Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new vision for internal audit

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to explore how internal auditing may recover from being one of the corporate governance gatekeepers that failed to prevent the global financial crisis. Design/methodology/approach - – This paper draws on the theory of professions and provides a brief analysis of internal auditing history, ending with an appraisal of contemporary status. Findings - – Internal auditing has not been “fit for purpose” and can be enhanced. Low expectations of internal audit are currently addressed by enhanced guidelines from a number of parties. Internal audit needs to move firmly into the corporate governance space – to audit corporate governance more effectively and to provide more dependable assurance to boards. Practical implications - – The global Institute of Internal Auditors can use recent enhanced internal auditing guidelines as a springboard to regain their lead. Internal audit needs to cut the umbilical cord that ties it to management. The accepted “dual reporting” of internal audit is flawed. Social implications - – Society cedes professional status to an occupational group when it is in society’s best interests to do so. An attribute of a profession is its accent on serving the public interest. It is unsatisfactory that, five years after the global financial crisis broke, the international Standards for internal auditing still do not articulate the correct professional conduct on making external disclosures in the public interest when internal auditors are aware of serious wrongdoing not satisfactorily addressed internally. Originality/value - – This paper comprises a conceptual analysis to challenge the internal audit profession.
Lube: Mitigating Bottlenecks in Wide Area Data Analytics

Over the past decade, we have witnessed exponential growth in the density (petabyte-level) and breadth (across geo-distributed datacenters) of data distribution. It becomes increasingly challenging but imperative to minimize the response times of data analytic queries over multiple geo-distributed datacenters. However, existing scheduling-based solutions have largely been motivated by pre-established mantras (e.g., bandwidth scarcity). Without data-driven insights into performance bottlenecks at runtime, schedulers might blindly assign tasks to workers that are suffering from unidentified bottlenecks. In this paper, we present Lube, a system framework that minimizes query response times by detecting and mitigating bottlenecks at runtime. Lube monitors geodistributed data analytic queries in real-time, detects potential bottlenecks, and mitigates them with a bottleneckaware scheduling policy. Our preliminary experiments on a real-world prototype across Amazon EC2 regions have shown that Lube can detect bottlenecks with over 90% accuracy, and reduce the median query response time by up to 33% compared to Spark’s built-in localitybased scheduler.
Effectiveness at What? The Processes and Impact of Community Involvement in Area-Based Initiatives

Community involvement is seen both as means and as ends in contemporary urban policy, and although increasingly popular with policymakers it is not universally welcomed. Incredulous opponents assert that it does not improve the position of poor people and that it distracts attention from structural inequalities, whereas sceptical believers hold that it boosts social cohesion, and improves the position of powerless groups. The authors provide a framework for understanding these conflicting accounts of the processes and impact of community involvement in area-based initiatives (ABIs). They draw on a review of the relevant literature commissioned by the Home Office. The work is grounded in theories of democracy that claim both developmental and instrumental benefits for participants. A third rationale is found in ‘due process' claims for involvement as a fundamental right. This framework suggests that answering questions about what works in community involvement in ABIs requires an empirical focus on aims, processes, and effects. The evidence shows that believers are justified in being sceptical but optimistic, and that opponents will remain incredulous in the light of weaknesses in the practice and outcomes of community involvement in ABIs. The authors conclude by discussing the implications for policy and future research.
Purchase intention and word of mouth in social apps

Social networking sites are used for both personal and professional interactions. Social apps thrive in the environment provided by social networking sites. Companies are focussing on this market space to promote their products and to identify new sources of revenue generation. The objective of our paper is to identify the factors for purchase decision and word of mouth of virtual and digital goods in social app-based communities. In this paper, we incorporate technology acceptance model, social influence, social app usage, attributes of virtual and digital goods among other constructs. Findings from our research indicate that the social self-image expression is an important determinant of both purchase intention and word of mouth of virtual and digital goods. Social app usage affects purchase intention of virtual and digital goods. Features of social apps and social networking site enabling and enhancing these factors can contribute towards business value from social app-based community.
Monetary Policy: Rules, Targets, and Shocks

The proper conduct of monetary policy is now once again wide open to discussion. An immediate practical controversy concerns the role of central banks in recovery from the world depression. Underlying that debate are some unresolved fundamental issues regarding the responsibilities, goals, targets, and operating procedures of central banks. Monetarism won the hearts and minds of many economists and most central bankers in the 1970s. Now it seems to be losing adherents and influence partly because it is blamed for the severe depression, partly because regulatory, institutional, and technological changes have altered the meanings and velocities of monetary aggregates. Last summer Chairman Volcker and his Federal Reserve colleagues suspended their monetarist targets, to almost universal relief. The severity of the recession, the international debt crisis, and the pace of change in financial structure were all good reasons. It is doubtful, though possible, that money stock targets will regain their previous status. If not, what philosophy of monetary control, what framework for the conduct of policy, will replace them? A host of monetary architects are ready to fill the vacuum. Some would restore the gold standard or make paper money convertible into other commodities. Some would replace intermediate monetary aggregates with other targets: the monetary base, nominal GNP or final sales, total domestic credit, price indexes or their rates of change, exchange rates. Some advocate irrevocable commitment to announced
Highly sensitive FM frequency scavenger integrated in building materials

Due to the abundance of ambient RF (Radio Frequency) energy, considerable research effort has been invested in RF energy scavenging. In this paper, we propose a rectifier which can be embedded into the building materials to provide a sustainable energy source in urban environments. The power will be available through DC sockets with different voltage settings. A highly sensitive and efficient rectifier operating at the FM frequency band is proposed which exhibits favorable impedance matching over a broad low input power range of -50 to -20 dBm (0.01 to 10 μW). Measurement results of input reflection coefficient and rectified output power are provided. An output DC power of around 11 μW is achieved from concurrently rectifying six tones of -20 dBm, providing a viable perpetual energy source for low power applications.
Internet and Democratic Citizenship among the Global Mass Publics: Does Internet Use Increase Political Support for Democracy?*

Abstract This study analyzed public opinion data for the 45 societies from the latest World Values Survey and found that Internet use promotes democratic support in democratic countries but not in authoritarian countries. In advanced democracies, democratic ideas and thoughts are freely produced and disseminated in cyberspace, and Internet users tend to absorb them. On the other hand, this online content is highly controlled by authoritarian governments in non-democratic settings, and Internet users are likely to be exposed to pro-government messages and entertainment, thereby nullifying the democratic utility of Internet use. These different social learning processes result in a global reinforcement effect of Internet use on democratic support. The results confirm that the Internet is a neutral technology and its effect depends on the political environment where it is used.
Keypoint Density based Region Proposal for object detection using rCNN

Recent changes to the topology of regional convolutional neural networks (rCNN) have allowed them to obtain near realtime speeds in image detection. We propose a method for region proposal alternate to selective search which is used in the current state of the art object detection [3] and introduce the fine grained image datasets. In a maritime surveillance setting, it maybe important to not only identify an object approaching your position but also know the type of vessel (e.g., a civilian fishing vessel or an enemy destroyer). Our region proposal technique Keypoint Density Region Proposal (KDRP) is able to achieve levels of performance that are not no worse than selective search at a very high level of significance, while only taking 49% of the time of selective search in the rCNN pipeline.
A Content-Based Spam E-Mail Filtering Approach Using Multilayer Percepton Neural Networks

— Nowadays increased spam e-mails are causing inconvenience to internet users and organizations and are considered as a serious wastage of resources, time, memory, space and efforts. Therefore, it is crucial to have an automatic e-mail classification system for the identification of spam e-mails. Spam mails need to be classified and separated from ham (non-spam) mails as they are the source of financial loss and annoyance for the recipients. The spam e-mail classifier performance can be greatly enhanced with the use of Artificial Neural Network classification. It has capability of learning huge amount of data with high dimensionality in a better way. In this paper, Multilayer Perceptron and Back Propagation Training algorithm is explored where ‘generalized delta’ rule is used for weight adjustments for hidden layers. The Perceptron uses Back Propagation Learning model for calculating its gradient. For fast convergence the learning rate η is changed for every iteration which is proportional to the negative gradient of the instantaneous error with respect to η. To avoid the local minima problem the weights are initialized to small random numbers which are uniformly distributed in the range [ -α/ , + α/ ], where Ni is the number of inputs, and α takes value in (1, 3). In this paper, four Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) Network models are constructed. For testing our model bench mark data drawn from UCI, Machine learning Repository is employed for training the neural network. The results of our MLP model are reasonable in terms of TP rate
Simulation analysis of a three-level NPC based STATCOM combined with TSC on a wind farm

This paper addresses the problem resulted from limited capacity of STATCOM at medium voltage level of 4.16kV and proposes the solution by combining a three-level neutral point clamped (NPC) based STATCOM with TSC. A 6 MW wind farm is constructed in the co-simulation platform between Matlab and PLECS. The simulation results validate the analytical predictions of combing STATCOM and TSC for the reactive power compensation cost effectively.
Career Planning and Development: The Realities in Nigerian Organizations

Abstract: Employees are veritable sources of competitive advantage and planning and developing their careers is beneficial to both the organization and the employees. This study focuses on whether organizations in Nigeria give premium to career planning and development activities; the programmes engaged in and the perceived effectiveness of programmes generally. The investigation, which adopted a cross sectional survey and utilized structured questionnaire and interviews, centred on 10 firms in Rivers State, Nigeria. Data generated were analysed using descriptive statistics, specifically percentages and means, and simple regression. The results indicate that organizations recognize the need to invest in people and do embark on career planning and development programmes but employees do not perceive programmes as overly effective. Also, although firms recognize employees as important assets for organization success, they do not give as much attention to personal needs of employees as they do corporate needs. This is potentially counterproductive. Thus, we recommend the full incorporation of employees needs in career development activities so as to address the issues of employability of employees and long term competitiveness of organizations. Key words: Career planning resources; Career development programmes; Investing in people; Personal needs of employees; Employability; Perceived effectiveness; Nigeria organization
The Tax-Spend Nexus in Nigeria: Evidence from Asymmetric Modeling

This paper examines the relationship government expenditures and revenues in Nigeria by reposing the implicit assumption of a symmetric adjustment process underlying the standard cointegration and error correction model. The study estimates an asymmetric error correction model using the momentum threshold autoregression framework over the period 1961–2012. First, the results suggest that revenues and expenditures are cointegrated and that the adjustment process of the budgetary disequilibrium is asymmetric. Second, in the short-run there is evidence of a bi-directional causal relationship between government revenues and expenditures. Third, the long-run results show that revenues and expenditures respond to budgetary disequilibrium. The asymmetric adjustment reveals that revenues respond only to a worsening budget, and government expenditure respond to a worsening budget than for an improving budget.
Please, Marry Me! An Experimental Study of Risking a Joint Venture

Empirical studies in family economics usually rely on questionnaires, statistical data or panel data. Here we try to study experimentally some crucial aspects of engaging in a marriage. The female partner can end the relationship or suggest one of two forms of joint venture where more labor division makes her more exploitable by her partner. More specifically, the random profit of the joint venture is allocated by ultimatum bargaining in the case of a full engagement whereas marriage bargaining is procedurally fair in the case of a low engagement. Our treatment variables are her and his outside options representing different attitudes to investing in human capital.
Conditional disruption of ubiquitous calpains in the mouse

Ubiquitous μ‐ and m‐calpain proteases are implicated in development and apoptosis. They are heterodimers consisting of 80‐kDa catalytic subunits encoded by capn1 and capn2, respectively, and a common 28‐kDa regulatory subunit encoded by capn4. The regulatory subunit is required to maintain stability and activity of μ‐ and m‐calpains; thus, genetic disruption of capn4 was predicted to eliminate both calpain activities. Germline disruption of capn4 caused embryonic lethality, hampering the use of those mouse models to explore physiological calpain functions. Here we describe a loxP/cre conditional capn4 targeted mouse model that enables tissue‐specific and temporal deletion of calpain activity. Disruption of the floxed capn4 gene using a ubiquitous cytomegalovirus promoter driven Cre recombinase transgene led to midgestation embryonic lethality. Fibroblasts from these embryos lacked detectable regulatory subunit expression, had reduced levels of the μ‐ and m‐calpain catalytic subunits, and had no detectable μ‐ and m‐calpain activities. These defects were corrected with a capn4‐encoding lentivirus. genesis 44:297–303, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Comparison of coseismic near‐field and off‐fault surface deformation patterns of the 1992 Mw 7.3 Landers and 1999 Mw 7.1 Hector Mine earthquakes: Implications for controls on the distribution of surface strain

Subpixel correlation of preevent and postevent air photos reveal the complete near‐field, horizontal surface deformation patterns of the 1992 Mw 7.3 Landers and 1999 Mw 7.1 Hector Mine ruptures. Total surface displacement values for both earthquakes are systematically larger than “on‐fault” displacements from geologic field surveys, indicating significant distributed, inelastic deformation occurred along these ruptures. Comparison of these two data sets shows that 46 ± 10% and 39 ± 22% of the total surface deformation were distributed over fault zones averaging 154 m and 121 m in width for the Landers and Hector Mine events, respectively. Spatial variations of distributed deformation along both ruptures show correlations with the type of near‐surface lithology and degree of fault complexity; larger amounts of distributed shear occur where the rupture propagated through loose unconsolidated sediments and areas of more complex fault structure. These results have basic implications for geologic‐geodetic rate comparisons and probabilistic seismic hazard analysis.
Higher Order Statistics for Multispectral Satellite Data

Satellite Data concisely convey information about positions, sizes and interrelationships between objects. The satellite image losses information due to lack of Acquisition capability of sensor and atmosphere's effect. It is very difficult to extract useful information at intensity level with low SNR, non wavelet segmented schemes losing high frequency contact with results texture is blurred several preprocesses are applied to make textual image clear and segmentation. Unsatisfied results due with lack of directionality with DWT, Here we can implement advance image processing technique for improving texture based features to multispectral satellite image, find discrepancy distribution of observed and normal region using Higher order statistical methods(HOS) like skewness, Kurtosis. The shape of the distribution of intensity levels are examined by HOG. For improving the visualization quality we examine features based on edges, lines and their gradients using Curvelet and Histogram of oriented Gradient (HOG), intensity distribution using Higher order Statistics (HOS).
Vertically stacked Benes networks for crosstalk-free permutation

Crosstalk in optical switching elements (SEs) is one of the major shortcomings in optical switching networks, and avoiding crosstalk is an important issue for proper optical network operation. We propose a new class of optical multistage interconnection networks (MINs)-vertically stacked Benes networks VSB(N, K) that have N inputs (outputs) and consist of K vertically stacked Benes networks. The VSB(N, K) network can support any permutation of an N-element set {0, 1, . , N-1}. Complete algorithms to realize crosstalk-free permutation in a VSB(N, K) network are the main contributions of this paper.
Oil Price Pass-Through into Domestic Inflation: The Case of Iran

: Review of economic developments in Iran over the past four decades shows that oil revenues have deep and wide impact on economic indicators. The Two channels which oil price changes directly or indirectly affect inflation as the most important Economic variables are: increase in demand (mainly by government public budget and Influencing the components of monetary base and money supply) and increase in production costs (via the price of factors of production). In this regard, the present paper attempts to investigate the nature and causes of oil price pass-through into inflation in the short-and-long term; analysis of the pass-through and in addition design the necessary policies to control its destructive consequences. For this purpose, the Dynamic Error Correction Model was used and the data were collected monthly from 2003/3 to 2013/3. The findings showed that the oil price pass-through into inflation in both short-and-long term were Positive and incomplete. Therefore, it would be useful in policymaking.
Phosphorylation of Phospholemman (FXYD1) by Protein Kinases A and C Modulates Distinct Na,K-ATPase Isozymes*

Phospholemman (FXYD1), mainly expressed in heart and skeletal muscle, is a member of the FXYD protein family, which has been shown to decrease the apparent K+ and Na+ affinity of Na,K-ATPase ( Crambert, G., Fuzesi, M., Garty, H., Karlish, S., and Geering, K. (2002) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 99, 11476-11481 ). In this study, we use the Xenopus oocyte expression system to study the role of phospholemman phosphorylation by protein kinases A and C in the modulation of different Na,K-ATPase isozymes present in the heart. Phosphorylation of phospholemman by protein kinase A has no effect on the maximal transport activity or on the apparent K+ affinity of Na,K-ATPase α1/β1 and α2/β1 isozymes but increases their apparent Na+ affinity, dependent on phospholemman phosphorylation at Ser68. Phosphorylation of phospholemman by protein kinase C affects neither the maximal transport activity of α1/β1 isozymes nor the K+ affinity of α1/β1 and α2/β1 isozymes. However, protein kinase C phosphorylation of phospholemman increases the maximal Na,K-pump current of α2/β1 isozymes by an increase in their turnover number. Thus, our results indicate that protein kinase A phosphorylation of phospholemman has similar functional effects on Na,K-ATPase α1/β and α2/β isozymes and increases their apparent Na+ affinity, whereas protein kinase C phosphorylation of phospholemman modulates the transport activity of Na,K-ATPase α2/β but not of α1/β isozymes. The complex and distinct regulation of Na,K-ATPase isozymes by phosphorylation of phospholemman may be important for the efficient control of heart contractility and excitability.
Stakeholder delight: the next step in TQM

Research has proved that total quality management is crucial to the success of many organizations. This article points out that intensified competition and developments in a turbulent environment necessitate a shift in the quality mindset to also include providing delight to all stakeholders by offering them superior value and satisfaction beyond what is expected. Reasons for the paradigm shift are discussed, requirements for an orientation of stakeholder delight are highlighted and ways of delighting stakeholders are suggested.
Genetic differentiation of Sorbus torminalis in Eastern Europe as determined by microsatellite markers

The genetic variation in fourteen Sorbus torminalis (L.) Crantz. populations distributed over the eastern and south-eastern part of its range was studied using seven nuclear microsatellite loci. The differentiation level was relatively high (FST = 0.228), as expected for a species with a fragmented range. The distance-based approach to the analysis of differentiation patterns (neighbour-joining tree based on pairwise coefficients of differentiation) did not reveal a clear geographical structure. On the other hand, model-based Bayesian methods (BAPS and STRUCTURE) gave geographically continuous clusters of populations. The occurrence of populations deviating strongly from the general pattern is attributed to founder effect. In spite of a generally high differentiation, a significant isolation-by-distance pattern was found, which might be a consequence of postglacial migration and gene flow among descendants of different refugia.