Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Are Discretionary Accruals a Good Measure of Audit Quality

Numerous studies use discretionary accruals (DA) as a proxy of audit quality; yet, there is no conclusive evidence on whether DA are a good proxy for audit quality. To test whether DA are a good measure of audit quality, we examine the association between DA and five measures of audit quality, namely; the likelihood restatement, f4 audit, negative internal control report, going concern opinion, and auditor’s industry specialization. The results show that while there is an association between DA and each of the first three audit quality measures, such an association is absent in the case of each of the last two. These mixed results indicate that DA are not necessarily a good measure of audit quality.
The Evaluation of Cardiac Troponin I Assays Measured Radiometer AQT 90 Flex and ReLIA Analyzers and Determination of Heterophilic Antibody Positivity Rate

Measurement of cardiac troponin I (cTnI) is important for the diagnosis of myocardial infarction and for risk stratification. The aim of this study was to compare the diagnostic performance of AQT90 Flex cTnI and ReLIA cTnI assays as based Vidas Ultra cTnI results, and also determine rate of the heterophilic antibody (HAs) positivity. A total of 246 cTnI and HAs assays were performed from the blood and serum samples. The diagnostic cut-off value for cTnI assays was accepted as 0.01 μg/L, 0.023 ng/mL and 0.15 ng/mL for Vidas Ultra, AQT90Flex and ReLIA analyzers, respectively. Sensitivity, specificity, predictive value of positive and negative test, false positive and negative rate and efficiency were calculated. The sensitivity, negative predictive value, false positivity rate and accuracy of cTnI assay performed on AQT90 Flex analyzer were higher than cTnI assay performed on ReLIA analyzer. However, cTnI assay performed on ReLIA analyzer have higher specificity and false negativity rate as compared to cTnI test performed on AQT90 Flex analyzer. The agreement of cTnI results were calculated using of kappa analysis. The analysis revealed a substantial agreement between cTnI assays performed on Vidas Ultra and AQT90 Flex analyzer (p<0.001, κ=0.618), and fair agreement between cTnI assays performed on Vidas Ultra and ReLIA analyzer (p<0.001, κ=0.373). The positivity rate of HAs was found as 4.87%. The results of the study showed that AQT90Flex cTnI assay has higher sensitivity and accuracy, lower specificity and false negativity rate as compared to ReLIA cTnI assay. However, fairly lower heterophilic antibody positivity rate is found
Moving North or South: Corporate Responses to Rising Health Care Costs in the U.S.

Health care has become a core competitive issue in North America. On the one hand, Americans are worried about the impact of their privately financed system on business interests. On the other hand, Canadians are capitalizing on US problems in an attempt to attract investment away from the United States through their public health insurance system. This paper seeks to evaluate whether these views and actions are justified. This is done by examining, through close dialogue and case study, how the two systems interact with firms' ability to compete. While the findings in this paper do not give empirical backing to those calling for a nationalization of US health care on the basis of competitiveness, our research does suggest that health care reform will be necessary to preserve individual and corporate welfare in the global economy.
A Cue-Integration Scheme for Object Recognition Using Discriminative Accumulation

Robustness is an important property for any object recognition system. A way to increase robustness is by using multiple cues. This thesis proposes a cue-integration scheme for discriminative classifiers. The basic idea is to use one classifier for each cue and combine the outputs of the classifiers. The outputs are combined through weighted summation, which allows different cues to have different influences on the classification. The cue-integration scheme is derived and thoroughly tested. Benchmarking against other methods using multiple cues, a voting scheme and a probabilistic accumulation scheme, shows very good performance for the new cue-integration scheme. However, there is evidence that it might suffer from generalization problems as the number of object classes increases. Based on the last fact a decision tree using the new cue-integration scheme for each decision is proposed. This is also thoroughly tested. As expected, this method does not suffer from generalization problems and benchmarking gives evidence of an overall improved performance. Kombinering av ledtrådar för objektigenkänning genom diskriminativ ackumulering Sammanfattning Det är viktigt för objektigenkännings-system att vara robusta mot oförutsedda variationer i bilder. Ett sätt att göra objektigenkänningen mer robust är att använda flera ledtrådar. Denna rapport presenterar en metod för att kombinera olika ledtrådar för att på så sätt uppnå mer robusta system. Grundidén är att använda en diskriminativ klassificerare för varje ledtråd och sedan kombinera utdata från dessa klassificerare. Utdata kombineras genom viktad addition, vilket innebär att olika ledtrådar har olika inverkan vid klassificeringen. Metoden härleds och testas noggrant. Jämförelse med beslutsträd och probabilistisk ackumulering visar mycket goda resultat för den nya metoden, även om det visar sig att den nya metoden har vissa generaliseringsproblem då antalet klasser ökar. En metod inspirerad av det sista påståendet föreslås, där ackumuleringsmetoden kombineras med ett beslutsträd så att varje binärt beslut görs med hjälp av ackumulering. Denna metod testas också noggrant och det visar sig som förväntat att jämfört med de andra metoderna uppnås genomgående förbättrade resultat.
Endosonographic-guided therapy of pancreatic pseudocysts.

VOLUME 52, NO. 6 (Suppl), 2000 GASTROINTESTINAL ENDOSCOPY S23 EUS is the latest addition to endoscopists’ armamentarium for drainage of pancreatic pseudocysts. The indications for pseudocyst drainage,1 whether performed by radiologic, endoscopic, or surgical means, remain basically unchanged. Symptomatic pseudocysts, infected pseudocysts (i.e., pancreatic abscesses), and enlarging pseudocysts unequivocally require drainage. The necessity of draining pseudocysts based strictly on size has been questioned,2,3 but most authorities recommend that pseudocysts larger than 6 cm in diameter should be drained once their wall has “matured. ” Surgery remains the standard for drainage of pseudocysts against which new methods must be compared. Surgical operations usually consist of a cystgastrostomy, a cystduodenostomy, or a Rouxen-Y-cystjejunostomy. These operative procedures carry a 10% to 30% morbidity rate, a 1% to 5% mortality rate, and a 10% to 20% rate of recurrence.4-6 Radiologic drainage7,8 and endoscopic drainage9-17 compare favorably with this surgical “standard. ”
Remission of advanced uterine leiomyosarcoma with pulmonary metastases with carboplatin and paclitaxel.

A patient who had a high-grade uterine leiomyosarcoma (LMS) with extensive intra-abdominal and pulmonary metastases at the time of diagnosis underwent supracervical hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy and tumor reductive surgery. She then received induction chemotherapy with paclitaxel 135 mg/m2 over 24 h and carboplatin (target AUC = 7.5 mg.ml/min) monthly for seven courses, achieving remission with a small amount of residual disease. The treatment was well tolerated except for peripheral neuropathy. Accordingly, the combination of carboplatin and paclitaxel may be considered in patients with advanced high-grade LMS of the uterus, and this regimen warrants further study in this disease.
The Relationship between Physical Self-Efficacy and Goal-Orientation with Physical Activity Enjoyment in Adolescents

The present study has been conducted with the aim of determining the relationship between physical selfefficacy and goal orientation with physical activity enjoyment in adolescent girls and boys. Participants in this study were 584 adolescent girls and boys (aged 15 on average) from Tehran, Isfahan and Ghazvin provinces of Iran. Measurement tools for the study included Ryckman's physical Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, Duda's Goal Orientation Questionnaire and Motl's Questionnaire of Physical Activity Enjoyment. For data analysis, Pearson's correlation coefficient, multivariate ANOVA and multivariate regression were used (P<0.05). Findings of the study showed positive significant correlation between perceived physical ability, Physical Self-Presentation Confidence, task-orientation, ego-orientation with enjoyment of physical activity. In the micro-scale of physical activity enjoyment, significant difference was observed between girls and boys. Results of multivariate regression showed significance of the model. Findings revealed that by improving physical self-efficacy and goal orientation in adolescents, enjoyment of physical activity can be increased and thus, physical activity boredom can be reduced and finally, increased physical activity enjoyment can be considered a factor in increasing physical activity participation and adherence to it in adolescents.
Tissue temperature monitoring with multiple gradient‐echo imaging sequences

The inherent sensitivity of multiple gradient‐echo sequences to the chemical shift is exploited to rapidly map muscle water frequency shifts caused by ultrasonic heating. The use of multiple echoes is shown to offer several advantages over single gradient‐echo approaches previously proposed for temperature measurement. An increase in the effective bandwidth significantly reduces aliasing problems observed with single gradient‐echo methods in high temperature applications. Of greater significance is the improved immunity to intrascan motion found for multi‐echo versus single echo gradient methods, making the former more attractive for clinical applications. Finally, a sensitivity to the presence of multiple spectral components unavailable with single gradient‐echo methods is obtained.
Detection of tumour infiltration in axonal fibre bundles using diffusion tensor imaging

We present a method for the detection and quantification of white matter infiltration from human brain tumours based on Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). Since white matter destruction alters the local diffusion properties, DTI has the potential to sensitively detect tumour infiltration and to quantify the degree thereof. Here, we consider three tumour patients with gliomas, two with and one without contralateral tumour progress. We use DTI to identify specific fibre systems, where infiltration has to be assessed. On this basis, the problem of arbitrary region of interest definition is solved such that tumour infiltration can be reliably quantified in particular fibre bundles. It is demonstrated at the Corpus Callosum (CC) and the Pyramidal Tract (PT) that fibre bundle infiltration can be well detected by specific visualisation techniques of diffusion tensor data. Infiltration of the CC is quantified by using a reliable method for the determination of diffusion properties inside particular fibre bundles. For an age normalised quantification of white matter infiltration we introduce the Integrity Index, which measures the diffusion anisotropy inside an infiltrated fibre bundle normalised by the diffusion anisotropy in a specific region of healthy fibre tissue. It turns out that the quantification of CC infiltration correlates with contralateral tumour progression and has the potential to serve as a surrogate marker for this process, which is crucial for surgical therapy decisions and intervention planning. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Zastosowanie kontraktów swap w Polsce

Swap is used in practice as a tool for the management of assets and liabilities of companies that may reduce the risk of the contract ie, changes in interest rates, exchange rates, commodity prices or equity prices. At globalized financial market, where the factor of success is possible access to cheaper capital, swaps can effectively optimization this needs
Reintermediation Strategies For Disintermediated Travel Agencies: A Strategic Marketing Perspective

The evolution and advancement of the Internet has disintermediated many 20 th century businesses, in particular traditional travel agencies. Reintermediation strategies for travel agents that result in additional value being delivered to customers need to be sought with the ultimate objective of retaining customers. The research on which this article is based was concerned with the apparent gap in existing research on this topic. Focus group discussions were held and an online survey was conducted with South African travel agents. Eight proposed reintermediation factors were tested for relationship significance to reintermediation and ultimately customer retention. The eight factors consisted of personal interaction, differentiated product, low service fees, product knowledge, high-quality service, coexisting with technology, targeting the leisure segment, and lastly targeting the corporate segment. Five factors proved to be valid reintermediation and customer retention indicators, with personal interaction being the most important and low service fees the least important. Marketing strategies for the purposes of reintermediation and customer retention related to these findings were recommended.
Applied Mathematics and Computation

In this paper, we propose a decoupled variational method for image inpainting in both image domain and transform domain including wavelet domain and Fourier domain. The original image inpainting problem is decoupled as two minimization problems with different energy functionals. One is image denoising with low rank regularization method, i.e., the patch-based weighted nuclear norm minimization (PWNNM). The other is linear combination in image domain or transform domain. An iterative algorithm is then obtained by minimizing the two problems alternatingly. In particular, we derive the variational formulas for PWNNM and reformulate the denoising process into three steps: image decomposition, patch matrix denoising, and image reconstruction. The convergence of the numerical algorithm is proved under some assumptions. The numerical experiments and comparisons on various images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
Intraday Index Predictability and Options Trading Profitability

In this paper we study the intraday dynamics of E-mini S&P 500 index futures and the option trading strategies employing the weekly E-mini S&P 500 index futures options. We make a number of contributions to the literature in the area of intra-day equity index futures return predictability and trading profitability. As far as we know till at present, ours is one of the first studies on intraday implied moments of S&P 500 index futures return using intraday option prices. We use intra-day E-mini S&P500 European-style weekly options data from August 2009 to December 2012 and improve on existing techniques to extract the first four moments of the risk-neutral futures return distribution. Secondly we perform intraday out-of-sample forecasting or prediction, and document the intraday dynamics of the risk-neutral moments. We introduce a novel local autoregression method that allows variable windows in estimating the autoregressive parameters. This is particularly useful in situations when there may be intraday news that cause structural breaks in the otherwise smooth process. It also distinguishes itself from the conventional autoregressive model with predetermined sample lengths. Thirdly, we show profitability in the options trading strategies involving the various risk-neutral moment forecasts, particularly that involving skewness. The positive profitability after transaction costs in skewness trading indicates that the market is not as efficient as thought to be. We also use a novel technique in kurtosis trading that resulted in positive profits before cost, something new in the literature where negative profits were found in kurtosis trading. These results may explain the persistence of intraday trading activities in the market. Our intraday risk-neutral moments also suggest that forecast increases in volatility and skewness lead to an average increase in subsequent return over the next 10 minutes. On the other hand, intraday forecast increase in risk-neutral kurtosis leads to an average decrease in subsequent return. These intraday results appear to be contrary to existing studies using risk-neutral moments over daily intervals. This suggests that intraday price dynamics is different from daily price dynamics.
A Visual Formalism for Computational Tree Logic

The recent advances in computer graphics and multimedia technology provide new means for the visualization of abstract information spaces through the use of multi-dimensional and multi-modal communication channels. In the context of computer-aided verification, this potential can be effectively employed to provide visual notations for mathematical formalisms. We describe a visual system which supports visual presentation and manipulation of temporal sequencing properties expressed in the formalism of computation tree logic. The system enforces a metaphoric transposition of the abstract temporal semantics of the logic onto a concrete visual space through the use of 3D graphics, multiple windowing, color associations, and through the joint and coherent exploitation of both textual and graphic representations. This results in a complex interaction environment supporting syntactic parsing, semantic understanding, and visual editing of temporal expressions.
Piezoelectric PDMS films for power MEMS

We have successfully demonstrated the fabrication of piezoelectric PDMS films utilizing casting, stacking, and micro plasma discharge processes. To realize electromechanical sensitivity, PDMS structures with micrometer-sized cells are implanted with positive and negative charges on the opposite internal surfaces of each cell, which behaves just like a dipole. In the prototype demonstration, multilayer PDMS films with inner cells of 50×50×50 µm3 are fabricated and charged under electric fields up to 40 MV/m. The resulting cellular PDMS films show an elastic modulus of at least 12% lower than solid ones and a piezoelectric coefficient (d33) up to 182 pC/N, which is about 10 times higher than that of common piezoelectric polymers (e.g., PVDF). As such, the demonstrated piezoelectric PDMS films could serve as soft and sensitive electromechanical transducers, which are desired for a variety of sensor and energy har- vesting applications.
Development and Validation of Scales to Measure Capacity Building, Economic Empowerment, and Barriers to Economic Empowerment

To measure capacity building, economic empowerment, and barriers to economic empowerment among youths involved in vocational skills development some scales were designed by the researcher while other scales were used either in their original or modified versions. The paper presents the scales developed by the researcher to measure these variables. Scales measuring the participants’ skills acquisition, economic empowerment, and barriers to economic empowerment were designed by the researcher. Training satisfaction scale was modified to measure the participants’ perception of training received. Self-esteem, perceived control, and personal growth initiative scales were used in their original versions. Using a factorial analysis, the cronbach’s alpha of the developed instruments achieved a reliability level at or above . 70. The developed scales have contributed to knowledge as they can be used to measure future research questions. It is hoped that several research directions could be pursued using the developed scales.
Brain stimulation in psychiatry: methods and magnets, patients and parameters

Purpose of review Electromagnetic brain stimulation is performed in various ways in psychiatric settings for the treatment of a variety of psychiatric disorders. Recent findings Transcranial direct current stimulation is a comparatively simple procedure. The available results warrant optimism regarding the future of this therapeutic approach in psychiatry. Multicentre studies of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation demonstrate a moderate treatment effect in depression. Theta burst stimulation and deep brain repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation represent innovative promising developments. The invasiveness of deep brain stimulation still causes this method to be one of the last resorts, even though promising results in severely disordered patients have been published. Summary In our view, the field of brain stimulation will be rapidly moving forward in the near future and will establish itself as one more of the ‘tools of the trade’ in psychiatric therapeutic practice.
Performance analysis in finite frequency ranges for linear multi-delay systems

This paper studies the problem of performance analysis for linear multi-delay systems in finite frequency domains. Unlike the existing results about the performance analysis for time-delay systems in the entire frequency range, this study is focused on examining the performances of time-delay systems in finite frequency ranges. Based on a further generalization of the strict S-procedure, a sufficient condition for performance analysis of multi-delay systems in a certain frequency range is developed in terms of solutions to a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated via a numerical design example.
Correction to “Stress‐induced volume reduction of isolated pores in wet soil”

[1] This study deals with deformation of small pores in wet soils of relatively high bulk density such as in the final settlement phase of tilled or disturbed soils. Pore deformation was modeled by volume reduction of spherical voids embedded in a homogenous soil matrix. External constant stress and overburden were considered as steady stresses because the change in interaggregate contact stress under overburden is slow compared to the associated strain rate. In contrast, stress due to passage of farm implements was considered as transient because the rate of change of interaggregate stress is comparable with the strain rate. Rheological behavior of the soil matrix under steady and transient stresses was obtained from independent rheological measurements. Experimental data from the literature were used to illustrate the model. Model predictions of relative density compared favorably with experimental data for constant stress application as well as for constant strain rate experiments. Results showed that the rate of densification decreased as the relative density approached unity (complete pore closure) and the relative stress required for driving densification increased exponentially with increasing relative density.