Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Increasing Importance of Operational Risk in Enterprise Risk Management

Enterprise Risk Management, as a corporate undertaking, has its deepest roots in financial services. Historically, for banks and insurance firms, the focus within enterprise risk has largely been credit and market risk. The Great Recession of 2008 showed us that liquidity risk and the interplay between a firm and capital markets were also important to consider. Now that sufficient time has passed since the Great Recession, we see that credit and market risk were not the sole causes. Indeed, critical operations and processes at many lending institutions failed. Underwriting procedures, loan processing, and the like were subject to little if any confirmation and oversight, leading to larger and higher credit risk positions than anticipated. Operational risk had reared its ugly head. The wave of regulation that has overtaken the financial services industry since then is largely driven by concerns over processes and procedures that caused harm to customers. The impact of processes and policies has never been greater. There are drivers at work to suggest that operational risk is still increasing, and that in particular, firms should be mindful of certain risk drivers, in the context of enterprise risk management, such as Increasingly Complex Operations, Development of New and Untested Products, Automation and Digitization, Increasing Reputational Impact from Operational Risk, New Focus of Regulators on the Treatment of Customers as Victims, and lastly, Cyber Risk. The disturbing and uncomfortable reality is that operational risk is unintended and, in theory, should not happen, if critical processes are well designed. Operational risk is self-inflicted, or if not self-inflicted, it is the result of unexpected errors or mistakes, all proving to be much more costly and dangerous than initially anticipated. Therefore, this leads firms to pay specific focus on operational risk management as part of enterprise risk management.
The museum environment and the visitor experience

Since the advent of the contract culture, the reduction in museum budgets, and the implementation of performance measures based on customer satisfaction management, museums have faced increasing pressure to attract wider audiences. This requires an understanding of visitor expectations, and experiences, of visiting a museum. However, for the most part, public museums have concentrated their research efforts into obtaining statistical data which measure through‐put and provide demographic profiles, ignoring in the process the nature of the experience itself. This paper looks at research derived primarily from academics working in the field of visitor studies. It outlines three approaches; the social, the cognitive, and the environmental perspective, which have been applied to studies of museum visitor behaviour. The paper then presents the findings from an observational study of visitors to a city museum. These findings are recast in the light of the three approaches described, in order to offer an integrated framework of customer behaviour which has implications for the management of the service encounter in museums.
Neuronal nicotinic alpha 7 receptor expressed in Xenopus oocytes presents five putative binding sites for methyllycaconitine.

1. The recently isolated compound methyllycaconitine (MLA) is a plant toxin which is a competitive inhibitor of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). We found that homomeric alpha 7 receptors display a very high sensitivity to MLA with an IC50 in the picomolar range. 2. The competitive nature of the alpha 7 MLA blockade was reinforced by the observation that this compound has no action on wild‐type serotoninergic receptors (5‐HT3), whereas it is a powerful antagonist of chimaeric receptors alpha 7‐5‐HT3. 3. The time course of MLA inhibition of the wild‐type (WT) alpha 7 follows a monotonic exponential decay whose time constant is proportional to the MLA concentration and could be described by a bimolecular mechanism with a forward rate constant (k+) of 2.7 x 10(7) S‐1 M‐1. In contrast, recovery from MLA inhibition displays an S‐shaped time course that is incompatible with a simple bimolecular reaction. 4. Given the pentameric nature of the neuronal nicotinic receptors, a linear chain model, including five putative MLA binding sites corresponding to the homomeric nature of alpha 7, is proposed. 5. Both onset and recovery data obtained on the alpha 7 wild‐type receptor are adequately described by this model assuming that a single MLA molecule is sufficient to block receptor function. 6. Analysis of MLA blockade and recovery of reconstituted heteromeric alpha 4 beta 2 receptors reveals, as expected, a time course compatible with only two binding sites for the toxin and, thus, further supports the validity of our model.
Status brands: examining the effects of non‐product‐related brand associations on status and conspicuous consumption

In seeking to expand our understanding of brands and their impact on consumer behaviour, assesses the relationship between brand associations, which contribute to consumption behaviour. A self‐administered questionnaire was developed and administered to a non‐probabilistic convenience sample of 315 young consumers. The findings of this research indicate that the status‐conscious market is more likely to be affected by the symbolic characteristics of a brand; feelings aroused by the brand; and by the degree of congruency between the brand‐user’s self‐image and the brand’s image itself. Results also indicate that the higher the symbolic characteristics, the stronger the positive feelings, and the greater the congruency between the consumer and brand image, the greater the likelihood of the brand being perceived as possessing high status elements. The suspicion that status‐laden brands would be chosen for status consumption and conspicuous consumption was also confirmed. These findings broaden our understanding of status‐conscious consumers and their behaviour towards brands.
Information-theoretic key agreement of multiple terminal: part II: channel model

This is the second part of a two-part paper on information-theoretically secure secret key agreement. This part covers the secret key capacity under the channel model. In this model, multiple terminals wish to create a shared secret key that is secure from an eavesdropper with unlimited computational resources. The terminals are all connected to a noiseless and authenticated but insecure channel, called the “public channel. ” Furthermore, the terminals have access to a secure but noisy discrete memoryless broadcast channel (DMBC). The first terminal can choose a sequence of inputs to the DMBC, which has outputs at the other terminals and at the eavesdropper. After each channel use, the terminals can engage in arbitrarily many rounds of interactive authenticated communication over the public channel. At the end, each legitimate terminal should be able to generate the secret key. In this paper, we derive new lower and upper bounds on the secrecy capacity. In each case, an example is provided to show that the new bound represents a strict improvement over the previously best known bound. This part of the paper is not standalone, and is written under the assumption that the reader has access to Part I, which is published in the same issue.
Characterization of the Cricket Hindgut Microbiota with Fluorescently Labeled rRNA-Targeted Oligonucleotide Probes

ABSTRACT Most cricket hindgut microorganisms (60 to 80%) were detected with a universal fluorescent rRNA-targeted probe and found to be eubacteria. Group-specific probes showed that the hindguts of five different cricket species harbor similar bacterial groups, although in different proportions, and that different diets shifted the structure of the hindgut microbial community. The Bacteroides-Prevotellaprobe, of the eight eubacterial probes tested, stained the largest percentage of cells in all crickets.
Government procurement as a policy tool in south africa

Prior to 1994, the government procurement system in South Africa favoured large and established businesses and it was very difficult for newly established business to enter the procurement system. In 1994, however, government procurement was granted constitutional status, and was recognised as a means of addressing past discriminatory policies and practices. This paper critically analyses the way in which provision has been made in legislation for the use of procurement as a policy tool. It is argued that the use of procurement as a policy tool in South Africa is justified. On the whole, the primary legislation dealing with the use of procurement as a policy tool offers an adequate effect to the constitutionally prescribed use of procurement as a policy tool.
Capacity of autocorrelation associative memory with quantized synaptic weight

The neural chips to speed up the process of a neural network have recently been developed actively. Since a conventional neural chip requires quantized synaptic weights, it is important to know the properties of the network with such weights. Devices for a 2-layer network with the same number of input and output elements have been well developed, and such a device can be used as an autocorrelation associative memory by feeding its output to its input. This paper investigates theoretically the capacity of an autocorrelation associative memory when its synaptic weights are quantized with a finite number of bits. It also proposes an optimum quantization function. A system with a finite number of elements is computer simulated. The proposed method can be applied to the design of a neural chip for associative memory.
How customers ‘learn’ to work for retailers

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to investigate how learning style affects the performance of the ‘working’ customer in one self-service context – retail Self Check-Out Tills (SCOT). For the purposes of this paper, we have adopted the UK term Self Check-Out Tills (SCOT), also known as ‘self-service registers’ in other countries, to describe this form of self-service in retail stores). The study uses qualitative and quantitative data collected from users of retail SCOT. Initial exploratory factor analysis of 232 SCOT users revealed significant differences in learning styles. Three categories emerged: ‘regular reassurance’, ‘motivated practice’ and ‘cautious discovery’. Customers adopting different learning styles varied in their perceptions of ability and enjoyment with SCOT, and in their capability of helping other customers with SCOT. The demographic make-up of customers adopting the different learning styles was also shown to vary. Previously, little has been done to identify the specific training needs of working customers. This research begins to address this knowledge gap.
A Novel Countermeasure Enhancing Side Channel Immunity in FPGAs

Side channel attacks (SCAs) are very effective in extracting information from algorithmically secure systems. Since, the earliest reports of attacks exploiting side channels such as power consumption, timing behavior and electromagnetic radiation etc., the countermeasures to resist such attacks have also been proposed. FPGAs originally thought to be resistant to such attacks because of some inherent characteristics were also found to leak information over the side channels. Overtime, SCA countermeasures have been proposed that continue to fade away as resistant attack techniques are developed. In this article an FPGA implementation of a multi-clock system with cipher embodiment, incorporating a novel countermeasure to resist SCAs, is presented. The proposed methodology of embedding single inverter ring oscillators (SIROs) within the synchronous cores helps improve immunity against electromagnetic, fault and glitch attacks, while the introduction of frequency hopping by randomly varying frequency driving the cipher hardens the system against power and timing attacks. The incorporated countermeasure enhances the immunity of FPGA based implementation against multiple types of SCAs without adversely affecting cost or performance.
The influence of dopant type and carrier concentration on the effective mass and Seebeck coefficient of GaNxAs1−x thin films

We probe whether an enhancement in the Seebeck coefficient (S) could be obtained in GaNxAs1−x through interactions between the N resonant states and the GaAs conduction band. Through experimental investigations, we then determined that an insufficient increase in the density of states effective mass (md) precludes such an enhancement. The relative influences of Group IV/VI dopants and the carrier concentration along with N passivation are discussed.
Testing Limited Arbitrage: The Case of the Tunisian Stock Market

This paper aims at showing that arbitrage, theoretically used as a mechanism of establishing equilibrium in financial markets, is limited in reality. Because of numerous obstacles and risks to arbitrage, assets prices become more and more biased and exhibit numerous anomalies. Like Lam and Wei (2011), in our study we show that arbitrage is limited. To this end, we use a sample of 20 firms listed on the Tunis Stock Exchange (TSE) over a period stretching from July 2007 to June 2012. The results indicate that arbitrage is limited and does not play a fundamental role in stabilizing prices.
Semantic recommender system for the recovery of the preserved web heritage

This paper presents a prototype of a semantic personalized recommender system for a repository of preserved web files. To do this, we design and implement a semantic repository of preserved web files, containing metadata associated with each preserved site. The knowledge stored in the metadata of the semantic repository is used for the recommender system, in order to give prioritized recommendations of the different preserved web files (or web heritage) that meet certain search criteria. The proposed recommender also considers semantic associations, in order to recommend not only the websites matched to the search criteria, but also semantically related.
Asynchronous video-otoscopy with a telehealth facilitator.

OBJECTIVE The study investigated whether video-otoscopic images taken by a telehealth clinic facilitator are sufficient for accurate asynchronous diagnosis by an otolaryngologist within a heterogeneous population. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A within-subject comparative design was used with 61 adults recruited from patients of a primary healthcare clinic. The telehealth clinic facilitator had no formal healthcare training. On-site otoscopic examination performed by the otolaryngologist was considered the gold standard diagnosis. A single video-otoscopic image was recorded by the otolaryngologist and facilitator from each ear, and the images were uploaded to a secure server. Images were assigned random numbers by another investigator, and 6 weeks later the otolaryngologist accessed the server, rated each image, and made a diagnosis without participant demographic or medical history. RESULTS A greater percentage of images acquired by the otolaryngologist (83.6%) were graded as acceptable and excellent, compared with images recorded by the facilitator (75.4%). Diagnosis could not be made from 10.0% of the video-otoscopic images recorded by the facilitator compared with 4.2% taken by the otolaryngologist. A moderate concordance was measured between asynchronous diagnosis made from video-otoscopic images acquired by the otolaryngologist and facilitator (κ=0.596). The sensitivity for video-otoscopic images acquired by the otolaryngologist and the facilitator was 0.80 and 0.91, respectively. Specificity for images acquired by the otolaryngologist and the facilitator was 0.85 and 0.89, respectively, with a diagnostic odds ratio of 41.0 using images acquired by the otolaryngologist and 46.0 using images acquired by the facilitator. CONCLUSIONS A trained telehealth facilitator can provide a platform for asynchronous diagnosis of otological status using video-otoscopy in underserved primary healthcare settings.
Effect of Pressure on the Composition of the Lower Mantle End Member FexO

The composition limits of FexO are sensitive to both pressure and temperature. Earlier studies have shown that FexO becomes highly nonstoichiometric when in equilibrium with metallic iron above 10 gigapascals, which is difficult to reconcile with available thermodynamic data. Experiments with a uniaxial split-sphere apparatus demonstrate that the iron content of FexO increases continuously at high pressure in excellent agreement with quantitative models and suggest that there is a discontinuity in the elastic properties of FexO above x = 0.95. On the basis of these results, it is inferred that the Earth's present lower mantle is not in equilibrium with metallic iron.
Oxidative Stress-Mediated Damage in Newborns with Necrotizing Enterocolitis: A Possible Role of Melatonin

Abstract Background Necrotizing enterocolitis is a gastrointestinal surgical emergency in premature neonates. Free radicals have been linked to the development of the disease in infants. Ischemia, hypoxia–reperfusion, infection, and inflammation produce elevated levels of reactive oxygen species, impairing the redox balance and shifting cells into a state of oxidative stress. Melatonin, an effective direct free-radical scavenger and indirect antioxidant agent, exerts pleiotropic action on the human body. Several studies have tested the efficacy of melatonin in counteracting oxidative injury in diseases of newborns. Melatonin has been widely used in newborns including cases of asphyxia, respiratory distress syndrome, and sepsis, and no significant toxicity or treatment-related side effects with long-term melatonin therapy have been reported. Conclusion Therefore, melatonin, besides standard therapies, could be considered as a potentially safe approach to prevent and treat necrotizing enterocolitis in premature infants. This review summarizes what is known about the role of oxidative stress, and potentially beneficial effects of antioxidants, such as melatonin, in necrotizing enterocolitis.
Quantum Merlin Arthur with Exponentially Small Gap Bill Fefferman

We will study the complexity of QMA proof systems with inverse exponentially small promise gap. We will show that this class, QMAexp, can be exactly characterized by PSPACE, the class of problems solvable with a polynomial amount of memory. As applications we show that a “precise” version of the Local Hamiltonian problem is PSPACE-complete, and give a provable setting in which the ability to prepare PEPS states is not as powerful as ability to prepare the ground state of general local Hamiltonians.
CLRU: a new page replacement algorithm for NAND flash-based consumer electronics

NAND flash memory has become the dominant secondary storage device for consumer electronics. However, existing data structures and algorithms in modern operating systems are optimized for magnetic disk-based storage device in light of its mechanical nature and NAND flash memory shows different hardware characteristics from magnetic disk. Therefore, a new page replacement algorithm should be designed for NAND flash-based storage device. In this paper, a new page replacement algorithm is proposed for consumer electronics equipped with NAND flash memory as secondary storage device. The proposed algorithm reduces the number of write operations to NAND flash memory by delaying the eviction of cold dirty pages and improves the page hit ratio by evicting the cold pages preferentially. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is better than existing page replacement algorithms designed for NAND flash memory in terms of page hit ratio and the number of write operations.
IQ and the genetics of autism.

While there seems to be general agreement that genetic factors play some role in the etiology of autism, many important questions remain unresolved. The purpose of this paper is to review five issues with respect to the association between low IQ and autism from a familial-genetic viewpoint: (1) does IQ estimate the severity of the autistic genotype? ; (2) what is the relationship between probands' and sibs' IQs? ; (3) what is the relationship between parents' and probands' IQs? ; (4) why do females with autism have lower IQs than males with the disorder? ; and (5) does IQ vary with the cause of autism? With respect to each issue, possible resolutions are outlined, as are the implications for understanding the genetic mode of transmission. The review concludes with a possible model for the genetic etiology of autism.
The effect of inconsistent word‐of‐mouth during the service encounter

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the effects of inconsistent word‐of‐mouth on service quality perception and purchase intention during the service encounter.Design/methodology/approach – A pilot study and a subsequent formal experiment with six scenarios were designed to test the inconsistent word‐of‐mouth effect. Participants were recruited from a major university located in Southern China.Findings – The results revealed that service quality perception and purchase intention were influenced more by the final word‐of‐mouth event than by the initial one and were more favorable with more positive word‐of‐mouth events.Research limitations/implications – Further research should study more factors such as source effect of word‐of‐mouth and knowledge about the service in investigating the inconsistent word‐of‐mouth effect on service quality perception and purchase intention.Practical implications – Consumers' service quality judgment and purchase intention seem to be highly driven by the most recent wor.
Altered bioavailability due to changes in the formulation of a commercial preparation of levothyroxine in patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma

In July 1995 we began noticing an unusually high rate of elevated TSH levels in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer treated with levothyroxine — specifically the brand Levothroid®— becoming more obvious from September 1995. Faced with the possibility that these findings had some relationship to the drug taken, we carried out a prospective study, changing this brand of levothyroxine for another.
Identifying social consequences of rural events.

Events have a range of consequences for host communities. While a number of researchers have focused upon impact assessment, there are some fundamental issues that require addressing. Firstly, most research investigating the social impacts of events use predefined quantitative assessment techniques or tools. These tools limit the ability of respondents to indicate the diversity of social consequences that they may experience. Secondly, the labeling of social consequences as positive or negative fails to acknowledge the "shades of gray" that may exist. Thirdly, there is a lack of research specifically investigating the social consequences of events within rural communities. Therefore, there is a need to identify a range of social consequences that occur as a result of hosting events, especially within rural communities. This is best achieved from the perspective of those experiencing the phenomena, thus qualitatively. This article aims to address these gaps by examining the social consequences of rural events from an event stakeholder perspective within three rural communities of Southwest Queensland, Australia. Specifically, this article reports on a number of social consequences identified that have been underutilized or discussed within the existing literature.