Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating risk reporting practices in Egypt

Traditional financial statements fail to satisfy users' needs for information because they provide only a partial view regarding a company's risk profile. Recently, risk reporting has become the focus of interest. This, however, has not been translated into empirical research that investigates risk reporting in corporate annual reports. This study addresses this gap through examining risk reporting practices in Egypt. The key objectives are to measure the extent of mandatory and voluntary risk reporting, identify the nature of voluntary risk reporting and investigate firm characteristics, corporate governance and ownership structure that could explain variation in risk reporting practices in the annual reports of Egyptian companies. In addition, the study aims to identify factors that may obstruct the presentation of risk reporting in annual reports of Egyptian companies. In the first phase, the annual reports of 106 listed companies for the years 2006/2007 were examined to measure the extent of risk reporting and examine potential determinants of risk reporting. In the second phase, 15 semi-structured interviews were carried out with academics, external auditors, regulators and financial managers to identify factors that may obstruct risk reporting in corporate annual reports. Results indicate a low level of compliance with mandatory risk reporting requirements. Also, results indicate a low extent of voluntary risk reporting with a tendency to report more past and qualitative than future and quantitative risk-related information. It is suggested that competition, role duality, board size, ownership concentration, profitability and auditor type influence the risk reporting practices of Egyptian companies. The study identified accounting practice problems (such as lack of effective profession and enforcement mechanisms), accounting education problems (such as inadequate local accounting textbooks) and the Egyptian culture of secrecy, as key obstacles to the presentation of risk reporting in corporate annual reports.
The Development of a Marine Natural Product-based Antifouling Paint

Problems with tin and copper antifouling compounds have highlighted the need to develop new environmentally friendly antifouling coatings. Bacteria isolated from living surfaces in the marine environment are a promising source of natural antifouling compounds. Four isolates were used to produce extracts that were formulated into ten water-based paints. All but one of the paints showed activity against a test panel of fouling bacteria. Five of the paints were further tested for their ability to inhibit the settlement of barnacle larvae, Balanus amphitrite , and algal spores of Ulva lactuca , and for their ability to inhibit the growth of U. lactuca . Two paints caused a significant decrease in the number of settled barnacles. One paint containing extract of Pseudomonas sp. strain NUDMB50-11, showed excellent activity in all assays. The antifouling chemicals responsible for the activity of the extract were isolated, using bioassay guided fractionation, and their chemical structures determined.
Gene structure and seasonal expression of carp fish prolactin short receptor isoforms

The complex adaptive mechanisms that eurythermal fish have evolved in response to the seasonal changes of the environment include the transduction of the physical parameter variations into neuroendocrine signals. Studies in carp (Cyprinus carpio) have indicated that prolactin (PRL) and growth hormone (GH) expression is associated with acclimatization, suggesting that the pituitary gland is a relevant physiological node in this adaptive process. Also, the distinctive pattern of expression that carp prolactin receptor (PRLr) protein depicts upon seasonal acclimatization supports the hypothesis that PRL and its receptor clearly are involved in the new homeostatic stage that the eurythermal fish needs to survive during the cyclical changes of its habitat. Here, we characterize the first prolactin receptor gene in a teleost and show that its expression is not associated with alternative promoters, unlike in humans and rodents. Using the regulatory region to direct the transcription of green fluorescent protein (GFP) in zebrafish embryos, we mapped the appearance of this hormone receptor during fish development. This is the first report identifying a fish prolactin receptor gene expressing transcript isoforms encoding for short forms of the protein (45 kDa). These have been found in osmoregulatory tissues of the carp and are regulated in connection with the seasonal acclimatization of the fish. J. Cell. Biochem. 100: 970–980, 2007. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Analysis of isolation bandwidth of miniaturized wilkinson power divider

In this paper, the resistor effect on isolation bandwidth of a compact Wilkinson power divider is studied. The discussion is based on an equal modified compact power divider on RO4003, with center frequency of 2.4 GHz. In this compact power divider, stepped impedance interdigital coupling sections were introduced to replace the quarter wavelength impedance transformer of Wilkinson power divider to realize the bandpass filtering capability. The theoretical analysis, simulation and measurement results are also discussed in this paper.
Postponement a Speculation in Electronics Retailing : case studies on Swedish retailers

Problem: Volatility and uncertainly in the supply chain has brought forward different challenges and opportunities for retailers over the years. For consumer electronics retailers in particular, short product life cycles and uncertainty of demand has given rise to different approaches such as postponement and speculation in the retail channel. Postponing different functions in the supply chain can be a source for reduced inventory costs, reduced logistics costs and greater customer satisfaction. As consumer electronics retailers face the uphill challenge of offering increased customization and services to consumers, a loss of focus on the efficiency and costs in the supply chain can be cause for less competitiveness in an already extremely competitive market. Postponement strategies can thus offer consumer electronics retailers a gateway to the conventional speculation approach and thereby reduce the heavy dependence retailers have on forecasting. Purpose: To analyze the postponement/speculation strategies applied by consumer electronics retailers. Method: An inductive approach was undertaken with qualitative interviews and observations held with three consumer electronics retailers located in Sweden. Results: The study shows that postponement activities within manufacturing and logistics processes is yet to be applied to a greater extent by consumer electronics retailers. The retailers tend to still speculate and forecast demand using sales forecasts and projected demand prognoses. The few elements of postponement found, were in the logistics flows and especially in the reverse logistics flow. For the three product categories which were chosen as focus of the study, there were slight deviations found for how the retailers apply postponement and speculation. This was found to related to their procurement and life cycle characteristics The decoupling point was found to be downstream, close to the retailers and hence emphasizing the make-to-stock approach which characterized the product flows in the supply chain. Reasons behind the lack of postponement application were found to be external market conditions and limited market scope of the retailers, making speculation and forward buying economically more justifiable than postponement. Volatility in demand for short life cycled products were dealt with through the use of intermediaries and a moving the material decoupling point somewhat upwards.
Mechanism-based inactivation of human cytochrome P450 1A2 and 3A4 isoenzymes by anti-tumor triazoloacridinone C-1305

Abstract 1. 5-Dimethylaminopropylamino-8-hydroxytriazoloacridinone, C-1305, is a promising anti-tumor therapeutic agent with high activity against several experimental tumors. 2. It was determined to be a potent and selective inhibitor of liver microsomal and human recombinant cytochrome P450 (CYP) 1A2 and 3A4 isoenzymes. Therefore, C-1305 might modulate the effectiveness of other drugs used in multidrug therapy. 3. The objective of this study was to investigate the mechanism of the observed C-1305-mediated inactivation of CYP1A2 and CYP3A4. 4. Our findings indicated that C-1305 produced a time- and concentration-dependent decrease in 7-ethoxycoumarin O-deethylation (CYP1A2, KI = 10.8 ± 2.14 μM) and testosterone 6β-hydroxylation (CYP3A4, KI = 9.1 ± 2.82 μM). The inactivation required the presence of NADPH, was unaffected by a nucleophilic trapping agent (glutathione) and a reactive oxygen species scavenger (catalase), attenuated by a CYP-specific substrate (7-ethoxycoumarin or testosterone), and was not reversed by potassium ferricyanide. The estimated partition ratios of 1086 and 197 were calculated for the inactivation of CYP1A2 and CYP3A4, respectively. 5. In conclusion, C-1305 inhibited human recombinant CYP1A2 and CYP3A4 isoenzymes by mechanism-based inactivation. The obtained knowledge about specific interactions between C-1305 and/or its metabolites, and CYP isoforms would be useful for predicting the possible drug–drug interactions in potent multidrug therapy.
Detecting Malicious Behavior of Android Applications

Android, is an open source platform for mobile devices and covers almost 82% of all smart phone devices in the world. This makes its security issues more prominent, especially in user privacy leakage. We developed an Application for Android-based mobile devices which will check the permissions of all the applications present on the device & simultaneously trace the API calls to detect the Malicious behavior of Android application. This tool has the capability of generating log files of API calls made by an application running on a mobile device. In addition, the dynamic monitoring feature of this application will generate an action when the highly sensitive API will be called by any malicious application. The log file may be effectively utilized in analyzing app’s behavior and intentions, which will prove to be useful in several application domains. For example, this tool may be used in developing malware detection analysis based upon the API call, identifying resource usages in different app components, developing the tool for analyzing the application’s behavior, and constructing efficient mobile anti-malware tools, etc. We proposed a twostep model which combines static and dynamic analysis approaches. During the static analysis, predefined permission sets are used to determine whether an application has potential risks & in dynamic analysis for those suspicious applications we use reverse engineering method to embed monitoring Smali code for those highly sensitive APIs such as sending LOCATION, SMS accessing user device ID, CONTACT, etc.
Efficient tree-based multicast in wormhole-routed 2D meshes

This paper proposes a tree-based routing scheme for multicasting general messages of arbitrary length on 2D mesh networks. The scheme takes into account of the characteristics of the programming interface and constructs a quad-branch multicast (QBM) tree for transmitting the given multicast. To maintain the QBM tree, we will describe how routers can be designed and initialized, and how the multicast message is delivered down the QBM tree. The proposed QBM-tree-based method is shown to perform better than previous approaches and is less sensitive to variations in the system parameters.
Loss of Tff1 Promotes Pro-Inflammatory Phenotype with Increase in the Levels of RORγt+ T Lymphocytes and Il-17 in Mouse Gastric Neoplasia

Background: TFF1 deficiency induces a mucosal pro-inflammatory phenotype that contributes to gastric tumorigenesis in mouse and human. Methods: We utilized the Tff1-KO mouse model to assess the impact of TFF1 loss on immune cells infiltration in the stomach. We used single cell suspension, flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, and quantitative PCR (qPCR) assays. Results: The Tff1-KO gastric mucosa demonstrated high chronic inflammatory scores (score: 3-4) at age 2 months, which exacerbated at age 8 months (score: 4-6). We next used single-cell suspensions for flow cytometry analysis of total leukocytes (CD45+ cells), total T lymphocytes (CD45+CD3+cells), T cell subsets (CD4+, CD8+, and CD3+CD4-CD8-cells), and monocytes/macrophages (CD45+F4/80+cells). The results demonstrated an age-dependent (2 → 8 month age) significant increase of leukocytes (p<0.05), T cells (p<0.05), and monocytes/macrophages (p<0.001) in the gastric mucosa of the Tff1-KO mice, as compared to Tff1-WT. A similar increase was observed in blood samples (p<0.05). Using ionomycin to activate CD4+ splenocytes, the results indicated that Tff1-KO CD4+ splenocytes secreted higher levels of IL-17A (p<0.05 at 2 and p<0.001 at 8 months) and IL-17F (p<0.05 at 2 and 8 months) than Tff1-WT splenocytes. Conversely, Tff1-KO CD8+-cells secreted less IL-17F, but comparable levels of IL-17A. In addition, we detected a significant upregulation of Il-17 mRNA expression in gastric tissues in the Tff1-KO, as compared to Tff1-WT (p<0.001). Conclusions: The results identify TFF1 loss as a major pro-inflammatory step that modulates the tumor microenvironment and immune cell infiltration in the stomach. Furthermore, the data suggest that the increase of IL-17A and IL-17F in Th17 cells, derived from CD4+ T cells, reflects the chronic inflammation in gastric mucosa, whereas the absence of change of IL-17A and decrease of IL-17F in CD8+Tc17 cells suggest loss of cytotoxic function of CD8+Tc17 cells during gastric tumorigenesis of the Tff1-KO mice.
Greenhouse gas budget (CO2, CH4 and N2O) of intensively managed grassland following restoration

The first full greenhouse gas (GHG) flux budget of an intensively managed grassland in Switzerland (Chamau) is presented. The three major trace gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) were measured with the eddy covariance (EC) technique. For CO2 concentrations, an open‐path infrared gas analyzer was used, while N2O and CH4 concentrations were measured with a recently developed continuous‐wave quantum cascade laser absorption spectrometer (QCLAS). We investigated the magnitude of these trace gas emissions after grassland restoration, including ploughing, harrowing, sowing, and fertilization with inorganic and organic fertilizers in 2012. Large peaks of N2O fluxes (20–50 nmol m−2 s−1 compared with a <5 nmol m−2 s−1 background) were observed during thawing of the soil after the winter period and after mineral fertilizer application followed by re‐sowing in the beginning of the summer season. Nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes were controlled by nitrogen input, plant productivity, soil water content and temperature. Management activities led to increased variations of N2O fluxes up to 14 days after the management event as compared with background fluxes measured during periods without management (<5 nmol m−2 s−1). Fluxes of CO2 remained small until full plant development in early summer 2012. In contrast, methane emissions showed only minor variations over time. The annual GHG flux budget was dominated by N2O (48% contribution) and CO2 emissions (44%). CH4 flux contribution to the annual budget was only minor (8%). We conclude that recently developed multi‐species QCLAS in an EC system open new opportunities to determine the temporal variation of N2O and CH4 fluxes, which further allow to quantify annual emissions. With respect to grassland restoration, our study emphasizes the key role of N2O and CO2 losses after ploughing, changing a permanent grassland from a carbon sink to a significant carbon source.
Spoken Instruction-Based One-Shot Object and Action Learning in a Cognitive Robotic Architecture

Learning new knowledge from single instructions and being able to apply it immediately is a highly desirable capability for artificial agents. We provide the first demonstration of spoken instruction-based one-shot object and action learning in a cognitive robotic architecture and discuss the modifications to several architectural components required to enable such fast learning, demonstrating the new capabilities on two different fully autonomous robots.
Three-dimensional instabilities and transition of steady and pulsatile axisymmetric stenotic flows

A straight tube with a smooth axisymmetric constriction is an idealized representation of a stenosed artery. We examine the three-dimensional instabilities and transition to turbulence of steady flow, steady flow plus an oscillatory component, and an idealized vascular pulsatile flow in a tube with a smooth 75 % stenosis using both linear stability analysis and direct numerical simulation. Steady flow undergoes a weak Coanda-type wall attachment and turbulent transition through a subcritical bifurcation, leading to hysteretic behaviour with respect to changes in Reynolds number. The pulsatile flows become unstable through a subcritical period-doubling bifurcation involving alternating tilting of the vortex rings that are ejected from the throat with each pulse. These tilted vortex rings rapidly break down through a self-induction mechanism within the confines of the tube. While the linear instability modes for pulsatile flow have maximum energy well downstream of the stenosis, we have established using direct numerical simulation that breakdown can gradually propagate upstream until it occurs within a few tube diameters of the constriction, in agreement with previous experimental observations. At the Reynolds numbers employed in the present study, transition is localized, with relaminarization occurring further downstream. A non-exhaustive investigation has also been undertaken into the receptivity of the axisymmetric shear layer in the idealized physiological pulsatile flow, with the results suggesting it has localized convective instability over part of the pulse cycle.
Job Training Determinants, R&D and Effects on Firms’ Productivity : evidence from firm-level data in Latin America

For many decades, Latin America followed an import-substitution industrialization (ISI) process. Constant technological developments, complex production processes and stronger international competition put in evidence some workforce fragilities, their lack of skills and capabilities. Enhancing investments in both job training and R&D may be a proper reaction for either the more immediate needs or the medium/long run structural demands, in Latin America. Exploring a firm-level dataset from Chile and Argentina, we estimate the firms’ training decision (standard probit model) and the productivity effects through OLS, treatment-effects model and instrumental variable, using industry and region fixed effects and clustered standard errors. Using OLS, training estimates on firms’ performance are 24% in Chile and 18% in Argentina. Joint investment in training and R&D leads job training to have an effect of 53% in Chile and 22% in Argentina, and R&D a magnitude of 9% in Chile and 5% in Argentina, which seems to evidence a complementarity relationship between these two policies. Although with different magnitudes, conclusions remain consistent using OLS, treatment-effects and IV. Firms’ heterogeneity is also accounted for, estimating a quantile model. JEL Classification: M53, O32, J24, C21, C26,
Polish Psychiatrists and Eugenic Sterilization During the Interwar Period

During the interwar period in Poland, the medical profession (especially psychiatrists) were very much in favor of eugenics and proposed several sterilization bills to the health authority, all of which included involuntary and compulsory sterilization of specified groups of individuals. The bills were rejected and no sterilization law was passed in Poland.
Acoustophoresis in variously shaped liquid droplets

The ability to precisely trap, transport and manipulate micrometre-sized objects, including biological cells, DNA-coated microspheres and microorganisms, is very important in life science studies and biomedical applications. In this study, the acoustic radiation force in an ultrasonic standing wave field is used for micro-objects manipulation, a technique termed as acoustophoresis. Free surfaces of liquid droplets are used as sound reflectors to confine sound waves inside the droplets. Two techniques were developed for precise control of droplet shapes: edge pinning and hydrophilic/hydrophobic interface pinning. For all tested droplet shapes, including circular, annular and rectangular, our experiments show that polymer microparticles can be manipulated by ultrasound and form a variety of patterns, for example, concentric rings and radial lines in an annular droplet. The complexity of the pattern increases with increasing frequency, and the observations are in line with simulation results. The acoustic manipulation technique developed here has the potential to be integrated into a more complex on-chip microfluidic circuit. Especially because our method is well compatible with electrowetting technology, which is a powerful tool for manipulating droplets with free surfaces, the combination of the two methods can provide more versatile manipulation abilities and may bring a wealth of novel applications. In the end, we demonstrate for the first time that acoustophoresis can be used for manipulating Caenorhabditis elegans.
Fuzzy identification and control of a class of nonlinear systems

Two different methods of fuzzy identification of a class of nonlinear systems are discussed in this paper. This is applicable to systems with unknown and partially known mathematical models. The class of systems considered are nonlinear in output but linear in input. In the first method, a gray box model is considered. The nominal values of parameters of the nonlinear system are assumed to be known. The unknown nonlinear function is identified offline by choosing a suitable fuzzy relational model and the parameters of the nonlinear system are updated on-line using recursive least square (RLS) algorithm. In the second method, a block box model is considered. The nonlinear plant is identified on-line by choosing a suitable linear model using RLS in stage-1 and the residual nonlinear part is identified in stage-2 using fuzzy identification. The control input is then calculated based on the identified nonlinear model using weighted one step ahead control method. Numerical examples are given to validate the proposed methods.
Achieving Fit between Learning and Market Orientation: Implications for New Product Performance

Drawing on the learning and market orientation literature, this study examines how responsive and proactive market orientations interact with exploitative and exploratory learning to affect new product performance. Despite advancements in understanding the distinctions between the different types of learning and market orientations, little evidence exists regarding which types of market orientation work best with exploitative or exploratory learning to improve new product performance. Using a sample of 216 high-tech Canadian firms, the authors find that new product performance is elevated only when exploratory learning is bundled with proactive market orientation. New product performance suffered when exploratory learning was complemented with responsive market orientation and when exploitative learning was complemented with proactive market orientation. Implications for marketing theory and practice are discussed.
New product deployment: The moderating influence of economic institutional context

We compare the determinants of new product deployment across transition and nontransition economy environments to show the importance of variance in economic institutional context. We argue that the expected positive relationships of institutional development, resource levels, and competitive pressure to new product deployment all weaken in transition economy contexts. Hypotheses are tested with survey data of over 7,000 firms in 7 industries from 33 countries.