Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation the Impact of Capital Adequacy on the Return on Equity of Islamic Banks in Gulf Cooperation Council

The purpose of this study examines the effect of the capital adequacy on the return on equity for the largest 16 Islamic banks in gulf cooperation council in terms of market value, using panel data analysis during the Period (2010-2014) and the effect the size, inflation, and GDP as a control variables, Also to explain how Islamic banks comply with international solvency standards (Basel), and the extent to which those standards with special nature of the Islamic banks and their impact on earnings of these banks. The study data collected from published annual reports for banks The capital adequacy is the main tool to measure the bank’s ability to meet its obligation and liabilities It is a one of the risk exposure scales of banks, such as credit risk, market risk, and operational risk. Islamic banks have special standards issued by the accounting and auditing organization for Islamic financial institutions (AAOIFI) and the council of Islamic financial services board (IFSB). The study found that there is a significant relationship between capital adequacy and return on equity in the absence and in the presence of control variables and the relationship was negative, size has a statistically significant positive effect on the return on equity, inflation has a statistically significant negative effect on the return on equity, GDP has a statistically significant positive effect on the return on equity.
Zebra finch females prefer males with redder bills independent of song rate—a meta-analysis

Male zebra finches display multiple secondary sexual traits such as song and red bill coloration. This color is dependent on carotenoids, which enhance immune function and are antioxidants. A red bill may thus function as an indicator signal. The zebra finch is extensively used in the study of carotenoid-dependent signaling. However, studies of female mate preferences for redder bills show mixed results. Here, we report a meta-analysis of mate-choice studies that reveals that female zebra finches do prefer males with redder bills (r e 0.61), except when there was reduced opportunity for imprinting or when bill color was experimentally manipulated, which both reduced preference for red bills to approximately zero. The latter may either be due to aspects of the experimental design or due to bill color being correlated with another trait such as song rate as was previously suggested. We show, however, in a separate meta-analysis on a different set of studies that the correlation between bill coloration and song rate (r e 0.14) was significantly lower than the r e 0.61 between bill color and attractiveness. We conclude, therefore, that the role of bill coloration in mate choice cannot be solely due to an association with song rate. Thus, we conclude that females do prefer males with redder bills when there was sufficient opportunity for sexual imprinting, but to what extent this is causally related to the bill color remains to be established. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.
A Personal Reflection

Professor Marian Miko lajczyk’s pioneering work on heteroatom chemistry can be found in his numerous literature publications, books, and monographs, and they firmly place him in a world-class ensemble of organosulfur and organophosphorus chemists. His contributions to stereochemical and synthetic main-group chemistry have provided a mechanistic understanding, new reagents, and novel pathways in several important areas of organoelement research. For these special issues of Phosphorus, Sulfur, and Silicon and the Related Elements, I asked Professor Miko lajczyk to personally develop a short list of what he considers to be his most important contributions over his impressive career. His suggestions are below:
Viscosity Arrhenius activation energy and derived partial molar properties in of N,N-dimethylacetamide + 2-ethoxyethanol binary mixtures at temperatures from 298.15 K to 318.15 K.

Calculation of excess properties in N,N-dimethylacetamide + 2-ethoxyethanol binary mixtures at (298.15, 308.15 and 318.15) K from experimental density, viscosity and sound velocity values were presented in previous work. Applications of these experimental values to test different correlation equations as well as their corresponding relative functions were also reported. Considering the quasi-equality between the Arrhenius activation energy Ea and the enthalpy of activation of viscous flow ∆H*, here we can define partial molar activation energy Ea1 and Ea2 for N,N-dimethylacetamide and 2-ethoxyethanol, respectively, along with their individual contribution separately. Correlation between the two Arrhenius parameters of viscosity in all the domains of composition shows the existence of two main distinct behaviours separated by a stabilised structure in a short range of mole fraction in N,N-dimethylacetamide from 0.14 to 0.45. We add that correlation reveals interesting Arrhenius temperature, which is closely related to the vaporisation temperature in the liquid vapour equilibrium.
A Study on the Image Color Preference after the Long-term Visual Operation Condition

The study of image appearance and image color reproduction has gradually shifted from the equipment orientation to the issue of image color preference. Based on the pilot study related to image color preference that published in 2010, this study was developed as a subsequent research. According to the pilot study, the researches about image color preference were mostly conducted in the standard illumination environment in laboratories. The setting was greatly different from not only the daily situations in which consumers watch televisions, computers or mobile devices for more than one to two hours, but also the working requirements of watching images for a long period of time. Do people trend the same image color preferences during or after watching images for a long or short time? Similar questions are worthy to be discussed from a more pragmatic aspect. In this study, we evaluated the image color preference after long-term images watching and conducted the experiments in the normal working conditions. The research design incorporated visual fatigue to evaluate the long-term working stimulations and image color preferences and to suggest the demands of image color preferences and working environments for daily working situations. The study results could be used as reference for researchers in the fields of image color preference, monitor development or industrial design.
Non-communicable respiratory disease in Malawi: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Non-communicable respiratory diseases are important contributors to morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan African countries such as Malawi. Aim To conduct a systematic review of the available literature relating to chronic respiratory disease in Malawi. Methods We conducted a systematic protocol-driven literature search of key scientific databases including Scopus and Medline. Papers were independently assessed for eligibility by two authors and included if they reported objective measures (including self-reported standard symptoms) of chronic respiratory disease and were conducted in Malawi. A meta-analysis of available estimates was then conducted. We re-analysed data from three of these studies in a secondary data analysis to allow for between-study comparisons. Results Our search identified 393 papers of which 17 (5 involving children and 12 involving adults) met the inclusion criteria. Wheeze was the symptom most frequently reported in children in the community (12.1%), hospital (11.2%) and HIV clinic (8.1%) settings. Cough was the symptom most frequently reported by adults in the community (3–18%). Spirometric abnormalities varied substantially between studies. For example, in adults, airflow obstruction varied between 2.3% and 20% and low forced vital capacity (FVC) varied between 2.7% and 52.8%. Conclusion We identified a high burden of chronic respiratory symptoms and abnormal spirometry (particularly low FVC) within paediatric and adult populations in Malawi. The estimates for country-wide burden related to this disease were limited by the heterogeneity of the methods used to assess symptoms and spirometry. There is an urgent need to develop a better understanding of the determinants and natural history of non-communicable respiratory disease across the life-course in Malawi.
Humans as Sensors to Enhance the Built Environment: a Case Study of the Eastern Harbor, Alexandria, Egypt

(Dr. Dina Taha, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, ditaha@alexu.edu.eg) (Eng. Rania Raslan, PhD Candidate, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, rania.raslan@alexu.edu.eg) (Dipl.-Ing Benjamin Bergner, Department of CAD & Planning Methods in Urban Planning and Architecture (CPE), Pfaffenbergstraße 95, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany, bergner.benjamin@t-online.de)
Cover Crop Biomass Production and Water Use in the Central Great Plains

The water-limited environment of the semiarid Central Great Plains may not produce enough cover crop biomass to generate benefits associated with cover crop use in more humid regions. There have been reports that cover crops grown in mixtures produce more biomass with greater water use efficiency than single-species plantings. This study was conducted to determine differences in cover crop biomass production, water use effi- ciency, and residue cover between a mixture and single-species plantings. The study was conducted at Akron, CO, and Sidney, NE, during the 2012 and 2013 growing seasons under both rainfed and irrigated conditions. Water use, biomass, and resi - due cover were measured and water use efficiency was calculated for four single-species cover crops (flax ( Linum usitatissimum L.), oat (Avena sativa L.), pea (Pisum sativum ssp. arvense L. Poir), rapeseed ( Brassica napus L.)) and a 10-species mixture. The mixture did not produce greater biomass nor exhibit greater water use efficiency than the single-species plantings. The slope of the water-limited yield relationship was not significantly greater for the mixture than for single-species plantings. Water- limited yield relationship slopes were in the order of rapeseed < flax < pea < mixture < oat, which was the expected order based on previously published biomass productivity values generated from values of glucose conversion into carbohydrates, protein, or lipids. Residue cover was not generally greater from the mix
Indirectly fluorescently labelled flagellates (IFLF): a tool to estimate the predation on free-living heterotrophic flagellates

A procedure was developed to estimate the direct grazing impact on free-living heterotrophic nanoflagellates (HNF). Cultured flagellates were labelled by feeding on brightly fluorescing bacteria (FLB) and then offered as indirectly fluorescently labelled flagellates (IFLF) to potential predators of HNF. The number of FLB in the predators' food vacuoles could be converted into IFLF uptake and consumption of HNF. This new technique was used to study the HNF-ciliate relationship in the pelagic zone of Lake Constance. Three groups of ciliates were detected as HNF grazers: small representatives of the genus Strobilidium. a small Haltena-Wke ciliate (probably Halteria grandinella) and a Codonelta spJTintinnidium sp. group The ingestion of HNF by these groups of ciliates ranged between 3 and 15,3 and 39, and 3 and 7 HNF ciliate h; respectively. The IFLF method allows the direct determination of ingested flagellate prey in the food vacuoles of their predators. Because indigenous living prey organisms were used, tracer discrimination can be reduced.
Vertical axis hybrid wind turbine design

Wind energy is one of the alternative energy sources that respond positively to both global warming and energy needs, due to the increasing population density and the adverse effects it has brought in recent years. In this study, modification on current design of wind turbines has been demonstrated in order to increase the energy yield obtained from renewable wind energy sources. With the investigation of Turkey’s wind map, a hybrid wind turbine design was carried out. This hybrid design incorporates Savonius and Darrieus type turbines which are used heavily in the literature. The hybrid design was developed to increase the performances of the vertical axis turbines from wind turbine types and to widen their usage areas. The comparison of the hybrid design with the conventional wind turbines were carried out by comparing their performance indexes such as efficiency, torque, and tip-speed ratio.
Local escape of an invasive plant, common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia L.), from above‐ground and below‐ground enemies in its native area

1 The Enemy Release Hypothesis proposes that exotic species gain an advantage in new regions because their natural enemies are lost during invasion; however, enemy release could also occur as a result of much smaller scale movements within an invasive plant's native range, i.e. if it escapes enemies while colonizing new sites. Few studies have considered this possibility, and none has compared escape from multiple guilds of enemies. 2 We studied an invasive North American weed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia (common ragweed), to determine whether it escapes above‐ground or below‐ground enemies at a local scale in its native range. Exotic populations of this plant are known to have escaped above‐ground enemies in Europe. 3 Experimental populations of ragweed isolated from existing populations by just 100 m experienced reduced levels of damage by invertebrate folivores and seed predators; however, there was no clear evidence that this escape led to improved performance. 4 Plants inoculated with unsterilized soil grew better than plants in sterile soil, likely reflecting a need for mycorrhizal colonization. Inoculum from ragweed populations was as beneficial as inoculum from nearby ragweed‐free sites, suggesting only a small initial role for site‐specific pathogens. 5 Performance declined over time when plants were serially inoculated with non‐sterile soil, indicating negative feedback with the soil biota. This feedback was stronger for inocula derived from ragweed populations vs. those from nearby ragweed‐free sites. 6 Seeds buried in ragweed populations were less likely to germinate subsequently than seeds buried in nearby ragweed‐free sites. This difference was not reduced by treatment with fungicide; consequently, the mechanism is unclear. 7 Synthesis. These results indicate that ragweed can escape both above‐ground and below‐ground enemies by dispersing to new sites, resulting in reduced levels of folivory, seed predation, soil feedback and perhaps losses to seed pathogens. Although consequences often may be small, this demonstrates that enemy release can occur for native as well as exotic populations of this species, linking possible mechanisms of local spread with long‐distance invasion.
SemRe-Rank

Automatic Term Extraction (ATE) deals with the extraction of terminology from a domain specific corpus, and has long been an established research area in data and knowledge acquisition. ATE remains a challenging task as it is known that there is no existing ATE methods that can consistently outperform others in any domain. This work adopts a refreshed perspective to this problem: instead of searching for such a ‘one-size-fit-all’ solution that may never exist, we propose to develop generic methods to ‘enhance’ existing ATE methods. We introduce SemRe-Rank, the first method based on this principle, to incorporate semantic relatedness—an often overlooked venue—into an existing ATE method to further improve its performance. SemRe-Rank incorporates word embeddings into a personalised PageRank process to compute ‘semantic importance’ scores for candidate terms from a graph of semantically related words (nodes), which are then used to revise the scores of candidate terms computed by a base ATE algorithm. Extensively evaluated with 13 state-of-the-art base ATE methods on four datasets of diverse nature, it is shown to have achieved widespread improvement over all base methods and across all datasets, with up to 15 percentage points when measured by the Precision in the top ranked K candidate terms (the average for a set of K’s), or up to 28 percentage points in F1 measured at a K that equals to the expected real terms in the candidates (F1 in short). Compared to an alternative approach built on the well-known TextRank algorithm, SemRe-Rank can potentially outperform by up to 8 points in Precision at top K, or up to 17 points in F1.
An assembly rule for functional groups applied to North American soricid communities

In this paper we demonstrate that an assembly rule for functional groups of Australian small mammals also accounts for the structure of soricid assemblages in mesic forests of northeastern North America. In this insectivore guild, functional groups are defined by body size. A null hypothesis of random assembly was rejected, requiring the acceptance of a deterministic alternative hypothesis, such as this assembly rule. The rule was derived empirically for a small mammal community in Australian heathland and was demonstrated to account for the structure of assemblages of small mammals from many heathland and temperate eucalypt forest sites over a range of 16° of latitude in Australia. The Australian assemblages included representatives of three trophic guilds (insectivore, herbivore, granivore-omnivore), representing three separate evolutionary lines. By using functional groups, rather than individual species, the assembly rule has broader application than previous species-specific rules. The rule reflects the use of available resources and demonstrates a high probability that each successive species in an assemblage will be drawn from a different functional group until each group is represented. Where sufficient resources are available the rule repeats. We conclude that assemblages of small mammals examined in Australia and North America follow the same assembly rule as demonstrated by their highly significant departures from randomly-generated assemblages. Additional evidence from Australia, North America, and England indicates that interspecific competition is the most likely mechanism responsible for the observed non-random interactive patterns. The process producing these patterns appears to act through body size in soricid communities, with larger body size conveying a competitive advantage by improving access to higher-quality foraging micro-habitats.
Environmental stress increases the prevalence and intensity of blood parasite infection in the common lizard Lacerta vivipara

Parasites affect the life-histories and fitness of their hosts. It has been demonstrated that the ability of the immune system to cope with parasites partly depends on environmental conditions. In particular, stressful conditions have an immunosuppressive effect and may affect disease resistance. The relationship between environmental stress and parasitism was investigated using a blood parasite of the common lizard Lacerta vivipara. In laboratory cages, density and additional stressors had a significant effect on the intensity of both natural parasitaemia and parasitaemia induced by experimental infection. Four weeks after infection, crowded lizards had three times more parasites than noncrowded lizards. After 1 month of stress treatment, naturally infected lizards had a significantly higher level of plasma corticosterone and a higher parasite load than nonstressed individuals. In seminatural enclosures, stress induced by the habitat quality affected both the natural blood parasite prevalence and the intensity of parasitaemia of the host.
Revisiting Normalized Gradient Descent: Evasion of Saddle Points

The note considers normalized gradient descent (NGD), a natural modification of gradient descent in optimization problems. The work focuses on continuous time descent. The main result provides an upper bound on the time spent by NGD near saddle points. In particular, it is shown that the time required for NGD to escape from the neighborhood of (non-degenerate) saddle points is always "fast" (proportional to the diameter of the neighborhood) and independent of both the dimension of the problem and the conditioning of the Hessian at the saddle point.
Stevia: the genus Stevia.

Stevia rebaudiana is a remarkable South American plant that has become widely used in certain parts of the world as a natural sweetening agent and dietary supplement. Purified extracts of S. rebaudiana have been used as sweeteners and flavor enhancers in the food industry in Japan for over a quarter of a century, and have been found to be up to 300 times sweeter than sucrose.This comprehensive volume provides reviews on the botany, ethnobotany, and chemical constituents of the genus Stevia and examines the chemical synthesis of such compounds as steviol and stevioside. The perceived safety of these compounds has become somewhat controversial in recent years, and a thorough consideration of the pharmacology and biological activity is provided. The final two chapters offer some insight into the various applications of S. rebaudiana extracts and stevioside in Japan and Korea, the two countries with the most extensive use of these food additives at present.Containing numerous up to date references, the book will appeal to a wide segment of the scientific community at all levels, especially those in the fields of natural products, pharmacy, pharmacognosy, plant science, agriculture and the food and beverages industry.
The association between high molecular weight glutenin subunit compositions and the bread-making quality of Chinese and Japanese hexaploid wheats

Variation in the electrophoretic banding patterns of high molecular weight (HMW) glutenin subunits of 274 hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum) varieties from China was examined by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Twenty-seven different major glutenin HMW subunits were identified. Each variety contained 3–5 subunits and 29 different glutenin subunit patterns were segregated. Seventeen alleles were identified based on comparison of subunit mobilities with those previously found for hexaploid wheat. Chinese hexaploid wheats exhibited particular allelic variation in glutenin HMW subunit composition and this variation differed from that found in wheats from Japanese and other countries. Average Glu-1 quality scores of 274 Chinese wheat varieties in the present study have been shown to be higher than that of Japanese wheats. Considerable genetic variation in the HMW glutenin subunit compositions of the Chinese wheats was observed in the present study and previously. Alleles from Chinese hexaploid wheat varieties have not been extensively introduced into Japan and other countries. The present data may indicate possible applications of Chinese germplasm in wheat breeding programs. To improve the wheat quality, genetic variation should be attempted through the introduction of genes of Chinese varieties into varieties in Japan and other countries.