Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Three Essays on the Prudential Supervision of the Banking System

This thesis aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the effects of prudential supervision (a component of banking system regulation) on the stability of the banking sector, the soundness of financial institutions and, at a macro-economic level, its impact on domestic credit. The adopted research methods facilitate the integration of heterogeneity at the systemic and individual-agent levels into the analysis. Bayesian estimation techniques are used in the empirical part, whereas the theoretical sections utilize agent-based modeling. The first chapter studies the effects of prudential supervision on domestic credit in 27 EU countries. The results show an increase in supervisory stringency to produce a positive effect on credit in countries with unified supervisory frameworks. The second chapter investigates the effects of prudential supervision coupled with “traditional” regulatory tools on bank resiliency and profits under long-lasting crisis conditions. Taxes are found to be the most efficient tool as they potentiate long-term profitable bank operations and adaptation to the crisis. The third chapter provides a case-study of a complex financial fraud that took place in Moldova in 2011-2015. An agent-based model that replicates the schemes is constructed to study the optimality of the Central Bank’s decision to not intervene. The results show that early intervention wouldn’t necessarily have minimized the financial losses of the banking sector, but that the Central Bank could have improved the outcome of the crisis by intervening when the exposure of the banking sector to the fraudsters was minimal.
Block Diagram of the Proposed HMM-based Distributed TTS System 3 . Proposed HMM-Based Distributed TTS System

In this paper, a hidden Markov model (HMM) based distributed text-to-speech (TTS) system is proposed to synthesize the voices of various speakers in a client-server framework. The proposed system is based on speaker-adaptive training for constructing HMMs corresponding to a target speaker, and its computational complexity is balanced by distributing the processing modules of the TTS system at both the client and server to achieve a real-time operation. In other words, fewer complex operations, such as text inputs and HMM-based speech synthesis, are conducted by the client, while speaker-adaptive training, which is a very complex operation, is assigned to the server. It is shown from performance evaluation that the proposed TTS system operates in real time and provides good synthesized speech quality in terms of intelligibility and similarity.
Voltage‐dependent flickery block of an open cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) channel pore

1 Fast flickery block of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) was studied with cell‐attached and whole‐cell patch‐clamp recordings from mouse NIH3T3 cells stably expressing a mutant CFTR channel, K1250A‐CFTR. This mutant CFTR channel, once open, can stay open for minutes. Within a prolonged opening, the kinetics of fast flickery closures can be readily quantified. 2 Flickering block of K1250A‐CFTR channels was voltage dependent since the open probability within an opening burst decreased as the membrane was hyperpolarized. 3 Mean open time (τo) and mean closed time (τc), obtained from single‐channel kinetic analysis, were corrected for missed events. Our data show that corrected τc was voltage dependent while corrected τo exhibited little voltage dependence. Results from whole‐cell current relaxation upon voltage jump further indicate that τc at a membrane potential of ‐100 mV was at least 10‐fold longer than that at +100 mV. 4 τc, but not τo, was sensitive to external permeant anions. After complete replacement of external Cl− with impermeant anions, τc showed little voltage dependence and approximated a value observed under strong hyperpolarization in the presence of high external permeant anions. These results suggest that the resident time of the blocker is prolonged by conditions (i.e. hyperpolarization or the absence of external permeant anions) that deplete Cl− in the CFTR pore. 5 Results from macroscopic current noise analysis of both wild‐type CFTR and K1250A‐CFTR channels further confirm the voltage dependence and Cl− sensitivity of the fast flickery block observed with single‐channel analysis. 6 We conclude that the voltage dependence of the flickery block in CFTR is mainly due to the voltage‐dependent occupancy of an anion‐binding site in the channel pore by trans‐anions. The blocker acquires a voltage‐dependent off rate through an electrostatic interaction with Cl− in the pore.
Photovoltaic/thermal combi-panels: A review

Since the 1970s a lot of countries has concentrated their attention on photovoltaic panels. A lot of studies and research have been made. Many innovative systems and products have been put forward and their quality evaluated by academics and professionals. A range of theoretical models have been introduced and their appropriateness validated by experimental data. Important design parameters are identified. This article gives a review about photovoltaic/thermal combi-panels and their classification.
Influence of socio-demographics of leisure travellers on service experience equity

Abstract This paper investigates the influence of socio-demographic characteristics of domestic leisure travellers on evaluation of service experience equity in three hotels offering hedonic service in Kaduna city, Nigeria. Data for this research were obtained using 284 questionnaires, and the results of this research indicate a non-existence of an association between educational status and the dimensions of service experience equity while gender, age, marital status, type of occupation, and income level significantly affect at least one dimension in varying proportion. On the overall, income level of leisure travellers has the highest significant main effect on evaluation of service experience equity in the hotels. Moreover, higher income earners tend to show high expectation, and preference for quality, alluring hedonic service.
Preliminary study of thyroid and colon cancers-associated antigens and their cognate autoantibodies as potential cancer biomarkers

Background: Autoantibodies, which are produced against tumor-associated antigens, are potential tumor markers and attract a growing interest for cancer detection, differential diagnostics and prognosis. Objective: To evaluate the diagnostic significance of 40 antigens identified by immunoscreening of cDNA libraries from thyroid and colon cancers by allogenic screening with different tumor types patients’ sera. Method: Plaque-spot serological assay. Results: Increased frequency of antibody response in sera of cancer patients compared with that of healthy donors was shown toward 14 antigens, 8 of which (CG016, BTN3A3, FKBP4, XRCC4, TSGA2, ACTR1A, FXYD3 and CTSH) have revealed exclusively cancer-related serological profile. Conclusion: Allogenic screening of 40 SEREX-antigens with sera from cancer patients and healthy donors allowed us to reveal 14 antigens with potential diagnostic significance. These antigens and their cognate autoantibodies could be considered as valuable targets for further analysis as potential cancer biomarkers.
Creating Community after Disaster: Norm Formation in Post-Hurricane Mitch Resettlements

Hurricane Mitch (1998), one of the most powerful in human history, devastated the small impoverished isthmus nation of Honduras, affecting nearly half the nation’s population and displacing hundreds of thousands. The Roman Catholic cardinal, Oscar Rodriguez, noted that the disaster destroyed 50 years of development efforts in just a few days. Aid flooded in at an unprecedented rate, and the Honduran president promised that the nation would “build back better. ” Indeed, many Hondurans hoped that, with this aid, they could utilize this tragedy as an opportunity to address the issues of poverty and crime that plagued their country. Unfortunately, this has not been most Hondurans’ experience (Ensor 2010). Although the nation’s infrastructure was rebuilt, larger social issues now haunt the small country. Crime is ubiquitous; corruption entangles many institutions, lowering trust in the government; and gang violence has earned the nation the title “homicide CONTeNTs
Strategic Venturing for Entrepreneurs: A New Application of the Socio-Economic Approach to Management

Cantillon originally described entrepreneurship as a practical and functional process of value creation to capture a concrete imagination of the future. Management scholars have identified the two main failure modes of entrepreneurship as an inadequate understanding of the external environment and insufficient capabilities for internal management of the venture. However, there has been limited transfer of research-based knowledge into practice to decrease the high failure rate of new ventures. This study documents a new application of SEAM strategic venturing to simultaneously address both failure modes, as documented in two extended entrepreneurial cases from France and America.
The Enriched Security intends to Cloud Storage and Data Sharing in Assorted Dynamic Groups

Cloud Patrons can fulfill a practical and effective viewpoint for information sharing in the cloud with the appeals of low upkeep and little organization cost. Since the code will be outsourced, we give an efforts to establish safety to the sharing information records. Tragically, because of the relentless change of the enlistment, ensuring the sharing information is a testing errand, especially for an untrusted cloud as a result of the connivance ambush. What's more, to exist arranges, they utilize secure correspondence channels to give the secured key dissemination among the gathering, nevertheless, to have such channel is a strong assumption and is troublesome for practice. In this paper, we propose a protected information sharing arrangement for component people. In the first place, we propose a protected way for key appointment with no sheltered correspondence channels, and the customers can securely get their private keys from social occasion boss. Second, our arrangement can fulfill fine-grained get to control, any customer in the social event can use the source in the cloud and disavowed customers can't get to the cloud again after they are denied. In our strategy, by using polynomial limit, we can fulfill a secured customer denial arrange. Finally, our arrangement can fulfill fine capability, which suggests past customers require not to redesign their private keys for the situation either another customer participates in the social affair or a customer is denied from the get-together.
Inter-Annotator Reliability of Medical Events, Coreferences and Temporal Relations in Clinical Narratives by Annotators with Varying Levels of Clinical Expertise

The manual annotation of clinical narratives is an important step for training and validating the performance of automated systems that utilize these clinical narratives. We build an annotation specification to capture medical events, and coreferences and temporal relations between medical events in clinical text. Unfortunately, the process of clinical data annotation is both time consuming and costly. Many annotation efforts have used physicians to annotate the data. We investigate using annotators that are current students or graduates from diverse clinical backgrounds with varying levels of clinical experience. In spite of this diversity, the annotation agreement across our team of annotators is high; the average inter-annotator kappa statistic for medical events, coreferences, temporal relations, and medical event concept unique identifiers was 0.843, 0.859, 0.833, and 0.806, respectively. We describe methods towards leveraging the annotations to support temporal reasoning with medical events.
The Effect of PCAOB on Auditing Fee

PCAOB conducts the direct supervision for the PCAOB registered accounting firm. Therefore, if an accounting firm is registered with the PCAOB, it will thoroughly manage for their quality management systems. The registered auditor can be expected to have better quality of the audit. This study carried out the analysis using the audit fee which proxies for audit quality. The results of analysis are as follows. After controlling for foreign accounting firms affiliated status, company size, risky assets, leverage, ROA, and market-related variables, PCAOB is a significant explanatory variable for the audit fees. The results of this study support the hypothesis that PCAOB-registered auditors will provide a good audit quality.
Impact of Repatriate’s Knowledge Transfer on Enterprise Performance: The Mediating Effect of Ambidexterity Innovation

Abstract This paper proposes that repatriate’s knowledge transfer is composed of two dimensions: Explicit knowledge transfer and tacit knowledge transfer. The influencing of repatriate’s knowledge transfer on enterprise performance is discussed, and the mediating role of ambidexterity innovation in the above relationships is analyzed. Then, relative assumptions are put forward, and theoretical model is established. Lastly, 156 multinational corporations are selected as study object, and data are collected, bias analysis, descriptive statistic analysis and hierarchical regression analysis are made. The conclusions are got, which are explicit knowledge transfer and tacit knowledge transfer have significant positive effect on exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation, respectively; and explicit knowledge transfer has more effect on exploitative innovation, while tacit knowledge transfer has more effect on exploratory innovation. The findings also indicate that exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation play partial mediation effect on the relationship between explicit knowledge transfer, tacit knowledge transfer and enterprise performance.
Developing a tagset for Pashto part of speech tagging

While building a machine translation system, the embedded part-of-speech (POS) tagger deserves special attention. The ever first tagset discussed here is created in accordance with the EAGLES guidelines. These guidelines were written for the languages of European Union. They can also be applied to Pashto language. This paper presents the creation process of Pashto tagset, which helps in the development of a POS tagger.
Methodology discourses as boundary work in the construction of engineering education

Engineering education research is a new field that emerged in the social sciences over the past 10 years. This analysis of engineering education research demonstrates that methodology discourses have played a central role in the construction and development of the field of engineering education, and that they have done so primarily through boundary work. This article thus contributes to science and technology studies literature by examining the role of methodology discourses in an emerging social science field. I begin with an overview of engineering education research before situating the case within relevant bodies of literature on methodology discourses and boundary work. I then identify two methodology discourses – rigor and methodological diversity – and discuss how they contribute to the construction and development of engineering education research. The article concludes with a discussion of how the findings relate to prior research on methodology discourses and boundary work and implications for future research.
Java Idioms: Code Blocks and Control Flow

It is sometimes desirable to treat a piece of code as an object in order to parameterize an operation, thus abstracting and encapsulating control flow and making it reusable. This paper introduces two idioms that use anonymous local inheritance to implement this behavior. It begins by explaining the concept of code blocks as objects that represent pieces of code and know the context of the method they are created in. Based on this concept, the idioms are presented: A NONYMOUS C OMMAND using delegation to achieve flexibility and A NONYMOUS T EMPLATE M ETHOD employing inheritance. The paper concludes with a practical discussion of how to use the idioms and when to choose which of them
Consequences of butylated hydroxytoluene in the freezing extender on post‐thaw characteristics of stallion spermatozoa in vitro

Ejaculates from six pure Spanish stallions were split, and one subsample frozen in a commercial extender supplemented with the lipid soluble antioxidant butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), while the other subsample served as control. After at least 4 weeks of storage, samples were thawed and post‐thaw sperm quality analysed: sperm motility and kinematics using a CASA system, membrane and acrosome integrity and mitochondrial membrane potential using flow cytometry. The outcome of cryopreservation varied significantly among stallions. However, the supplementation with 1 mm BHT had no significant effect on any of the sperm parameters evaluated post‐thaw.
The use of gamification mechanics to increase employee and user engagement in participative healthcare services: A study of two cases

Purpose Gamification introduces game-like properties into routine service processes to make them more engaging for service employees and users alike. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of gamification mechanics, or game design principles, on user engagement in gamified healthcare services. Design/methodology/approach Through observations, interviews and the study of desk materials, two cases of gamified healthcare services, each using different game mechanics, are analyzed. Findings Gamification mechanics produce four distinct experiential outcomes in patients: challenge, entertainment, social dynamics, and escapism. Patient engagement can be stimulated through these outcomes. However, to fully enjoy the benefits of gamified services, users are often expected to acquire and use new skills. The relative absence of these skills (or difficulties in acquiring them), depending on users’ medical predispositions and age, may defer or negatively moderate the positive effects of gamification on engagement. In the case of progressively decreasing capabilities (e.g. in the case of aging users or users with degenerative diseases, whose physical or mental disabilities may be emphasized by the mechanics), it is recommended that health professionals adapt the mechanics accordingly or search for alternative options to increase patient well-being. Research limitations/implications The study was conducted in healthcare, and caution must be exercised in generalizing the findings to other domains. However, the finding that gamified service users’ disabilities - or the lack of required abilities – may negatively impact the encouraging or engaging effects of the use of gamification appears to be relatively universal. Originality/value This study contributes to service research, specifically in the healthcare domain, by providing insight into employees’ and users’ motivations for using gamified service processes, the experiential impact of gamification mechanics, the individual factors that influence users’ gamified experience and multiple forms of cognitive, emotional and behavioral engagement outcomes. A research agenda is developed.
Maximum Sustainable Throughput Prediction for Large-Scale Data Streaming Systems

In cloud-based stream processing services, the maximum sustainable throughput (MST) is defined as the maximum throughput that a system composed of a fixed number of virtual machines (VMs) can ingest indefinitely. If the incoming data rate exceeds the system’s MST, unprocessed data accumulates, eventually making the system inoperable. Thus, it is important for the service provider to keep the MST always larger than the incoming data rate by allocating a sufficient number of VMs. In this paper, we propose a cost-effective framework to predict MST values for a given number of VMs for stream processing applications with various scalability characteristics. Since it may be difficult to find one prediction model that works well for various stream processing applications, we first train several models using linear regression for each application. We then select the best-fitting model for the target application through the evaluation of extra MST samples. To save cost and time to collect MST samples while achieving high prediction accuracy, we statistically determine the most effective set of VMs within a budget. For evaluation, we use Intel’s Storm benchmarks running on Amazon EC2 cloud. Using up to 128 VMs, experiments show that the models trained by our framework predict MST values with up to 15.8% average prediction error. Further, we evaluate our prediction models with simulation-based elastic VM scheduling for a realistic data streaming workload. Simulation results show that with 20% over-provisioning, our framework is able to achieve less than 0.1% SLA violations for the majority of test applications. We save 36% cost compared to a static VM scheduling that covers the peak workload to achieve the same level of SLA violations.
Influences of motivations and lifestyles on intentions to use smartphone applications

Mobile advertising, influenced by the current growth in smartphone applications, creates new opportunities for the advertising industry. This study identified motivations for the use of smartphone applications as well as lifestyle clusters of users and examined their influences on the relationships between perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude and intentions to use. This research used a face-to-face survey and empirical analyses to investigate key questions about how and why consumers use smartphone applications, illustrating the imperative roles that motivations and lifestyle clusters play in an important advertising context. This study represents a step toward clarifying how different lifestyle clusters influence different relationships between motivations, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude and intentions to use applications as advertising media, offering implications for advertising academics and practitioners.
Real-time Electrocardiogram Monitoring Final Report

An arrhythmia is an irregular heartbeat that occurs when the electrical signals controlling the heart's muscular contractions become malformed. Patients who suffer from these symptoms are often given a Holter monitor to wear, which records electrocardiogram (ECG) data. During a subsequent healthcare provider visit, the patient's ECG data is analyzed, and if an arrhythmia was successfully recorded, the underlying condition can be diagnosed. This project aimed to develop a wearable medical device for real-time arrhythmia detection, which acquires ECG data through a three-lead ECG sensor. It performs ECG signal processing and immediately alerts the patient's health care provider of an arrhythmia via wireless messaging. At the current stage of this project, a common form of arrhythmia known as premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) are identified using the Pan-Tompkins and the wavelet-based Template-Matching algorithms. When three or more consecutive PVCs are detected, the device sends urgent report email to a patient’s health care provider. In the experimental study, the design has been successfully validated using benchmark records from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. A low-cost digital signal processor evaluation kit, the Texas Instruments TMS320C5515 eZdsp USB stick, and an embedded Linux system, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, were chosen to be the hardware platform for this project. This study suggested a viable, low-complexity solution for real-time heart monitoring and arrhythmia detection.