Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of financial development on bank profitability

PurposeThis paper investigates the effect of financial development on bank profitability. The authors examine whether financial development is an important determinant of bank profitability.Design/methodology/approachThe ordinary least square and the generalized method of moments regression methods were used to analyze the impact of financial development on the profitability of the Nigerian banking sector.FindingsThe authors find a significant negative relationship between the financial system deposits to GDP ratio and the non-interest income of Nigerian banks. This indicates that higher financial system deposits to GDP depresses the non-interest income of Nigerian banks. The result implies that the larger the size of the Nigerian financial system, the lower the profitability of banks in Nigeria. Also, the authors observe that bank concentration, nonperforming loans, cost efficiency and the level of inflation are significant determinants of the profitability of Nigerian banks.Practical implicationsIt is recommended that regulators should establish market-enabling policies that encourage new banks to emerge in the banking industry. The entry of new banks can lead to increase in financial system deposits and credit supply for economic growth. Regulators also need to understand the role of Nigerian banks in promoting financial development and find ways to collaborate with banks towards financial sector development. Another implication of the findings for asset managers is that asset managers will need to take into account the prevailing level of financial development, particularly the size of the financial system, in their asset pricing and investment decisions. This will ensure that investors get value for their investments in Nigeria. The financial implication of the study is that the level of financial development in Nigeria can improve the finance-growth linkages in Nigeria through the efficient allocation of credit and capital to crucial sectors of the Nigerian economy to spur growth in those sectors.Originality/valueEvidence dealing with how financial development affects the profitability of the banking sector in African countries is scarce in the literature, and is completely absent for Nigeria. This paper addresses this research gap.
Fungicidal effects of homoeopathic medicines versus allopathic ketoconazole in Candida albicans

Abstract Background: Candida albicans, accounts for more than 75% of all Candidal infections. Apart from its growing prevalence, it is also one of the most resistant strains against antifungal medication. Homoeopathy is an alternative to allopathic medication and has shown inhibiting fungal growth. Objective: This study was to determine effectiveness of homoeopathic tinctures and medications versus allopathic Ketoconazole in growth inhibition and fungicidal properties against in vitro cultures of C. albicans. Materials and Methods: Efficacy of five antifungal agents were tested for inhibiting fungal growth and their fungicidal properties on cultured C. albicans the agents tested were Eucalyptus globulus and Ocimum basilicum in essential oil form, Benzoicum Acidum 30C and Kali Iodatum 30C in tablet form, and compared with the effect of 100 mg Ketoconazole in powder form. Results: In the growth inhibition trial, O. basilicum had the largest zone of inhibition followed by E. globulus following. The ketoconazole group showed similar inhibition rates with Benzoicum Acidum 30C, and Kali Iodatum 30C showed more inhibition than Ketoconazole. The present data suggests that no individual agent had an effective fungicidal effect on C. albicans, only causing a minimal reduction on the surface in the fungal colony. Conclusion: Results indicate that essential oils O. basilicum and E. globulus were most effective in growth inhibition. However, both essential oil and homoeopathic treatment had limited fungicidal properties. This concludes that homoeopathic alternatives can be effective in preventing fungal infections but may be less effective in treatment of a fully developed C. albicans infection.
Transmission of galactic cosmic rays through Mars atmosphere

For human operations on the surface of Mars, methods of estimating radiation exposures from galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) are needed. To facilitate making estimates of human radiation exposures for crew operations in the Martian atmosphere, lookup tables have been generated that provide doses for critical body organs and effective doses for exposures from galactic cosmic rays anywhere on the surface of Mars. The organ doses and effective doses are tabulated for carbon dioxide atmospheric shielding areal densities ranging from 0 to 300 g cm−2 followed by aluminum spacecraft or habitat shield areal densities ranging from 0 to 100 g cm−2. The Badhwar‐O'Neill GCR model for interplanetary magnetic field potentials, ranging from the most probable solar minimum (currently 417 MV) to solar maximum conditions (1800 MV) in the solar cycle, is used as input into the calculations. This model is the standard one used for space operations at the Space Radiation Analysis Group at NASA Johnson Space Center. Use of the tables is illustrated for an environment consisting of the current galactic cosmic radiation spectrum impinging on an aluminum habitat on the surface of Mars.
Mediating effect of the organizational culture on the relationship between leadership and operational performance in food processing SMEs

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of leadership on the operational performance of food processing SMEs in Punjab, Pakistan. This study also examines whether the organizational culture plays a mediating role in the relationship between leadership and operational performance. Previous studies explained that visionary leadership and dynamic organizational culture are the key factors for the organization’s success that provide a competitive environment and had an impact on the organization’s performance. The data were collected from 288 food processing SMEs through purposive with snowball sampling techniques. A structured questionnaire was employed for data collection from the Owners/Managers of the food processing SMEs. The Partial Least Square (PLS) approach was used to test the proposed hypothesis. The empirical investigations show that leadership is positively related to organizational culture and operational performance. The study also found a mediating role of organizational culture between leadership and operational performance by adopting the Hayes process of mediation. The findings of the study will help food manufacturers in improving the operational performance of their SMEs. Moreover, by practicing transformational leadership styles, and adopting the quality culture, SMEs can get a competitive advantage.
The origin , evolution , and trajectory of large dust storms on Mars during Mars years 24 – 30

Mars Daily Global Maps (MDGM) derived from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Mars Color Imager (MARCI) are used to study the distribution and evolution of large dust storms over the period from Mars years 24–30 (1999–2001). Large storms are defined here as discrete dust events visible in image sequences extending over at least 5 sols (Mars days) and where the dust covers areas beyond the origination region. A total of 65 large dust storms meeting these criteria are identified during the observational period and all are observed during the Ls = 135–30 seasonal window. Dust storms originating in the northern and southern hemispheres appear to form two distinct families. All but two of the storms originating in the northern hemisphere are observed in two seasonal windows at Ls = 180–240 and Ls = 305–350 ; while all but two of those originating in the southern hemisphere are observed during Ls = 135–245 . None of the large dust storms originating in the northern hemisphere are observed to develop to global scale, but some of them develop into large regional storms with peak area >1 10 km and duration on the order of several weeks. In comparison, large dust storms originating in the southern hemisphere are typically much smaller, except notably in the two cases that expanded to global scale (the 2001 and 2007
The Relationship between Iranian EFL Students’ Achievement Goal Orientations and Their Gender

Achievement goal orientation has been described as the set of purposes or reasons students may adopt for performing an academic task (Dweck, 1986; Pintrich, 2000). So, Goal orientation is one of the concepts that has emerged in educational psychology over the last few decades and also is one of the most important concepts regarding learning in any educational setting. Due to the importance of students' achievement goal orientation in the education context, and the influences that goals have on their learning processes and outcomes, in the present study, the researcher has tried to investigate the type of goal orientations held by Iranian EFL students and to examine if achievement goals are dependent on gender. To achieve the goal, achievement goal orientation questionnaires were distributed among 182 B.A. students, both males and females, majoring in English Literature at Shiraz University. Consequently, having analyzed the data, the researcher found that that mastery was the dominant type of goal orientation held by Iranian EFL students. Afterwards, performance approach, work avoidant, and performance avoidant goal orientations were respectively the achievement goal orientations held by them. Then, an independent sample t-test was run for the purpose of comparing the students both males and females with the type of achievement goal orientations held by them to see whether the achievement goal orientations are dependent on gender or not. Thus, the results indicated that there were no significant differences across gender groups. That is, the goal orientations held by the students were not dependent on gender.
National health insurance scheme renewal in Ghana: Does waiting time at health insurance registration office matter?

The study examined effect of waiting time at national health insurance registration office on national health insurance renewal in Ghana and also, estimated acceptable waiting time at national health insurance registration office. A secondary data collected from 1009 individuals by PhD candidate at University of Cape Coast, Ghana was used for this study. The sample size used for this study was 636 and binary logit model was used to examine the effect of waiting time at national health insurance scheme office on renewal of national health insurance policy. The study found that waiting time at national health insurance scheme registration office/centre has a negative influence on individual’s decision to renew NHIS policy. The desired (acceptable) waiting time at NHIS registration centre is 2 hours 45 minutes (147 minutes). This means that individuals who spend less than 2 hours 45 minutes are more likely to renew their NHIS policy when the policy expires. This study recommends that National Health Insurance Authority should develop software (an App) that an individual can use to renew his/her NHIS membership when his/her membership expires without visiting NHIS registration office.
Production and operations management for intelligent manufacturing: a systematic literature review

In the context of Industry 4.0, the manufacturing sector is moving from automation towards intelligence. The application of new generation information and communication technologies (ICTs) improves the interconnection and transparency of intelligent manufacturing (IM) systems, which will change how information interacts and work is done, thus changing how work should be managed. These changes require the following characteristics for IM production and operations management (POM): integration, flexibility and networking, autonomous and collaborative decision-making, learning-based operations management, self-optimisation and adaptability, and proactive decision-making. This paper presents the state of the art, current challenges, and future directions of IM-related POM research from the perspectives of these characteristics through a systematic literature review. Descriptive and thematic analyses of 208 research articles published between 2005 and 2020 are provided. The review and discussions focus on five research themes, i.e. value creation mechanisms, resource configuration and capacity planning, production planning, scheduling, and logistics.
A dynamically young, gravitationally stable network of filaments in Orion B

Context. Filaments are a key step on the path that leads from molecular clouds to star formation. However, their characteristics, for instance their width, are heavily debated and the exact processes that lead to their formation and fragmentation into dense cores still remain to be fully understood. Aims. We aim at characterising the mass, kinematics, and stability against gravitational collapse of a statistically significant sample of filaments in the Orion B molecular cloud, which is renown for its very low star formation efficiency. Methods. We characterised the gas column densities and kinematics over a field of 1.9 deg2, using C18O (J = 1−0) data from the IRAM 30 m large programme ORION-B at angular and spectral resolutions of 23.5″ and 49.5 kHz, respectively. Using two different Hessian-based filters, we extracted and compared two filamentary networks, each containing over 100 filaments. Results. Independent of the extraction method, the filament networks have consistent characteristics. The filaments have widths of ~0.12 ± 0.04 pc and show a wide range of linear (~1−100 M⊙ pc−1) and volume densities (~2 × 103−2 × 105 cm−3). Compared to previous studies, the filament population is dominated by low-density, thermally sub-critical structures, suggesting that most of the identified filaments are not collapsing to form stars. In fact, only ~1% of the Orion B cloud mass covered by our observations can be found in super-critical, star-forming filaments, explaining the low star formation efficiency of the region. The velocity profiles observed across the filaments show quiescence in the centre and coherency in the plane of the sky, even though these profiles are mostly supersonic. Conclusions. The filaments in Orion B apparently belong to a continuum which contains a few elements comparable to already studied star-forming filaments, for example in the IC 5146, Aquila or Taurus regions, as well as many lower density, gravitationally unbound structures. This comprehensive study of the Orion B filaments shows that the mass fraction in super-critical filaments is a key factor in determining star formation efficiency.
Characterization of cumulus cloud fields using trajectories in the center of gravity versus water mass phase space: 2. Aerosol effects on warm convective clouds

In Part I of this work a 3‐D cloud tracking algorithm and phase space of center of gravity altitude versus cloud liquid water mass (CvM space) were introduced and described in detail. We showed how new physical insight can be gained by following cloud trajectories in the CvM space. Here this approach is used to investigate aerosol effects on cloud fields of warm cumuli. We show a clear effect of the aerosol loading on the shape and size of CvM clusters. We also find fundamental differences in the CvM space between simulations using bin versus bulk microphysical schemes, with the bin scheme precipitation expressing much higher sensitivity to changes in aerosol concentrations. Using the bin microphysical scheme, we find that the increase in cloud center of gravity altitude with increase in aerosol concentrations occurs for a wide range of cloud sizes. This is attributed to reduced sedimentation, increased buoyancy and vertical velocities, and increased environmental instability, all of which are tightly coupled to inhibition of precipitation processes and subsequent feedbacks of clouds on their environment. Many of the physical processes shown here are consistent with processes typically associated with cloud invigoration.
Can Really Regularized Amplitudes Be Obtained as Consistent with Their Expected Symmetry Properties

Through a very detailed investigation involving a set of simple perturbative amplitudes we show that the answer for the question put in the title of the present work is: undoubtedly NO! We are not restricting the sentence to the amplitudes which are considered as anomalous. The referred investigation is performed by using a procedure alternative to the traditional regularization methods. In the context of such a strategy the amplitudes are not modified in intermediary steps of the calculation, like traditional regularization procedures do, and only the validity of the linearity in the integration operation is assumed in the operations made in Feynman integrals typical of the perturbative calculations. The central point of the investigation is the question related to the consistent interpretation of the amplitudes. For these purposes, in all amplitudes having power counting indicating the possibility of divergences, the relations among Green functions, Ward identities and low energy limits are analyzed, in a model having different species of massive 1/2 spin fermions coupled to spin 0 and 1 (even and odd parity) boson fields, formulated in a space-time dimension D=1+1. We show that the maintenance of the linearity in operations involving Feynman integrals excludes the possibility of an anomalous term in the Ward identity relating the axial-vector and the pseudo-scalar-vector two point functions amplitudes. In addition, we show that it is not possible the maintenance of Ward identities and low energy limits in a consistent way if the amplitudes of the perturbative calculations are quantities to be regularized, just because there is no regularization method which is capable to give acceptable results for the divergent objects present in the calculations. This conclusion includes the Dimensional Regularization method which cannot give unique results if the linearity and the symmetric integration are simultaneously required in Feynman integrals. The qualitative conclusions apply in an equally-way in other space-time dimensions having, therefore, implications in many phenomenological consequences of quantum field theories stated through perturbative solutions.
Water Ordering Induced by Interfaces : An Experimental and Theoretical Study

We study interfacial water by a novel method -we examine its stabilization in bulk water. Our study evidences that in an iterative immersion process [placing a hydrophilic membrane (Nafion®) in ultra-pure Milli-Q water kept in a plastic Petri capsule, manual agitations causing the liquid to lap against the membrane, removal and drying of the membrane, repetition of these steps] leads to ordering of part of the water molecules in the remnant liquid. It endows the remnant liquid with physicochemical characteristics similar to those of the membrane’s interfacial water. The orderings persist for macroscopic times (at least many days). These are very stable. These persist after drying or lyophilizing the remnant liquid, leaving a macroscopic solid residue at ambient temperature and pressure: a new solid phase of water. We report new experimental results (thermogravimetric measurements on the solid residues and density data on the liquid). These enable us to provide the first consistent explanations of previously reported characteristics of these orderings (observed by a wide variety of techniques, e.g., fluorescence microscopy, conductivity, pH for the liquid phase and IR spectroscopy on the solid residues). Our main findings are: (1) The up to hundreds of micrometers wide zone of ordered water near a hydrophilic surface, which excludes solutes and therefore in the literature termed “exclusion zone water”, is attributable to stabilization of liquid aggregates wherein water molecules are ferroelectric ordered. (2) The surface’s charge distribution and the ferroelectric ordering affect the electron cloud of the water molecules and lead to their organization in ~0.1 micrometers sized domains. (3) Critical temperatures for formation of the aggregates and domains, predicted in previous publications, are for the first time verified by our thermogravimetric data.
Energy use within road maintenance operations with potentials for increased efficiency

This Licentiate thesis is done within the scope of the doctoral thesis project Energy Efficiency within Road Maintenance Operations. This initiation part forms the base of the energy use within these operations. The aim is to create an energy model for the mapping of the energy consumption within road operations. The model could be used to evaluate possible energy efficiency measures and also as a reporting tool for energy use within different road maintenance districts. To be able to map the energy use a questionnaire was sent to the road maintenance districts run by the contractor SKANSKA. Since it is difficult to know about the energy consumption within the different parts of the operations, the hours were used as unit for the answers. This is information that every road manager have some knowledge about because of the different time report systems that are used within the organisation. The time that each type of vehicle was employed for a specific operation were given and the model recalculated the hours into fuel and eventually energy by the use of fuel consumption values from previous studies. This way the model can easily be modified to suite the user depending on the purpose, the fuel consumption of the vehicles and which vehicles that are used for the specific operation activities within the particular maintenance district.
Constructions of general polynomial lattices for multivariate integration

We study a construction algorithm for certain polynomial lattice rules modulo arbitrary polynomials. The underlying polynomial lattices are special types of digital nets as introduced by Niederreiter. Dick, Kuo, Pillichshammer and Sloan recently introduced construction algorithms for polynomial lattice rules modulo irreducible polynomials which yield a small worst-case error for integration of functions in certain weighted Hilbert spaces. Here, we generalize these results to the case where the polynomial lattice rules are constructed modulo arbitrary polynomials.
Evaluating the Dynamical Stability of Outer Solar System Objects in the Presence of Planet Nine

We evaluate the dynamical stability of a selection of outer solar system objects in the presence of the proposed new solar system member Planet Nine. We use a Monte Carlo suite of numerical N-body integrations to construct a variety of orbital elements of the new planet and evaluate the dynamical stability of eight trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) in the presence of Planet Nine. These simulations show that some combinations of orbital elements ( ) result in Planet Nine acting as a stabilizing influence on the TNOs, which can otherwise be destabilized by interactions with Neptune. These simulations also suggest that some TNOs transition between several different mean-motion resonances during their lifetimes while still retaining approximate apsidal antialignment with Planet Nine. This behavior suggests that remaining in one particular orbit is not a requirement for orbital stability. As one product of our simulations, we present an a posteriori probability distribution for the semimajor axis and eccentricity of the proposed Planet Nine based on TNO stability. This result thus provides additional evidence that supports the existence of this proposed planet. We also predict that TNOs can be grouped into multiple populations of objects that interact with Planet Nine in different ways: one population may contain objects like Sedna and 2012 VP113, which do not migrate significantly in semimajor axis in the presence of Planet Nine and tend to stay in the same resonance; another population may contain objects like 2007 TG422 and 2013 RF98, which may both migrate and transition between different resonances.