Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asset Structure, Corporate Governance, Capital Structure and Financial Performance of Construction and Manufacturing Firms Listed In Kenya

: Financial performance of listed firms draws attention not only from the government but also shareholders and other stakeholders. The management thus works around the clock to implement the strategic plans as well as turnaround strategies. To achieve this, more emphasize is on investment and financing decisions including the general corporate governance as key ingredients of boosting financial performance of firms in Kenya. Existing empirical studies have focused on the study variables even though not collectively. To fill the gap, the study therefore sought to establish the moderating effects of capital structure and corporate governance in the relationship between asset structure and financial performance of construction and manufacturing firms listed in Kenya. As guided by agency and stewardship theories, post positivist research paradigm and explanatory research design were used. Secondary panel data collected from 12 listed firms was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. From the panel regression analysis results, both noncurrent as well as current assets positively and statistically significantly affected financial performance. Given interaction analysis, capital structure had a negative and insignificant moderating effect in noncurrent assets-financial performance linkage. On the other hand, capital structure positively and significantly moderated current assets-financial performance linkage. Moreover, a positive and significant moderating effect of corporate governance was documented given the nexus between noncurrent assets and financial performance. Similarly, corporate governance positively and significantly moderated current assets-financial performance linkage. The study thus concluded the existence of enhancing moderating effect, since increase in capital structure increased the effect of currents assets on financial performance. Moreover, corporate governance was an enhancing moderating given that its increase led amplified the effect of asset structure, that is, noncurrent and current assets, on financial performance. Other than the findings having theoretical and practical implications, further research was expected to extend the scope, model as well as measurement approaches for study variables.
FAKTOR – FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI KEPUTUSAN PEMBELIAN DAGING SAPI DI PASAR RAYA I SALATIGA

Pasar Raya 1 is one of the traditional markets located in the city of Salatiga. Pasar raya 1 is located on Jl. Jend. Sudirman, Kutowinangun Kidul Kec. Tingkir, Salatiga City, Central Java. Pasar Raya. This study aims to identify consumer characteristics, analyze the effect of price, service quality, lifestyle, product quality, place, promotion. This research was conducted in August - December 2020 in the City of Salatiga. This type of research uses quantitative descriptive, the sampling method used in this research is purposive sampling by determining criteria, namely anyone who has made a purchase and is willing to be interviewed. Samples were collected as many as 70 respondents, namely the criteria for beef consumers in Pasar Raya 1. The analytical method used is multiple regression analysis techniques. The results showed that: 1. The Characteristics of the most respondents, 64 (93%) were female, 32 (45.7%) aged 40-49 years, based on the education level of 26 people (37.1%) SMA, the factors that have a significant effect are price (X1), product quality (X4), place (X5), while for service quality (X2), lifestyle (X3), promotion (X4), do not have a significant effect on purchasing decisions.
Urinary Neopterin and Microalbuminuria in Patients Treated by Low-density Lipoprotein Apheresis

Abstract Low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-apheresis is a method of extracorporeal elimination of LDL-cholesterol in patients with severe primary lipoprotein disorders. LDL-cholesterol activates macrophages, which play an important role in atheromatous plaque formation. In the present study, we have investigated urinary neopterin, a specific marker of macrophage activation and microalbuminuria, an indicator of generalized vascular dysfunction, after a single LDL-apheresis procedure in 10 patients with severe primary lipoprotein disorder. The urinary neopterin/creatinine ratio was increased in patients compared to controls. No significant changes of the neopterin/creatinine and albumin/creatinine ratios were observed after LDL-apheresis, except a significant (p < 0.006) decrease of urinary neopterin/creatinine ratio in the evening after the apheresis. This decrease showed significant negative correlation with the pre-apheretic levels of atherogenic cholesterol fractions (p < 0.05) and with cholesterol decrease during the apheresis (p < 0.05). Urinary albumin/creatinine ratio correlated positively with total and LDL-cholesterol levels before the apheresis and with the evening urinary neopterin/creatinine ratio after the apheresis, but did not correlate with glycemia and triacylglycerides. Elevated urinary neopterin in the patients with severe primary lipoprotein disorders reflects the presence of atherosclerosis. A single LDL-apheresis procedure did not significantly affect microalbuminuria. The decrease of urinary neopterin in the evening after the apheresis corresponds with the diurnal rhythm of neopterin excretion and was less pronounced in patients with more severe hypercholesterolemia. The correlations between microalbuminuria, neopterin and pre-apheretic cholesterol concentrations indicate a possible connection between microvascular dysfunction, macrophage activity and severity of hyperlipidemia, but these results should be interpreted with caution because of small number of subjects evaluated.
Mineralogical and Crystal-Chemical Constraints on the Glauconite-Forming Process in Neogene Sediments of the Lower Guadalquivir Basin (SW Spain)

Glaucony is a significant green marine facies in the northwestern passive margin of the Guadalquivir Basin (Spain), where glauconite formed authigenically on a sediment-starved continental shelf, with fecal pellets and benthic foraminiferal tests being the main glauconitized substrates. Results from a study using XRD, TGA-DSC, SEM-EDS, and EPMA have revealed that glauconite is remarkably heterogeneous in mineral composition and chemical maturity, even in a single grain, reflecting a complex interaction of micro-environmental factors, substrate influences and post-depositional alterations. In its early stage, the glauconitization process is consistent with the slow precipitation of a Fe-rich smectite phase, most likely intergrade between nontronite and Fe-montmorillonite end-members, which evolved to a regularly interstratified glauconite-smectite (Gl/S). The Fe-smectite-to-Gl/S transformation is interpreted as a diffusion-controlled reaction, involving sufficient Fe availability in pore water and the constant diffusive transport of seawater K+ and Mg2+ ions towards the substrate. The pelletal glauconite is actually a highly evolved Gl/S consisting almost totally of mica layers, with 0.74 ± 0.05 apfu of K+ in the interlayer, while the Gl/S occurring as replacements of foraminiferal tests contains a mean of 7% of expandable layers in the walls and 16% in the chamber fillings, due to rate-limited ion diffusion.
Analisis Laju Aliran Udara dan Laju Aliran Massa Bahan Bakar Terhadap Beban Pembakaran Sampah pada Incinerator Berbahan Bakar Limbah Oli Bekas

The amount of household waste and B3 from oil machine waste have been increasing along with the increasing of polulation and the number of vehicles. This waste can be used as a source of energy. The aim of this research was to analize the air flow rate and mass flow rate of fuel in the incinerator oil machine waste using a burner furnace by conducting several variations of the experiment with variations in air velocity of 10,4 m/s (B1), 13,4 m/s (B2) and 14,3 m/s (B3) and fuel flow rate of 0,00408 l/s (A1) and 0,00838 l/s (A2) with fuel valve openings 1/2 and 1/4. The test results showed that the highest temperature was 1021,50C in the A2-B3 experiment with 45 minutes and the lowest temperature was obtained in the A1-B1 experiment which was 840,50C at the same time. In the incinerator test, the burning of dry plastic waste weighing 12 kg of waste burns out in 34 minutes with a temperature ratio for the burner furnace which is 780,90C and the incinerator chamber space is 480,70C and the combustion rate is 21,42 kg/hour. the yield of residual combustion is 9,32% and the incinerator combustion eficiency is 90,68% and for dry leaf waste weighing 8 kg the waste is burnt out in 20 minutes with a burner furnace temperature ratio of 712,30C and incinerator chamber space of 443, 20C and the combustion rate of 24,24 kg / hour and the yield of combustion residue is 96,94%.
Design and evaluation of postural interactions between users and a listening virtual agent during a simulated job interview

Postural interaction is of major importance during job interviews. While several prototypes enable users to rehearse for public speaking tasks and job interviews, few of these prototypes support subtle bodily interactions between the user and a virtual agent playing the role of an interviewer. The design of our system is informed by a multimodal corpus that was previously collected. In this paper, we explain how we were inspired by these video recordings of human interviewers to build a library of motion‐captured movements that interviewers are most likely to display. We designed a fully automatic interactive virtual agent able to display these movements in response to the bodily movements of the user. Thirty‐two participants presented themselves to this virtual agent during a simulated job interview. We focused on the self‐presentation task of the job interview, the virtual agent being listening. Participants stood on a force platform that recorded the displacements of their center of pressure to assess the postural impact of our design. We also collected video recordings of their movements and computed the contraction index and the quantity of motion of their bodies. We explain the different hypotheses that we made concerning (1) the comparison between the performance of participants with human interviewers and the performance of participants with virtual interviewers, (2) the comparison between mirror and random postural behaviors displayed by a female versus a male virtual interviewer, and (3) the correlation between the participants' performance and their personality traits. Our results suggest that users perceive the simulated self‐presentation task with the virtual interviewer as threatening and as difficult as the presentation task with the human interviewers. Furthermore, when users interact with a virtual interviewer that mirrors their postures, these users perceive the interviewer as being affiliative. Finally, a correlation analysis showed that personality traits had a significant relation to the postural behaviors and performance of the users during their presentation.
Conditions of the Central-Limit Theorem Are Rarely Satisfied in Empirical Psychological Studies

Data obtained in empirical Psychological studies are almost always analyzed with statistical tests. Many of these statistical tests assume that the distribution of the data is normally distributed. In Psychology, it is often assumed that this property is satisfied because of the Central-limit Theorem. This theorem says that variables always take the form of a normal distribution whenever they are averages computed from a sufficient number of other variables that have been randomly-sampled from an arbitrary distribution, or from a set of arbitrary distributions. I show, however, that conditions of the Central-limit Theorem are rarely satisfied in empirical Psychological studies, and the assumption of a normal distribution cannot depend on the Central-limit theorem. This study explains how the conditions are violated and it describes computer simulations that test how this violation affects the interpretation of experimental results.
Revisiting the effect of PCR replication and sequencing depth on biodiversity metrics in environmental DNA metabarcoding

Abstract Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is an increasingly popular tool for measuring and cataloguing biodiversity. Because the environments and substrates in which DNA is preserved differ considerably, eDNA research often requires bespoke approaches to generating eDNA data. Here, we explore how two experimental choices in eDNA study design—the number of PCR replicates and the depth of sequencing of PCR replicates—influence the composition and consistency of taxa recovered from eDNA extracts. We perform 24 PCR replicates from each of six soil samples using two of the most common metabarcodes for Fungi and Viridiplantae (ITS1 and ITS2), and sequence each replicate to an average depth of ~84,000 reads. We find that PCR replicates are broadly consistent in composition and relative abundance of dominant taxa, but that low abundance taxa are often unique to one or a few PCR replicates. Taxa observed in one out of 24 PCR replicates make up 21–29% of the total taxa detected. We also observe that sequencing depth or rarefaction influences alpha diversity and beta diversity estimates. Read sampling depth influences local contribution to beta diversity, placement in ordinations, and beta dispersion in ordinations. Our results suggest that, because common taxa drive some alpha diversity estimates, few PCR replicates and low read sampling depths may be sufficient for many biological applications of eDNA metabarcoding. However, because rare taxa are recovered stochastically, eDNA metabarcoding may never fully recover the true amplifiable alpha diversity in an eDNA extract. Rare taxa drive PCR replicate outliers of alpha and beta diversity and lead to dispersion differences at different read sampling depths. We conclude that researchers should consider the complexity and unevenness of a community when choosing analytical approaches, read sampling depths, and filtering thresholds to arrive at stable estimates.
Direct and Joint Effects of Genotype, Defoliation and Crop Density on the Yield of Three Inbred Maize Lines

The aim of this study was to observe direct and joint effects of three factors (genotypes, ecological environmental conditions and the applied crop density) on the level of defoliation intensity and yield. Three inbred lines (G) of maize (G1–L217RfC, G2–L335/99 and G3–L76B004) were used in the study. The trials were performed in two years (Y) (Y1 = 2016 and Y2 = 2017) and in two locations (L) (L1 and L2) under four ecological conditions of the year–location interaction (E1–E4) and in two densities (D1 and D2) (50,000 and 65,000 plants ha−1). Prior to tasselling, the following five treatments of detasseling and defoliation (T) were applied: T1—control, no leaf removal only detasseling, T2–T5—removal of tassels and top leaves (from one to four top leaves). The defoliation treatments had the most pronounced effect on the yield reduction in G1 (T1–Tn+1… T5), p < 0.05. The ecological conditions on yield variability were expressed under poor weather conditions (E3 and E4), while lower densities were less favorable for the application of defoliation treatments. The result of joint effects of factors was the lowest grain yield (896 kg/ha) in G3 in the variant E3D1 for T2 and the highest grain yield (11,389 kg/ha) in G3 in the variant E2D2 for T1. The smallest effect of the defoliation treatment was on the kernel row number (KRN).
Berberis vulgaris aqueous extract prevention of carbon tetrachloride induced hepatotoxicity and lipopolysaccharides/paracetamol induced hepatitis in rats

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of Berberis vulgaris water extract (BWE) against CCl4-induced hepatotoxicity and LPS/PCM induced- hepatic inflammation in the experimental animal models. CCl4 (100 ug/kg, oral) administration for 28 days as well as the co-administration of LPS (250 ug/kg bw) and PCM (2 g/kg bw) for 28 days resulted in massive elevation in serum and hepatic prooxidants and inflammatory parameters (thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), tissue tumor necrosis factor–alpha (TNF-α), interleukin 6 (IL-6) and IL-12 and nitric oxide (NO) with depletion in antioxidants system (superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx). These alterations were combined with elevation of serum liver function tests (alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate transaminase (AST) and alkaline phosphatase level and (ALP). Oral administration of the BWE (100 mg/kg) for 15 days showed hepatoprotective and anti-inflammatory effects against both CCl4 and LPS/PCM as it increased the activities of antioxidants enzymes, decreased the prooxidants and inflammatory markers levels and improved the serum liver function tests levels. The obtained findings thus suggest that B. vulgaris aqueous extract has protective roles against hepatic toxicity and hepatic inflammation due to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Key words: Carbon tetrachloride, paracetamol, lipopolysaccharide, glutathione peroxidase, alanine transferase.
Roles of the Rocky Mountains in the Atlantic and Pacific Meridional Overturning Circulations

The effect of the Rocky Mountains (RM) on meridional overturning circulations (MOCs) is investigated using a fully coupled climate model. Located between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the RM is the major mountains in North America. It presence plays an important role in atmospheric moisture transport between the two oceans. Adding the RM to a flat global continent (OnlyRocky) leads to a weakening of the atmospheric moisture transport from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic, which is consistent with previous finding. However, the simulation also shows more atmospheric moisture is transported from the tropical Pacific and Atlantic to the North Atlantic. The net effect of moisture transport leads to a slight freshening of the North Atlantic. The Atlantic MOC (AMOC) is hardly changed, but the Pacific MOC (PMOC) declines by 40% due to more moisture retained in the North Pacific. The sensitivity experiment of removing the RM from a realistic global topography (NoRocky) gives roughly opposite atmospheric changes to the OnlyRocky experiment. The AMOC in NoRocky declines slightly and then recovers, while the PMOC is nearly unchanged. The paired experiments conducted in this study demonstrate that the presence of the RM plays a trivial role in Northern Hemisphere deep-water formation.
EFFECT OF NITROGEN AND BIOFERTILIZATION, SEAWEED EXTRACT AND THIAMINE ON GROWTH, YIELD AND ESSENTIAL OIL OF PARSLEY PLANT

Corresponding author: M.A.H. Mahmoud mmahmohamed@gmail.com ABSTRACT: A field experiment was carried out to study the effect of reducing the recommended dose of mineral N fertilizer on parsley (Petroselinum sativum, Hoffm.) plants. To achieve this aim, some biostimulants commercial product (Minia azotein) which contain N fixing bacteria, seaweeds extract at 100 and 200 ppm and thiamine (Vit. B1) at 100 and 200 ppm, separately or in combinations were used. Results revealed that mineral N at 50 to 75% + Minia azotein significantly stimulated the vegetative growth traits, yield components, essential oil content, photosynthetic pigments and N % relatively to control plants (recommended dose of mineral N). Using mineral N fertilizer at 25% and Minia azotein significantly reduced the above-mentioned characters compared to check treatment. All treatments of seaweeds extract and/or thiamine (Vit. B1) significantly augmented the vegetative growth parameters, yield components, essential oil photosynthetic pigments and N % compared with control plants. The most effective treatment was seaweeds extract and Vit. B1 both at 200 ppm. The best results with regard to the herb dry and, fruit weight and essential oil productivity were obtained as a result of using N fertilizer at 50% plus Minia azotein in combinations with seaweeds extract + Vit. B1 each at 200 ppm.
Analysis of patients (pts) with in-transit metastases treated with nivolumab (NIVO) or ipilimumab (IPI) in CheckMate 238.

9569 Background: In the phase 3 CheckMate 238 study, NIVO has demonstrated improved recurrence-free survival (RFS) and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) vs IPI in pts with resected stage IIIB–C or IV melanoma, which was sustained at the 4-y analysis. Having in-transit metastases/satellites (ITM) is a poor prognostic factor, and pts with ITM are generally omitted from clinical trials. This study was the first and only adjuvant checkpoint inhibitor trial to include pts with ITM. Here, we present post hoc outcomes in this subgroup. Methods: Pts aged ≥15 y with completely resected stage IIIB–C or IV melanoma stratified by stage and tumor PD-L1 status were randomized 1:1 to NIVO (3 mg/kg Q2W; n = 453) or IPI (10 mg/kg Q3W for 4 doses, Q12W thereafter; n = 453) for a maximum of 1 y or until disease recurrence/unacceptable toxicity. Pts with ITM, with or without synchronous nodal involvement, were included. The primary study endpoint was RFS; overall survival (OS) was a secondary endpoint; and DMFS was exploratory. Results: Each of the 2 treatment groups had 164 pts with ITM. Baseline characteristics were generally similar between treatment groups in pts with or without ITM; in pts with ITM vs without ITM, tumor ulceration was less frequent in NIVO-treated pts, and fewer IPI-treated pts had PD-L1 expression ≥5%. RFS and DMFS favored NIVO vs IPI in all ITM subgroups (table). OS was similar to the intention-to-treat (ITT) population with no differences noted between treatment groups or between ITM subgroups. Among pts with or without ITM, dominant metastatic sites were lung and lymph nodes, followed by brain, liver, and soft tissue (in varying order). Similar metastasis patterns were observed in pts with ITM regardless of nodal involvement. Treatment-related adverse events (any grade and grade 3/4) in pts with ITM were similar to those of the ITT population. Conclusions: Results of this post hoc 4-y analysis of CheckMate 238 showed that safety and efficacy were similar in pts with or without ITM, supporting the use of adjuvant NIVO in pts with ITM, regardless of nodal involvement. Clinical trial information: NCT02388906. [Table: see text]
The Role of Brand Image, Food Safety, Awareness, Certification on Halal Food Purchase Intention: An Empirical Study on Indonesian Consumers

The purpose of this study was to determine the factors that influence customer interest in buying halal processed food. We use the voluntary sampling method with 110 respondents who are halal food customers in Indonesia. The data analysis was performed using the SEM-PLS method. The research was conducted for one month by distributing questionnaires directly to respondents. This study to analyze brand image, perceived quality, perceived value, halal certification, health, halal awareness, and halal marketing as factors that influence customers' halal purchase intentions. The results showed that halal awareness, brand image, halal certification, health reasons, and perceived value have a positive and significant effect on purchase intention.