Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mandatory Adoption of IFRS and Analysts’ Forecasts: How Much Does Enforcement Matter?

Differences in countries’ institutional settings are believed to impact on the extent to which benefits can be achieved from the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). We investigate seven proxies that have been used to distinguish between institutional settings, including two self-constructed indexes that focus specifically on auditing and accounting enforcement (AUDIT and ENFORCE). Our measures are developed for 51 countries and three years: 2002 (that is, three years before IFRS were widely adopted in 2005); 2005; and 2008. To assess the merits of the proxies we focus on benefits manifest in firms’ information environments, as reflected in two properties of analysts’ earnings forecasts, namely their accuracy and the dispersion among them. Based on a sample of 357,034 firm-month observations available for 37 of the 51 countries, we find AUDIT and ENFORCE and the more general legal measure ‘rule of law’ of Kaufmann et al. (2010) have the strongest association with these two properties of analysts’ forecasts. We also find that AUDIT and ENFORCE provide additional explanatory power relative to ‘rule of law’. When our proxies and rule of law are included, both our measures are significant but the ‘rule of law’ proxy has explanatory power only in models based on dispersion. Thus we provide evidence of the importance of accounting enforcement in securing favourable capital market outcomes, which has not been demonstrated in the prior literature because researchers commonly use more general legal proxies for enforcement. The new AUDIT and ENFORCE proxies may be more useful than other proxies found in the literature when seeking to distinguish between countries according to the strength of their enforcement of accounting requirements.
Assessing Risk Management: How Effective Is Your Program?

Injuries may occur more often in physical education due to the nature of the activities taught. Because of this, the issue of negligence is an important concern. Risk management is one method physical educators use to decrease the occurrence of injuries and negligence. The purpose of this article is to introduce a Risk Management Inventory that was developed for public school physical educators to measure risk in the areas of equipment and facilities, supervision, instruction, emergency and medical procedures, and administrative behaviors. Learning through observation and modeling, risk management inventory development, and the validity of the Inventory will be discussed.
THE INFLUENCE OF CUSTOMER CENTRIC STRATEGIC APPROACH FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN CFC STANBIC BANK KENYA LIMITED

Businesses are losing money through missed business opportunities because they are unable to quickly and effectively profile customer and prospect data quality issues. This study aimed at finding out the influence of enterprise technology on customer satisfaction at CFC Stanbic bank in Kenya. The study employed a descriptive study design and a target population of 100 staff members of the five branches of this bank in Nairobi Kenya. Data was processed and analyzed using SPSS 21. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, and percentages and inferential statistics such as Correlation analysis presented in tables were used to show the relationship between the different variables. The researcher found enterprise technology to be an important predictor of customer satisfaction. It was concluded that the enterprise technology was considerably important to the bank in tracking the performance of all its products and services and to monitor the traffic of knowledge in its set up. It was recommended that the bank’s needs to regularly train employees on technology application to customers as most of the time technology was outpacing the capability of staff to handle it and this could cause delays in the system and inconvenience the customers.
The Applications of Environmental Technologies in Hotels

ABSTRACT This article investigates the use of environmental technologies in the hotel industry. Data was collected via a series of in-depth, semistructured interviews with hotel professionals. The research findings reveal that the environmental technologies most commonly used in the sampled were light-emitting diode lights, T5 fluorescent tubes, motion sensors, the key-card system, and water-cooled chillers. When not faced with budget or technical constraints, the hotel professionals preferred solar-based renewable energy-related technology, food-waste decomposers, and energy-saving chillers. This study provides a framework for hospitality researchers and practitioners to better understand the use of environmental technologies in the hotel industry. This study offers theoretical and practical implications.
Herausforderungen Lehrender in der Medizin: Ergebnisse einer Umfrage unter Mitgliedern der Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung

Abstract Background:Despitetheincreasinginterestinmedicaleducationinthe German-speaking countries, there is currently no information SorenHuwendiek 1 EckhartG.Hahn 2 availableonthechallengeswhichmedicaleducatorsface.Toaddressthisproblem,wecarriedoutaweb-basedsurveyamongthemembers BurkhardTonshoff 3 oftheAssociationforMedicalEducation(Gesellschaftfurmedizinische ChristophNikendei 4 Ausbildung,GMA). Methods:Acomprehensivesurveywascarriedoutontheneedforfur-therqualifications,expertiseandthegeneralconditionsofmedical 1UniversitatBern,MedizinischeFakultat, educatorsinGermany.Aspartofthisstudy,theeducatorswereasked Institutfurmedizinische tolistthethreemainchallengeswhichtheyfacedandwhichrequired Lehre,AbteilungAssessment urgentimprovement.Theresultswereanalysedbymeansofqualitativecontentanalysis. undEvaluation,Bern,Schweiz Results:Thequestionnairewascompletedby147ofthe373membersontheGMAmailinglist(responserate:39%). Theeducatorsnameda 2UniversitatsklinikumErlangen,Gesellschaftfur totalof346challengesandemphasisedthefollowingareas:limited
Reasoning in the Executive Suite: The Influence of Role/Experience-Based Expertise on Decision Processes of Corporate Executives

This study investigates the effect of high-level executives' professional experience, expertise, and role in a specific functional area such as finance or corporate development on their reasoning processes when making managerial decisions. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and Vice-Presidents of Corporate Development (VPs) in the diversified foods industry were tape recorded as they thought aloud while evaluating four restaurant chains which were candidates for corporate acquisition. The experiment was designed so that these four acquisition candidates varied with respect to key financial and profitability data and such measures of a firm's strategic business position as product concept, markets, distribution channels, labor relations, and managerial expertise and loyalty. The attributes of financial performance and strategic position embedded in the descriptions of candidate firms were validated by an expert panel. The executives also provided rating-scale evaluations of the strategic, financial, and overall desirability of the four candidate firms.The taped thought processes (verbal protocols) were analyzed to determine whether CFOs and VPs differed when evaluating the overall desirability of the acquisition candidates in their use of such lines of reasoning as assessments of the candidate's competitive environment, financial strength, management, operations, and the potential financial, managerial, and operational synergies offered by the proposed acquisition. The probability of generating these assessments during the evaluation process did not appear to be related to expertise based on experience or organizational role.When the protocols were analyzed with respect to specific business issues identified by CFOs and VPs when evaluating acquisition candidates, however, there was a role/experience effect. Overall ratings of candidate-firm desirability were straightforward functions of the executive's ratings of the candidate's strategic position and financial performance. On average, VPs tended to be more optimistic in their evaluations than CFOs.There is modest statistical evidence that VPs and CFOs differ in the emphasis they place on strategic and financial ratings in evaluating a candidate's overall promise. VPs tend to take a balanced view in forming their overall ratings, whereas CFOs place the predominant weight on financial matters.The similarity in lines of reasoning used by CFOs and VPs presents evidence of shared expertise at the corporate level. The difference in the attention that CFOs and VPs place on specific business issues suggests that collectively these different perspectives constitute an adaptive survival mechanism which evolves in successful organizations. The mechanism complements the shared expertise and protects organizations from making flawed strategic decisions. Analyzing these role/experience-based differences has value in developing an understanding of how organizations do and should integrate recommendations from executive officers of various functional areas.
Residential managers' views of the preparedness of residential workers to support children and young people where domestic abuse has featured in their backgrounds - what residential workers need to know.

This paper aims to demonstrate how more detailed information about the prior experience of domestic abuse in the lives of children and young people entering care could improve the future growth and development of those accommodated in Scottish residential child care units. The paper will also explore the level of preparedness residential workers have in assessing risk and supporting children and young people who have experienced domestic abuse and the scope for involving parents as a protective factor.
Driver vs. manager perceptions of commonly used safety practices in commercial motor vehicle operations

This research investigated the perceptions of Commercial Motor Vehicle Operators and Safety Professionals regarding 35 commonly implemented practices used to improve operating safety. Several differences were found in how drivers of different backgrounds rated various practices, and between the drivers and safety managers. These differences were found to be persistent even when combined with measures of safety performance and experience. Managers tended to overvalue (relative to drivers) practices related to hiring, while drivers tended to overvalue (relative to managers) practices related to company support and reward systems. Motor Carriers, insurers, and regulators could consider areas of agreement with respect to high value practices as actionable for increased investment of resources. At the same time, resources allocated toward areas of low perceived value could be reduced.
College students' consumption of credit cards

Purpose – The importance of and viability of the college student cohort for credit card firms and banks are well documented and so are the challenges facing marketers interested in this target market. The first purpose of this paper is to examine college students’ motivation for consuming credit cards and the usefulness of the latter to them. The second purpose relies on marketing scholars’ advice by replicating and then validating an extant scale that measures college students’ decision criteria for credit cards. Specifically, the paper attempts to answer two questions: what is the compelling reason for a college student to want to own and use a credit card? In addition, how important is the credit card to the college student? Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopted the classical multi‐step scale development procedure, which demands that thorough attention is paid to every step of the process. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the reliability and validity of the re.
Thermal analysis of PMSM based on lumped parameter thermal network method

The increase of motor capacity cause the rise of motor internal temperature, the high temperature severely affected performance and reliable operation of motor. Considering influence of the permanent magnet eddy current loss on thermal field of motor, thermal field of PMSM has been analyzed by Lumped Parameter Thermal Network Method(LPTN), the thermal network model of 38 nodes has been established. Finally, the correctness of model is verified by comparison with the analysis results of Finite Element Method(FEM) and temperature test.
Improved Post-Processing for Human Detection in Railroad Surveillance

Foreground detection (FD) has been widely used for moving object detection such as human detection. The practical performance of FD methods varies significantly in different real-world environments. Post-processing methods can improve the effectiveness of FD algorithms by providing high quality foreground masks for further detection. The accuracy of human detection in railroad surveillance is often limited due to occlusion and noise, causing incomplete objects in foreground masks. In this work, we introduce a novel integration step into the post-processing module following FD. We take priori knowledge into account and apply specific rules when combining the labeled components, resulting in significant improvement in the accuracy of human detection.
Optimization of a Laser-Based Proton Source and a New Mechanism of Ion Acceleration

The 3-D particle-in-cell simulations with the code MANDOR demonstrate effective ion acceleration from the interaction of intense ultrashort linearly polarized laser pulses with both ultrathin solid dense foils and low-density targets when the laser energy ranges from several millijoules to tens of joules. The optimum foil thickness and the corresponding maximum energy of the accelerated ions for a given energy of the laser pulse were found. Different mechanisms of ion acceleration, such as target normal sheath acceleration, directed Coulomb explosion, and ponderomotive acceleration, are involved. We discuss the transition from one acceleration regime to another when the target thickness and density and the laser pulse intensity change and show that reducing the target density significantly increases the ion energy. We present some examples of isotope production as a possible application of multimegaelectronvolt proton beams on the joule scale of a laser.
Changing the Culture of Long-Term Care

Abstract “Culture change” the effort to transform long-term care institutions into communities where elders and workers thrive has become a significant part of the national agenda in long-term care. This article addresses the difference between programmatic change and the deep, organizational transformation known as culture change. There is a growing need to distinguish between these types of change in order to establish a clear definition of what it means to transform organizational culture This article explores how institutions can become true home by examining how their espoused values align with their values in action. Most importantly, it emphasizes the need to flatten the traditional hierarchy and involve residents and direct-care workers in planning and implementing changes that empower them as decision makers in their own lives.
Towards a Social Engineering Test Framework

A growing number of hacking attacks use social engineering techniques to exploit the human factor of computer systems. They include versatile sophisticated approaches like reciprocity, authority or manipulation techniques to capitalize on in general positives of humans such as helpfulness. These attacking techniques are used in the private as well as in the business context. In the latter they form a main tool for industrial espionage. While there exist evaluation standards for security critical software and hardware as well as their operational environment, due to our knowledge there is no evaluation standard available in order to evaluate vulnerability of organizations with respect to social engineering. This paper will present a framework to evaluate this kind of vulnerability. This framework includes whitebox as well as blackbox tests. The framework enables organizations to elaborate the level of resistance as well as to identify concrete vulnerabilities. These can be used to implement concrete measures to improve the situation, i.e. the level of
Industrial In‐depth Interviews: Some Considerations for First‐time Users

Opens with the observation that the would‐be interviewer is faced with a daunting task for which the existing literature is not always helpful. Presents a resume of the considerations necessary to begin successful personal interviews. These include: training and preparation, credibility, confidentiality, interview technique, lack of co‐operation, interview accuracy, interviewer bias, reliability and validity and overload. Combines the received wisdom of the literature with sound practical advice.
The Dynamism between Technological and Product Innovation Capabilities in Low-R&D Industries: A Comparative Analysis of Mauritius Textile Firms

It is common knowledge that the nature of products is a crucial determinant of firms’ innovative activities. Thus products which are fairly unchanging in nature and embody low levels of innovations are viewed as being largely the result of process innovation as opposed to product innovation activities. This view is founded on the suggestion that their competitiveness is principally dependent upon shortened production cycles and cost reduction processes both forming the bases for standardization and mass-production. Hence, there seems to be a general consensus that the technological capabilities of firms which manufacture low-RD (2) domestic enterprises and subsidiaries of multinational enterprises. The study shows that, contrary to what is generally accepted, product innovation capabilities are as crucial as process innovation capabilities in the overall development of low-R&D firms’ technological base.
Probability Bracket Notation, Multivariable Systems and Bayesian Networks

Probability Bracket Notation (PBN) is applied to systems of multiple random variables for preliminary study of static Bayesian Networks (BN) and Probabilistic Graphic Models (PGM). The famous Student BN Example is explored to show the local independences and reasoning power of a BN. Software package Elvira is used to graphically display the student BN. Our investigation shows that PBN provides a consistent and convenient alternative to manipulate many expressions related to joint, marginal and conditional probability distributions in static BN.
Prevention of cytomegalovirus disease in solid organ transplant patients: prophylactic versus preemptive therapy.

PURPOSE The advantages and disadvantages of universal prophylaxis and preemptive therapy and current evidence-based recommendations for preventing cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease in solid organ transplant recipients are discussed. SUMMARY Advantages of universal prophylaxis include the ease of implementation, a reduced incidence of CMV disease, and possibly fewer indirect effects of CMV infection. Disadvantages of universal prophylaxis may include prolonged antiviral drug exposure, resistance, toxicity, the development of late-onset CMV disease, and greater drug costs. Advantages of preemptive therapy may include reduced drug exposure and decreased risk for toxicity and resistance. Disadvantages include the logistic demands of laboratory testing, uncertainty about the impact on the indirect effects of CMV disease, and the costs associated with failure to prevent CMV disease. Evidence-based guidelines call for universal prophylaxis for patients at highest risk for CMV disease. Preemptive therapy may be most appropriate for those at a moderate or low risk of CMV. Antiviral drug regimens used for universal prophylaxis depend on the type of organ transplanted and the donor-recipient CMV serostatus. The optimal preemptive drug regimen and laboratory monitoring strategy are unknown. CONCLUSION Selection of a strategy for preventing CMV disease in solid organ transplant patients requires consideration of patient-specific risk factors as well as practical considerations, such as available resources.
Consumer trust in food retailers: conceptual framework and empirical evidence

Purpose – The rising number of food safety scandals during recent years has led to increased uncertainty about food consumption choices. Additionally, new production process technologies, increased attention toward product ingredients, and obesity concerns have affected general levels of trust in food. Consequently, trust is an ever more decisive factor for success in food industry buyer‐seller relationships and, hence, in the retail food market. Although considerable research has investigated trust in organizations, research in the food retailing industry needs further investigation. The aim of this paper is to identify variables related to consumer trust in food retailers. Only when consumer trust in food retailers is understood can retailers effectively apply corresponding strategies to secure long‐term success.Design/methodology/approach – Based on an established model of trust in organizations, the authors developed a questionnaire to test drivers (ability, benevolence, integrity), outcomes (risk tak.
The FOXE1 locus is a major genetic determinant for familial nonmedullary thyroid carcinoma

Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy and nonmedullary thyroid carcinoma (NMTC) represents 90% of all cases. NMTC risk in first‐degree relatives of affected cases is elevated fivefold to ninefold. Familial NMTC (FNMTC) accounts for about 3–7% of all thyroid tumors and is a more aggressive clinical entity than its sporadic counterparts. Linkage analysis on high‐risk families performed a decade ago mapped several susceptibility loci, but did not lead to the identification of high‐penetrance causal germline mutations. More recently, a genome‐wide association study (GWAS) identified common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) affecting the risk of sporadic NMTC. We sought to verify if the newly identified genetic risk factors for NMTC are relevant for FNMTC as well. We genotyped 23 SNPs at 11 candidate loci in 672 subjects belonging to 133 pedigrees with at least two NMTC cases. Statistical analysis was performed using family‐based association tests, modified quasi‐likelihood score and logistic‐normal models. SNPs at 9q22.33 near FOXE1 showed convincing evidence of association with NMTC risk in these high‐risk families. The other tested loci resulted negative. These findings confirm the importance of the SNPs identified by recent GWAS on sporadic NMTC on FNMTC as well. However, the proposed FOXE1 causal variants do not show the strongest association signal. Moreover, mutation screening of the FOXE1 coding sequence in the FNMTC cases did not identify rarer causal variants, suggesting that other yet unidentified variants at this locus are involved in FNMTC etiology.
The impact of government R&D expenditure on Zhejiang business R&D activities

This paper analyzes government BD expenditure acquiring methods,gross scale and structure distribution of Zhejiang busi- nesses,as well as comparing the gap on government RD direct expenditure to businesses between Zhejiang and main regions home and abroad.Furthermore,it reviews the positive relation between government direct expenditure and businesses RD input by themselves, meanwhile it points out current government RD expenditure can stimulate the increasing of enterprises RD input efficiently.Thus the government should offer more direct RD support in order to promote the innovation abilities of enterprises.