Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consumer involvement in financial services: An empirical test of two measures

This study reports an empirical test of two involvement scales: Zaichkowsky’s personal involve‐ment inventory (PII) and Kapferer and Laurent’s consumer involve‐ment profile (CIP). The purpose of this study is to identify whether these two scales are applicable to financial services. Eight financial services are investigated: the use of a cheque book, overdraft facility, the use of Switch services, the use of a cash machine, savings account, investment services, mortgage services, and personal loan. The empirical findings show that the two scales indicate different levels of involvement in the eight financial services. The PII measure indicates that mortgage, investment and cash machine use are high involvement services. The use of savings account, personal loan, a chequebook, overdraft facility, and Switch services are found to be medium involvement services. The CIP shows that investment, mortgage, and savings accounts are rated as high involve‐ment services. Personal loans, overdraft facilities, Switch card, cash machine, and chequebook usage are in the middle range of involvement. Being a multidimen‐sional scale, the CIP provides more data about involvement. More investigation is needed in order to understand the links between consumer involvement in financial services and customer behaviour. The authors conclude with recom‐mendations for further research into consumer involvement in financial services and its effect on bank customer behaviour.
The concept and application of life style segmentation.

A NEW dimension for segmenting markets has been developed in recent years. This new method, called life style segmentation, has been useful for marketing and advertising planning. The purpose of this article is to describe the theory behind life style segmentation and discuss how it has been and can be applied. Life style segmentation is the marriage of two concepts into a single system. One of the concepts is life style patterns and the other is market segmentation. In order to discuss the uses of life style segmentation, it is important first to examine briefly each component of the system and then the uses of the total system.
Recognizing the Reliability Non-coherence Components of Bulk Power Systems Based on Reliability Indices Decomposition Method

Reliability non-coherence phenomenon may exist in bulk power systems in some cases due to the effects of some factors on the system reliability. Reliability non-coherence component (RNC) has negative impacts on system economy and reliability, so recognizing the RNCs of power systems can effectively improve the system reliability and capital benefit. This paper proposes reliability indices decomposition (RID) method to recognize the RNCs of bulk power systems. Based on RID method, the reliability of systems with any component out of service can be obtained while computing the reliability of the original system. This method is applied in RBTS and IEEE RTS systems, through comparing RID method with direct method, it is verified that RID method can recognize the RNCs of bulk power systems accurately and save much computation time.
Asymmetric Differences in the Gray Matter Volume and Functional Connections of the Amygdala Are Associated With Clinical Manifestations of Alzheimer’s Disease

Objective Asymmetry is a subtle but pervasive aspect of the human brain, which may be altered in several neuropsychiatric conditions. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have reported that cerebral structural asymmetries are altered in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but most of these studies were conducted at the region-of-interest level. At the functional level, there are few reports of resting-state functional asymmetries based on functional MRI. In this study, we investigated lateral differences in structural volumes and strengths of functional connectivity between individuals with AD and healthy controls (HCs) at the voxel level. Methods Forty-eight patients with AD and 32 matched HCs were assessed. An analysis of voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of gray matter volume was performed at the whole-brain level to explore anatomical cerebral asymmetries in AD. We then performed a seed-to-whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) analysis to reveal FC asymmetries in AD. An asymmetry index (AI) was used to measure these changes, and the relationship between the structural and functional AIs and the clinical symptoms of AD was explored. Results A VBM analysis revealed a rightward and a leftward lateralization in the amygdala and the thalamus, respectively, in patients with AD. FC between the amygdala and the precuneus showed a rightward lateralization in AD, which was the opposite of the lateralization in the HCs. The asymmetric changes in structure and function were associated with disease severity and functional impairment in AD. Conclusion Our study highlights the value of considering asymmetries in the amygdala and the thalamus in clinical evaluations and their relevance to clinical measures.
Professional Oral Care Needs Further Evidence on Health Behaviour Change Outcomes.

Health education approaches provided by oral health professionals are often seen as being ineffective in changing patient behaviour. Especially in periodontal care, conventional oral hygiene instructions frequently have no long-term effect and must thus be repeated. Considerable behavioural research suggests that the root of this common problem can be traced back to a false assumption inherent in the health education approach itself: one assumes that behavioural change is simply a function of the patient having acquired the requisite knowledge or understanding from the given professional, in this case, the practitioner. In contrast to educational approaches, however, more empathic behavioural support such as Motivational Interviewing (MI) is based on a different assumption of human behavioural change. It concludes that mere knowledge itself is insufficient to bring about behavioural change and that motivation to change is elicited from within the patient rather than externally imposed upon the patient by a practitioner. MI has been defined as ‘a client-centred, directive method for enhancing intrinsic motivation to change by exploring and resolving ambivalence’. By eliciting and elaborating upon the patient’s own reasons for change, the motivation for change is intrinsic or internal, rather than externally imposed. Interestingly, soon after MI received attention in both general medical practice and clinical research, the founders, Miller and Rollnick, felt the need to additionally publish an article entitled ‘What is Motivational Interviewing and what is it not? ’ In order to clarify their message to both researchers and clinicians, the authors stated that MI is not: ‘i) the transtheoretical model of change (pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action) as introduced by Prochaska and DiClemente; ii) a way of tricking people into doing what you want them to do; iii) a specific technique; iv) a decisional balance; v) an assessment feedback; vi) a cognitive-behaviour therapy; vii) a client-centred therapy; viii) easy to learn; ix) practice as usual; and x) a panacea’. It is essential for both the clinician and the researcher to know the basic principles of health-behaviour change interventions in order to evaluate Professional Oral Care Needs Further Evidence on Health Behaviour Change Outcomes
Twenty years of research in the Human Nutrition Research Centre, Newcastle University, 1994–2014

The Human Nutrition Research Centre (HNRC) in Newcastle University was established in 1994 as a multidisciplinary, cross-faculty research centre under the direction of Professors John Mathers and Andrew Rugg-Gunn. The remit of the centre was to undertake research into the links between nutrition and health and, in particular, on interventions that could reduce the risk of common non-communicable diseases and so improve public health. Although that remains the central goal, we have expanded our research approaches to take advantage of emerging technologies such as those in nutrigenomics and have major interests in interactions between nutrition and the genome. Innovative methodology is central to advances in all sciences and we have undertaken research on new tools for the measurement of dietary intake that are appropriate for different population groups to span all life stages. In 2008, we were re-designated as a University Research Centre. This article has been written to outline the work that the centre has undertaken to celebrate 20 years of nutrition research in the HNRC.
Significance of the negative exercise test in evaluation of patients with chest pain

Fifty‐three patients with chest pain and a negative exercise test at greater than 85% predicted maximal heart rate underwent coronary arteriography. Twenty‐one patients (40%) had significant luminal narrowing in one or two vessels. No patient had left main disease. Pathologic electrocardiographic Q waves were present in only coronary heart disease patients (p < 0.001). There was no difference (p > 0.05) in prevalence of T wave abnormalities, chest pain or ventricular beats during exercise in patients with or without coronary disease. Analysis of sex distribution revealed that typical angina pectoris was uncommon in the women (p < 0.001) and all twenty‐one coronary patients were men (p < 0.001). We conclude that in patients with chest pain and a negative exercise test, three vessel or left main coronary artery disease is unlikely. Also, women with atypical chest pain and a negative exercise test are unlikely to have a fixed coronary obstruction.
Clustering Corporate Brands Based on Social Metrics A Case Study of the Cosmetic Brands

Since the Internet provides a space for expressing and sharing Internet users’ ideas or minds, corporate marketers can acquire measurable and actionable insights from the web archives like SNS (Social Network Service). As SNS is widely used to record people ’s daily activities and thoughts, researcher can gather and read people’s mind on SNS through opinion mining or sentiment analysis. In this study we suggest a framework for clustering brand names of cosmetic products using social metrics gathered on the social media Microblog, Twitter. To cluster the brand names, we calculate the distance of paired brand names based on the total number paired brand names mentioned together. These distances are transformed to project the brand names onto a 2dimensional and a 3-dimentional space using MDS (Multi-Dimensional Scaling). After projecting the brand names, we found the clusters of the brand names using k-means clustering and identified the characteristics of each cluster.
THE ANALYSIS OF BANK FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE USING ALTMAN (Z-SCORE) TO PREDICT BANKRUPTCY (Study On Listing And Delisting Bank In Indonesian Stock Exchange)

This research examines whether Altman (Z-Score) is suitable to measure the financial performance of listed and delisted banks in Indonesian Stock Exchange. Altman (Z-Score) is a method to predict a bankruptcy. The type of this research is descriptive research. This research is using documentation method as data collection method. The sampling method is purposive sampling. The samples of this research are consists of, eight listed banks and three delisted banks. There are assumptions about listed companies which have good financial performance, while delisted companies have poor financial performance. Delisting decision on Indonesian Stock Exchange can be caused by the bankruptcy. However, delisting decision is also based on the company decision to be going concern. The research results showed several listed banks were in gray area during observation. It indicated not all of listed banks have good financial performance. The results of Altman-test for delisted banks were in safe area. It indicated that not all delisted banks had poor financial performance. In fact, the reason of several companies to being delisted because of consolidation or expand its business. Keywords: Altman (Z-score), Bank, Listing, Delisting, Financial Performance
Efficient method for counting and tracking of moving objects through region segmentation

Object Counting and Tracking are an integral part of computer-aided surveillance intelligence. In this paper, we propose an Object Counting algorithm based on region segmentation and a tracking method that works on the Kalman Filter to predict the next state of a moving object. We considered people, moving under an overhead camera as our primary targets. As a pre-processing step, we extracted foreground objects using a background subtraction method and optimized those foreground objects using Morphological operations. The counting algorithm works by segmenting the image into regions and analyzing the individual regions to count the moving objects based on certain heuristics. Experiments show that our method can obtain counting accuracy about 89.47% with a decent performance.
Assessing the role of knowledge management capability and environmental dynamism in SMEs

On the path towards open innovation: Assessing the role of knowledge management capability and environmental dynamism in SMEs Isabel Martinez-Conesa, Pedro Soto-Acosta, ELIAS GEORGE CARAYANNIS, Article information: To cite this document: Isabel Martinez-Conesa, Pedro Soto-Acosta, ELIAS GEORGE CARAYANNIS, (2017) "On the path towards open innovation: Assessing the role of knowledge management capability and environmental dynamism in SMEs", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 21 Issue: 3,pp. -, doi: 10.1108/JKM-09-2016-0403 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi. org/10.1108/JKM-09-2016-0403
Immune and Metabolic Signatures of COVID-19 Revealed by Transcriptomics Data Reuse

The current pandemic of coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has affected millions of individuals and caused thousands of deaths worldwide. The pathophysiology of the disease is complex and mostly unknown. Therefore, identifying the molecular mechanisms that promote progression of the disease is critical to overcome this pandemic. To address such issues, recent studies have reported transcriptomic profiles of cells, tissues and fluids from COVID-19 patients that mainly demonstrated activation of humoral immunity, dysregulated type I and III interferon expression, intense innate immune responses and inflammatory signaling. Here, we provide novel perspectives on the pathophysiology of COVID-19 using robust functional approaches to analyze public transcriptome datasets. In addition, we compared the transcriptional signature of COVID-19 patients with individuals infected with SARS-CoV-1 and Influenza A (IAV) viruses. We identified a core transcriptional signature induced by the respiratory viruses in peripheral leukocytes, whereas the absence of significant type I interferon/antiviral responses characterized SARS-CoV-2 infection. We also identified the higher expression of genes involved in metabolic pathways including heme biosynthesis, oxidative phosphorylation and tryptophan metabolism. A BTM-driven meta-analysis of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) from COVID-19 patients showed significant enrichment for neutrophils and chemokines, which were also significant in data from lung tissue of one deceased COVID-19 patient. Importantly, our results indicate higher expression of genes related to oxidative phosphorylation both in peripheral mononuclear leukocytes and BALF, suggesting a critical role for mitochondrial activity during SARS-CoV-2 infection. Collectively, these data point for immunopathological features and targets that can be therapeutically exploited to control COVID-19.
Auditor Downgrades During Financial Distress When the Market is Rational

This paper provides both theoretical and empirical analyses of the relationship between firms' performance and auditor change. The theoretical analysis focuses on the auditor's role as a commitment device not to overstate firms' earnings. We show that even when the investors are fully rational and firms cannot gain from overstatement, firms are more likely to switch to a lower quality auditor during financial distress. This tendency is stronger when firms are less myopic. This paper also discusses empirical evidence from U.S. data, and presents new evidence based on Chinese data.
Robust Downlink Beamforming in Multiuser MISO Cognitive Radio Networks With Imperfect Channel-State Information

This paper studies the problem of robust downlink beamforming design in a multiuser multiple-input-single-output (MISO) cognitive radio network (CR-Net) in which multiple secondary users (SUs) coexist with multiple primary users (PUs) of a single-cell primary radio network (PR-Net). It is assumed that the channel-state information (CSI) for all relevant channels is imperfectly known, and the imperfectness of the CSI is modeled using a Euclidean ball-shaped uncertainty set. Our design objective is to minimize the transmit power of the SU-Transmitter (SU-Tx) while simultaneously achieving a lower bound on the received signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for the SUs and imposing an upper limit on the interference power (IP) at the PUs. The design parameters at the SU-Tx are the beamforming weights, and the proposed methodology to solve the problem is based on the worst-case design scenario through which the performance metrics of the design are immune to variations in the channels. The original problem is a separable homogeneous quadratically constrained quadratic problem (QCQP), which is an NP-hard problem, even for uncertain CSI. We reformulate our original design problem to a relaxed semidefinite program (SDP) and then investigate three different approaches based on convex programming. Finally, simulation results are provided to validate the robustness of the proposed methods.
Effect of essentiale in diabetic subjects with Non - Effect of essentiale in diabetic subjects with Non - Alcoholic fatty liver

Nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) has been reported to be common among subjects with diabetes. However, there are not much therapeutic options for NAFL. In this open labeled clinical trial we studied the effect of Essentiale in diabetic subjects with NAFL. Twenty-eight type 2 diabetic patients attending the out-patient division of M.V. Diabetes Specialities Centre, Chennai and satisfying the inclusion criteria were recruited for the study. High resolution B mode ultrasonography was carried out for diagnosis of NAFL. Liver function markers [Alanine aminotransferase (ALT), Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and Gamma Glutamyl transferase (GGT)] were measured. 22 out of the 28 patients (78.5%) were available for follow up. The mean age of the study subjects was 41±8 years and 50% were males. A significant reduction in all the liver enzymes were observed after Essentiale treatment (baseline vs. six months after treatment: ALT: 54.5± 29.6 IU/L vs. 37.1±18.7 IU/L, p< 0.05, AST: 38.0±18.0 IU/L vs. 27.6±12.4 IU/L, p< 0.05, GGT: 38.7±27.5 IU/L vs. 29.6±13.8 IU/L, p< 0.05). Ultrasound studies revealed that the hepatic echotexture improved after Essentiale treatment in 12/22 (54.5%) of the study subjects, while there was no change in 9/22 (40.9%), and it worsened in only one patient (4.5%). The study results suggest that Essentiale protects and improves liver function in diabetic subjects with NAFL. Prospective, blinded clinical trials are required to confirm these findings.
Social Adjustment of Remitted Bipolar and Unipolar Out-patients

Various areas of social adjustment were compared using the Social Adjustment Scale in 27 remitted bipolars, 24 remitted unipolars and 25 normal controls matched for age and sex. Scores for global adjustment and for social and leisure activities were significantly worse in patients than in controls. The maladjustment in social and leisure activities appeared only in ‘contact with friends' for bipolar patients and ‘diminished social interactions' for unipolar patients. Unipolar patients differed significantly from controls on the items investigating sexual adjustment. In unipolars, social maladjustment seemed to be independent of the course of the disease; in bipolars, it was partly related to the mean number of lifetime episodes and current residual symptoms.
A Structural Equation Investigation of the Pay Satisfaction-Valence Relationship among Salespeople

This study investigates the relationship between salespeople's level of pay, satisfaction with pay, and valence for more pay using structural equation models with unobserved variables. The results suggest that (1) greater satisfaction with pay is associated with lower valences attached to it, (2) those who are most highly paid are most dissatisfied with their pay level, and (3) there is no direct relationship between an individual's income level and the person's valence for more pay.
Activation of CTP:Phosphocholine Cytidylyltransferase α Expression during the S Phase of the Cell Cycle Is Mediated by the Transcription Factor Sp1*

An essential step during cell division is induction of phosphatidylcholine biosynthesis. In this pathway, CTP:phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase α (CTα) plays an important regulatory role. Previous studies (Golfman, L. S., Bakovic, M., and Vance, D. E. (2001) J. Biol. Chem. 276, 43688–43692) demonstrated that CTα mRNA accumulates during S phase in preparation for cellular mitosis. We now demonstrate that increased binding of the transcription factor Sp1 to the proximal promoter of CTα is responsible for increased transcription during the S phase. The Sp1 binding element present in position –67/–62 is essential for activation, and the Sp1 site in position –31/–9 is required to enhance transcription. Inhibition of Sp1 expression by RNA interference abolished the enhanced expression of CTα. Immunoprecipitation studies demonstrated that Sp1 interacts with cyclin E, cyclin A, and cyclin-dependent kinase 2 during the S phase. We conclude that Sp1 binding to the CTα proximal promoter is necessary to enhance transcription during the S phase. This is the first elucidation of a mechanism by which expression of a key enzyme in phospholipid biosynthesis is regulated during the cell cycle.
Audit Firm Tenure and Audit Qualifications in Spain: A Multinomial Approach

The Green Paper on Audit Policy by the European Commission has questioned the current regulatory framework of audit rotation in the European Union and it has encouraged additional research about the effects of long audit firm tenures on independence. Prior research has mostly limited to examine audit qualifications for reasons of going concern with samples of financially distressed firms. Such approach presents limitations in terms of the generalization of results. The approach we propose allows, on the one hand, for the inclusion of all types of audit qualifications in the analysis; while, on the other hand, it takes into account the particularly serious implications of going-concern qualified opinions for both, the auditor and the audited firm. Our results show that auditors seem willing to sacrifice independence in lengthy engagements, but only regarding non-going-concern qualified opinions. This result might have some interesting implications for policy makers, particularly in the current discussion about the necessity of mandatory audit firm rotation. If, as most papers do, we measure auditor independence only through the issuance of going-concern opinions, a mandatory firm rotation rule does not seem to be necessary. However, if all types of qualifications are considered, mandatory firm rotation could increase independence.