Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparative Analysis of the Performance of Islamic and Conventional Banks: Does Corporate Governance Matter

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of corporate governance (CG) internal structure on the performance of Islamic and conventional banking system in Pakistan. To account for the problem of heteroscedasticity, this study used GLS estimation technique by using a sample of five fully fledged Islamic and 15 conventional banks for the period from 2006 to 2015. The study finds that board size and its composition largely contribute to the Islamic and conventional banking performance. However, board committees have an insignificant relationship with the performance of conventional and Islamic banks that demands further investigation into the structure and powers of the board committees. In short, this study provides evidence that corporate governance does matter for the performance of Islamic and conventional banking. The current findings are useful for the policymakers and regulators to improve the existing governance structure for achieving better performance in the financial sector.
Ethical practice online: An exploration of provider liability risk among practitioners in the emerging field of online therapy

Little attention has been given to liability issues and practitioner vulnerability in the rapidly emerging modality of online therapy. The purpose of this study was to explore ethical issues and identify potential risks of liability faced by mental health professionals in three areas of online practice: qualifications and training, domain of practice, and delivery of services. A sample of 232 online providers who were members of the International Society for Mental Health Online (International Society for Mental Health Online) completed an online survey containing items asking about their online therapy procedures and ethical practice. Descriptive statistics, including frequencies and percentages, were used to examine the distribution and patterns of item responses. In addition, t tests were used to compare responses of the participants grouped by two key online therapist characteristics, gender, and domicile of practice. Results indicated that participants were well qualified to provide mental health services with respect to educational and credential requirements (licensure). Issues of possible liability were uncovered with respect to domain of practice in the virtual world, with a significant number of therapists delivering online services outside their licensed geographical boundaries. Although most online practices were congruent with those of traditional therapy, the majority of providers did not know if their malpractice insurance covered online therapy, putting them at risk in the case of a practice lawsuit. Comparison by gender revealed no differences, and by domicile, little difference suggesting that risk of liability were concerns experienced by online therapists in general. Results of this study will be useful for professional organizations and educational institutions as basis for increasing the level of clarity about ethical practice as well as providing the necessary elements for future trainings, and by regulating bodies to establish consistent standards and develop legal safeguards to guide and protect practitioners in their practice. And finally, information from this study can be used to focus further research on ethical practice in online therapy and provide a baseline for future studies examining the relationship between the ethics and efficacy of online therapy.
Incentives and political economy

Mainstream economics has recognized only recently the necessity to incorporate political constraints into economic analysis intended for policy advisors. Incentives and Political Economy uses recent advances in contract theory to build a normative approach to constitutional design in economic environments. The first part of the book remains in the tradition of benevolent constitutional design with complete contracting. It treats politicians as informed supervisors and studies how the Constitution should control them, in particular to avoid capture by interest groups. Incentive theories for the separation of powers or systems of checks and balances are developed. The second part of the book recognises the incompleteness of the constitutional contract which leaves discretion to the politicans selected by the electoral process. Asymmetric information associates information rents with economic policies and the political game becomes a game of costly redistribution of those rents. Professor Laffont investigates the trade-offs between an inflexible constitution which leaves little discretion to politicians but sacrifices ex post efficiency and a constitution weighted towards ex post efficiency but also giving considerable discretion to politicians to pursue private agendas. The final part of the book reconsiders the modeling of collusion given asymmetric information. It proposes a new approach to characterizing incentives constraints for group behaviour when asymmetric information is non-verifiable. This provides a methodology to characterise the optimal constitutional response to activities of interest groups and to study the design of any institution in which group behavior is important. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship. com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/0199248680/toc.html
An intelligent bearing fault diagnosis system: A review

Rolling element bearing (REB) is a well-known component that most extensively used in the industry. They operate in extreme condition (high temperature, dirty environment) which may lead to unexpected failure after the certain operation. Faulty on bearing cause severe equipment damage, financial loss and threaten people's life. Development of proper fault diagnosis system of REB capable of preventing unexpected failure from occurs and maintain the machine work in the healthy state. Over a few decades, machine learning is introduced to provide a consistent fault diagnosis result. Hence, this paper reviewed the development of bearing diagnosis method using machine learning models.
Laboratory Strategy of the Austrian DNA Intelligence Database

The Austrian DNA Intelligence Database project was installed October 1, 1997. It consists of two components, the executive branch which is located at the ministry of the Interior in Vienna, and the laboratory unit situated at the Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Innsbruck. Reference material of suspected persons is collected by means of buccal scrapes by police officers and sent to the laboratory anonymously. The personal data of the suspected person is administrated at the Ministry of the In-terior exclusively. Each reaction tube containing a buccal scrape is unambiguously characterized by its barcode, which is the only link between the personal data and the obtained DNA profile of the suspected person. Parallel, unidentified casework samples are collected at crime scenes and processed at the laboratory again taking advantage of the barcode technology.
On hostile design: Theoretical and empirical prospects

Instances of ‘hostile design’ appear across urban space, aimed at pushing particular behaviour – and, ultimately, particular people – out of public areas. But notions of hostile design and related concepts require theoretical clarification. Empirical study is also urgently needed on how such designs influence attitudes, behaviours and health, with implications for cities’ approaches to everything from homelessness to heatwave relief. This critical commentary reviews the main examples of hostile design, considers what, at minimum, must be addressed by theoretical accounts of this phenomenon, and identifies empirical research projects that are just waiting to be performed.
Regulating Healthy Gender: Surgical Body Modification among Transgender and Cisgender Consumers

Few bodies consistently portray natural or unaltered forms. Instead, humans inhabit bodies imbued with sociocultural meanings about what is attractive, appropriate, functional, and presentable. As such, embodiment is always gendered. The social, extra-corporeal body is a central locus for expressing gender. Surgical body modifications represent inherently gendered technologies of the body. But psychomedical institutions subject people who seek gendercrossing surgeries to increased surveillance, managing and regulating cross-gender embodiment as disorderly. Using mixed research methods, this research systematically compared transgender and cisgender (non-transgender) people’s experiences before, during, and after surgical body modification. I conducted a content analysis of 445 threads on a message board for an online cisgender surgery community, an analysis of 15 international protocols for transgender-specific surgeries, and 40 in-depth interviews with cisgender and transgender people who had surgery. The content analysis of the online community revealed similar themes among cisgender and transgender surgery users. However, detailed protocols existed only for transgender consumers of surgery. Interview findings showed that transgender and cisgender people reported similar presurgical feelings toward their bodies, similar cosmetic and psychological motivations for surgery, and similar benefits of surgery. For both cisgender and transgender people, surgery enhanced the inner self through improving the outer gendered body. Despite these similar embodied experiences, having a cisgender gender status determined respondents’ abilities to pursue surgery autonomously and with institutional support. Ultimately, this research highlights inequalities that result from gender status and manifest in psychomedical institutions by identifying the psychosocial impacts of provider/consumer or doctor/patient interactions, relating gendered embodiment to regulatory systems of authority, and illuminating policy implications for clinical practice and legal classifications of sex and gender. INDEX WORDS: Transgender, Cisgender, Surgical body modification, Cosmetic surgery, Sex reassignment surgery, Gender identity disorder, Body dysmorphic disorder, Gatekeeping, Gender binary REGULATING HEALTHY GENDER: SURGICAL BODY MODIFICATION AMONG TRANSGENDER AND CISGENDER CONSUMERS
Disruptive Transformations in Health Care: Technological Innovation and the Acute Care General Hospital

21 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION . 23 Context. 24 Rising Health Care Spending . 25 Health Care Sector: Hospitals . 27 Health Care Sector: Specialty Surgical Facilities . 28 Medical Technology Diffusion . 30 Purpose of Study . 31 Research Questions . 32 Hypotheses . 33 Overview of Theoretical Framework . 34 Organization Theory . 34 The Health Care Sector as an Organizational Field . 34 Open System Perspective . 35 Competitive Strategy . 36 Disruptive Innovation . 38 Research Design . 40 Scope and Methodological Approach . 41 Sample . 41 Data Source . 42 Data Analysis Plan . 43 Rational and Significance. 46 Policy Significance . 48 Methodological Significance . 49 Theoretical Significance . 51 Conclusion and Outline of Remaining Chapters . 51 Disruptive Transformations in Health Care D. Pulane Lucas vi CHAPTER 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW . 53 Disruptive Innovation Theory . 53 Introduction: Origins, Components, and Applications. 53 Disruptive Innovations in the Health Care Industry. 60 Criticism of Disruptive Innovation Theory . 63 Innovative Technology: Laparoscopy . 66 The Competitive Environment of the Hospital Industry . 69 Economic and Health Service Utilization Trends . 69 Growth in Specialty Medical Facilities . 72 Conclusion . 80 CHAPTER 3 – THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND CONCEPTUAL MODEL . 82 Theoretical Backdrop: System-Level Analysis & Open System Perspective . 83 System-Level Analysis . 83 Open System Perspective . 84 Disruptive Innovation Theory . 87 Development of Conceptual Model . 87 Theoretical Framework: Population Ecology . 88 Population Ecology Theory . 88 Theory Usage: Disruptive Innovation and Population Ecology . 94 Structural Inertia . 95 Liability of Smallness . 99 Niche Width Dynamics . 100 Overview of Conceptual Model . 101 Description of Key Terms . 101 Acute Care General Hospital . 101 Ambulatory Surgery Center . 102 Inpatient Surgical Setting . 102 Ambulatory (Outpatient) Surgical Setting . 103 Open and Laparoscopic Surgical Procedures . 103 Cholecystectomy . 104 Appendectomy . 105 Bariatric Surgery . 105 Disruptive Technology . 106 Innovative Business Model . 107 ICD-9 Procedure Codes . 108 Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSA) . 109 Conceptual Model . 109 Hypotheses .
Enterprise Social Media Adoption: Its Impact on Social Capital in Work and Job Satisfaction

Enterprise social media is increasingly being recognized as an important technical tool to achieve more effective management and sustainable development. Limited research has been conducted on workplace satisfaction in the enterprise social media context. To fill this gap, we propose a research model explaining how employees’ usage of enterprise social media influences job satisfaction from the social capital perspective. Through a survey of 509 respondents, we conceptualize the constructs of enterprise social media use (i.e., work-related use and social-related use), social capital (i.e., bridging social capital and bonding social capital), and job satisfaction. We empirically validate the proposed model. The results largely support the proposed hypotheses. Firstly, both work-related use and social-related use positively impact bridging and bonding social capital. Secondly, bridging and bonding social capital play different roles in job satisfaction. Bonding social capital promotes job satisfaction, while bridging social capital inhibits job satisfaction. Thirdly, work-related use accumulates more bridging social capital, while social-related use is more conducive to the establishment of bonding social capital. Finally, some theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
A Novel Approach to Transmission Power, Lifetime and Connectivity Optimization in Asymmetric Networks

This thesis deals with the problem of proper power management over asymmetric networks represented by weighted directed graphs (digraphs) in the presence of various constraints. Three different problems are investigated in this study. First, the problem of total transmission power optimization and connectivity control over the network is examined. The notion of generalized algebraic connectivity (GAC), used as a network connectivity measure, is formulated as an implicit function of the nodes' transmission powers. An optimization problem is then presented to minimize the total transmission power of the network while considering constraints on the values of the GAC and the individual transmission power levels. The problem of network lifetime maximization and connectivity control is investigated afterwards. Each node is assumed to deplete its battery linearly with respect to the transmission powers used for communication, and the network lifetime is defined as the minimum lifetime over all nodes. Finally, it is desired to maximize the connectivity level of the network with constraints on the total transmission power of the network and the individual transmission powers. The interior point and the mixed interior point-exterior point methods are utilized to transform these constrained optimization problems into sequential optimization problems. Given the new formulation, each subproblem is then solved numerically via the subgradient method with backtracking line search. A distributed version of the algorithm, taking into account the estimation of global quantities, is provided. The asymptotic convergence of the proposed centralized and distributed algorithms is demonstrated analytically, and their effectiveness is verified by simulations.
Indigenous and boundaryless careers: cultural boundaries in the careers of Māori academics

Abstract Boundaryless career theory has been criticised for its ambiguity and lack of attention to the range of boundaries that influence careers. However, career scholars have also indicated there is hope for the theory through calls to understand a broader range of boundaries, and a continued interest in exploring boundaries, their properties, and career behaviours as people respond to these boundaries. In this article, we examine career boundaries specific to Indigenous (Māori) business academics. Consequently, we seek to extend boundaryless career theory by explicating how cultural boundaries act as key organising mechanisms in the careers of Māori academics in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on 27 interviews with three participant groups, findings from this national study demonstrate how cultural boundaries, specifically cultural responsibility and cultural conduct, guide individual and collective career behaviour, priorities and aspirations. Further, from the perspective of non-Māori business school decision makers, cultural boundaries serve to challenge the legitimacy of Māori academics as knowledge producers, limiting career opportunities for Māori in the academic context. Our findings contribute to the advancement of boundaryless career theorising and underscore not only the important role culture plays in career enactment and decision making, but also the need for a shared understanding from managers and human resource professionals to facilitate career opportunities for Indigenous Peoples.
A Study on 3D Reconstruction Method in Cooperation with a Mirror-mounted Autonomous Drone

3D reconstruction from images obtained by RGB-D camera provides a 3D model that reflects the current conditions of nuclear power plants (NPPs), and it is useful for field work support in NPPs. However, machinery equipment and pipes are intricately connected in NPPs and a lot of areas are not photographed because they are occluded by peripheral machines or pipes. It is feasible, but still challenging photographing those areas with RGB-D camera-mounted drones, due to the battery capability and the weight of drones.In this study, 3D reconstruction in cooperation with a lightweight mirror-mounted autonomous drone has been proposed and a novel method for determining drone’s flight path to scan those areas with a mirror has been developed. In this method, suitable locations for scanning the occluded areas with a mirror are detected and connected using multiple paths that are verified as safe to fly.The developed method was evaluated in the simulation environment. The results suggested that the developed method could obtain more points and photograph more occluded areas than the method of repeating random movements and the method to locally search for the optimal direction.
An Efficient Application Partitioning Algorithm in Mobile Environments

Application partitioning that splits the executions into local and remote parts, plays a critical role in high-performance mobile offloading systems. Optimal partitioning will allow mobile devices to obtain the highest benefit from Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) or Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). Due to unstable resources in the wireless network (network disconnection, bandwidth fluctuation, network latency, etc.) and at the service nodes (different speeds of mobile devices and cloud/edge servers, memory, etc.), static partitioning solutions with fixed bandwidth and speed assumptions are unsuitable for offloading systems. In this paper, we study how to dynamically partition a given application effectively into local and remote parts while reducing the total cost to the degree possible. For general tasks (represented in arbitrary topological consumption graphs), we propose a Min-Cost Offloading Partitioning (MCOP) algorithm that aims at finding the optimal partitioning plan (i.e., to determine which portions of the application must run on the mobile device and which portions on cloud/edge servers) under different cost models and mobile environments. Simulation results show that the MCOP algorithm provides a stable method with low time complexity which significantly reduces execution time and energy consumption by optimally distributing tasks between mobile devices and servers, besides it adapts well to mobile environmental changes.
A Review of Researches on Deep Learning in Remote Sensing Application

In recent years, deep learning has been widely used in the field of image understanding and made breakthroughs research progress in image understanding. Because remote sensing application and image understanding are inseparable, researchers have carried out a lot of research on the application of deep learning in remote sensing field, and extended the deep learning method to various application fields of remote sensing. This paper summarizes the basic principles of deep learning and its research progress and typical applications in remote sensing, introduces the current main deep learning model and its development history, focuses on the analysis and elaboration of the research status of deep learning in remote sensing image classification, object detection and change detection, and on this basis, summarizes the typical applications and their application effects. Finally, according to the current application of deep learning in remote sensing, the main problems and future development directions are summarized.
Predicting the severity of Neonatal Chronic Lung Disease from chest X-ray images using deep learning

Chronic lung disease (CLD) is the most common and serious lung disease in premature infants. In this study, we predict the severity (mild or severe) of neonatal chest X-ray images using a convolutional neural network (CNN) to enable early intervention to provide personalized treatment and improve prognosis. Thirty subjects were tested in a leave-one-out cross validation experiment using 30 chest X-ray images of 11 patients with mild disease and 19 patients with severe disease at 7 days of age. To improve the prediction accuracy, we proposed to limit the input image of the CNN to the lung field region and to use a pre-training model for transfer learning. Four different experiments were conducted, comparing the results with different input images (whole image or lung field region) and with and without transfer learning. The results showed that the best accuracy was obtained when the entire image was used as input and no transfer learning was performed, with an Accuracy of 0.667.
An Empirical Study of CAPM, the Fama-French three-factor and the Fama-French five-factor Model - A Study Performed on the Swedish Stock Market.

This thesis aims to add further research about the Fama-French five-factor model and its ability to explain average returns on the Swedish Stock Market. Additionally, the study also investigates and compares the performance of CAPM, the Fama-French three-factor model and the Fama-French five-factor model. The study rejects all three models ability to explain average returns of the Size-B/M, Size-OP, and of the aggregated portfolios. In contrast, only the Fama-French three-factor model was rejected in terms of explaining the average returns of the Size-Inv portfolio, indicating that CAPM and the Fama-French five-factor model can be used as explanatory models for portfolios sorted on size and investments. Due to the ambiguous results, the study could not conclude whether one model is preferable the others which may be the explanation behind why CAPM is still widely used despite years of criticism. Even though the Fama-French threeand fivefactor models were invented relatively near in time, the study did not indicate that these models are superior to CAPM.