaptive strategies. Meteorological data from 1987 to 2017 were used to analyze climatic trends. These data shows that average temperature has increased from 1987-2017 by 0.0146 °C/yr. and annual rainfall has decreased from 1987-2017 by 0.6507 mm/yr. Majority of the respondents (56%) were unknown about climate change. Weather related disasters, mosquito/other insects, invasive species were found highly increased compared to before. The most common adaptation options include using weed control, compost manure, economic diversification, storage of energy, changing planting and harvesting date, crop diversification etc. However, lack of information concerning climate change, agricultural pests and diseases, lack of education, no access to sufficient seeds and fertilizers, no access to sufficient land, no access to credit were major constraints of adaptation and institutions such as School, Mother’s group and Rural Municipality, DFO, INGO like UNDP, WASH are assisting in Climate Change adaptation.
Pyoderma gangrenosum in a patient with type 2 diabetes: a case report

We are presenting a case of patient with type 2 diabetes mellitus that was diagnosed with a soft tissue infection in the lower extremity. This was initially treated as cellulitis and antibiotic treatment was initiated. Due to a poor clinical response, the diagnosis of pyoderma gangrenosum was proposed as part of the differential diagnosis. Skin biopsies and pathology confirmed the diagnosis of pyoderma gangrenosum that had a satisfactory response to steroid treatment.
Multiphase Simulation of DNAPL Migration for Site Characterization

Chlorinated solvents, which are low-viscosity, dense non-aqueous liquids (DNAPLs), have been released over approaching the past hundred years into the subsurface both intentionally and unintentionally. Such solvents have caused widespread ground-water contamination, incurred huge costs and have produced complex subsurface characterization problems for those involved in remedial design and risk assessment. To date, few attempts have been made to employ multiphase simulators to predict the migration, trapping and dissolution of spilled DNAPLs in order to assist in site characterization operations. This paper demonstrates how it is possible to use multiphase computer models to design characterization plans for implementation at DNAPL sites based upon limited knowledge of the geology, release rates and the physical-chemical properties of the DNAPL. RÉSUMÉ Les solvants chlorinés, qui ont une viscosité basse et sont des liquides denses non-aqueux (DNAPL), ont été relâchés sous la surface de la terre au courant des preseque dernières cent années intenionnellement et nonintentionnellement. Ces solvants ont déjà causés de nombreuses contaminations d'eaux souterraines, ont entraîné des coût énormes et ont produits des problèmes pour la caractérisation des régions souterraines pour ceux et celles impliqués dans l'atténuation et la gestion des risques. À date, peu d'essais ont été entrepris pour effectuer des simulations multiphasiques pour prédire la migration, le piégeage et la dissolution des DNAPL répandus pour assister avec les opérations de caractérisation d'un site. Cet article démontre comment il est possible d'utiliser des modèles informatiques multiphasiques pour conçevoir des plans de caractérisation et les implanter aux sites contaminés par des DNAPL en utilisant des connaissances limitées de la géologie, des taux de relâchement et des propriétés physicauxchimiques du DNAPL.
The Effect of Dean Leadership, on the Performance of Lecturers Working in The Faculty of Education in Medan State University

The aims of this study are to determine: (1) the effect of the dean of the Faculty of Education’s leadership on the work motivation of lecturers working in the Faculty of Education in Medan State University, (2) the effect of organizational culture on the work motivation of lecturers working in the Faculty of Education in Medan State University, (3) the effect of the dean of the Faculty of Education’s leadership on the performance of lecturers working in the Faculty of Education in Medan State University, (4) the effect of organizational culture on the performance of lecturers working in the Faculty of Education in Medan State University, (5) the effect of work motivation on the performance of lecturers working in the Faculty of Education in Medan State University and publishing in international journals. This research is a quantitative study using a path analysis approach (path analysis) which began in the Academic Year 20182019 and concluded December 2018.
Qualitative analysis of some bioactive components of methanolic leaf extract of M. citrifolia (Noni)

Medicinal plants offer endless opportunities for new drugs discovery due to their supremacy for the possession of phytochemical compounds known for diverse antimicrobial activities. The world ever increasing demand for therapeutic drugs from natural products with particular interest in edible plants for safety purposes is now catching researchers’ attention. This study therefore aimed at determining the presence of some bioactive phytochemical components of methanolic leaf extract of M. citrifolia L. Qualitative screening of leaf extract has confirmed the existence of Tannins, steroids, saponins, flavonoids and alkaloids in the mixture. And these bioactive compounds correspond to phytochemicals with antimicrobial, nematicide, pesticidal, antioxidant, ant-inflammatory, cytotoxic, anti-allergy, and anti-carcinogenic properties (bioactive compounds) earlier documented by previous researchers.
Longitudinal meta-analysis of job crafting shows positive association with work engagement

Abstract Work engagement is a state in which workers show high levels of vigor, dedication, and absorption to and in their work and have been associated with several positive life outcomes. Job crafting describes a set of pro-active behaviors in which individuals alter their work behaviors and environments. It is thought increased job crafting may be associated with increased work engagement. In order to estimate the effect of job crafting on work engagement and control for reverse causation, we performed a random-effects meta-analysis focused on repeated data designs (e.g., longitudinal, daily diary, RCT). We found a considerable positive association between job crafting and later work engagement (standardized effect size of d = 0.37, 95%CI = [0.16, 0.58]). We conclude the paper with a general discussion of the state of job crafting research, limitations, and a call for large randomized controlled trial interventions.
Large and irreversible future decline of the Greenland ice sheet

Abstract. We have studied the evolution of the Greenland ice sheet under a range of constant climates typical of those projected for the end of the present century using a dynamical ice sheet model (Glimmer) coupled to an atmosphere general circulation model (FAMOUS–ice AGCM). The ice sheet surface mass balance (SMB) is simulated within the AGCM by a multilayer snow scheme from snowfall and surface energy fluxes, including refreezing and dependence on altitude within AGCM grid boxes. Over millennia under any warmer climate, the ice sheet reaches a new steady state, whose mass is correlated with the magnitude of global climate change imposed. If a climate that gives the recently observed SMB were maintained, global-mean sea level rise (GMSLR) would reach 0.5–2.5 m. For any global warming exceeding 3 K, the contribution to GMSLR exceeds 5 m. For the largest global warming considered (about +5 K), the rate of GMSLR is initially 2.7 mm yr−1, and eventually only a small ice cap endures, resulting in over 7 m of GMSLR. Our analysis gives a qualitatively different impression from previous work in that we do not find a sharp threshold warming that divides scenarios in which the ice sheet suffers little reduction from those in which it is mostly lost. The final steady state is achieved by withdrawal from the coast in some places and a tendency for increasing SMB due to enhancement of cloudiness and snowfall over the remaining ice sheet by the effects of topographic change on atmospheric circulation, outweighing the tendency for decreasing SMB from the reduction in surface altitude. If late 20th-century climate is restored after the ice sheet mass has fallen below a threshold of about 4 m of sea level equivalent, it will not regrow to its present extent because the snowfall in the northern part of the island is reduced once the ice sheet retreats from there. In that case, about 2 m of GMSLR would become irreversible. In order to avoid this outcome, anthropogenic climate change must be reversed before the ice sheet has declined to the threshold mass, which would be reached in about 600 years at the highest rate of mass loss within the likely range of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.