Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How corporate governance affect firm value and profitability Evidence from Saudi financial and non-financial listed firms

This paper investigates the possible effects of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms on the firm market and accounting value (FV) in Saudi Arabia after the 2011 CG reforms using a sample of 300 annual reports of financial and non-financial companies listed on Tadawul from 2012 to 2016. Our results are suggestive of heterogeneous effects of CG mechanisms on firm value and profitability in that they might have either encouraged or discouraged FV in Saudi Arabia. This means that, averagely, better-governed firms tend to achieve better market value, but not necessarily a better accounting value. Our findings indicate that implementing a voluntary 'comply-or-explain' CG regime in Saudi Arabia has, so far, a limited impact on FV. This implies that developing other enforcement mechanisms for CG provisions, such as appending good CG practices to listing rules for companies to comply with, might lead to better financial results for those well-governed companies in Saudi Arabia. Despite the limitations, it is hoped that our study can inspire further examinations in this research area.
The Financial Behavior of Jordanian Pharmaceutical Industry

The study aims to analyze the financial behavior of the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry companies listed in Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) during the period 2005-2015. The study examines the relationship between funding sources and the Return on Equity (ROE) in order to reach conclusions and to make recommendations to enhance the performance of the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry companies. The Generalized Least Square (GLS) test and Hausman test are used to estimate the fixed effects and random effects model. The random effects model proved to be more suitable for testing the impact of the financial behavior on the profitability of the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry as measured by ROE. The study results showed that the financing through equity has a positive and significance effect on the ROE, which explains the fact that the Jordanian pharmaceutical companies mainly depend on equity financing by 67%. The study recommended that the Jordanian pharmaceutical companies should make an effort to finance its capital increase, assets increase and expansion by financing through equity sources.
Identification of Green Procurement Drivers and Their Interrelationship Using Fuzzy TISM and MICMAC Analysis

The objective of the chapter is to identify the leading green procurement drivers and identify the interrelationships using fuzzy total interpretive structural modeling and MICMAC approach. For the purpose of this study, 25 drivers were identified from existing literature that influence green procurement practices. These are finally refined through experts’ opinions. The final fuzzy model consists of fuzzy relationships between one-to-one criteria. The key drivers which emerged from fuzzy TISM and MICMAC analyses are government policy and regulations, total quality environmental management, management support, management review, continuous education of employees, cross-functional team building, organization culture, and green process and technology. The green procurement model may assist supply chain practitioners in better decision making and successful implementation of green procurement programs.
An exploration into the effectiveness of service collaboration between two Irish charities providing homeless support services.

The aim of this study was to explore the effectiveness of service collaboration between two Irish charities providing homeless support services. The objectives of this study were to explore the views of the members within the joint working group, on the effectiveness of the collaboration and their decision-making process, to examine the views of both workforces on the overall impact of the collaboration, to examine the views of the joint CEO of both organisations, on the factors that will determine the collaboration`s effectiveness, to identify the cost-sharing benefits of collaboration between the two charities, to investigate the extent to which the collaboration can facilitate a shared service and to examine the extent to which the collaboration can enhance the overall service provided to service users. A triangulation method of research was applied, incorporating both questionnaires and interviews as a means of gathering data. Questionnaires were distributed to all staff members of both organisations, while interviews were conducted with four members of the joint working group and the joint CEO also. The reason for examining the area of charity collaboration was due to the researcher’s personal and professional interest in the progress of the collaboration between Company X and Company Y. The findings from this research study show that the collaboration has been very effective to date, but if the partnership is to continue to grow and develop into the future, then a number of strategic actions need to be taken.
Adaptive Guidance Model Based Similarity for Software Process Development Programming

This paper describes a modeling approach SAGM (Similarity for Adaptive Guidance Model) that provides adaptive and recursive guidance for software process development. This approach, in accordance to developer needs, allowsspecific tailored guidance regarding the profile of developers. A profile is partially or completely defined from a model of developers, through their roles, their qualifications, and through the relationships between the context of the current activity a nd the model of the defined activities. This approach aims to define the generic profile of development context and a similarity measure that evaluates the similarities between the profiles created from the model of developers and those of the development team involved in the execution of a software process. This is to identify the profiles classification and to deduce the appropriate type of assistance to developers (that can be corrective, constructive or specific).
PDAA Mechanism: A Preemptive Distributed Address Assignment Mechanism

Our contribution in this paper focuses on addressing mechanism and autorouting in the tree topology. Actually, we improve on the address assignment mechanism which sponsored by ZigBee alliance. The ZigBee stack protocol is designed for sensor network which is widely used. This improved address assignment mechanism is called the preemptive distributed address assignment mechanism (PDAAM). Preemptive addressing is very useful, because in the design phase we can not predict the exact node density of the sensor networks, it is particularly suitable for the networks which contain uneven distribution of node density. Further, it gives a routing algorithm. The packet can be routed from a node to the next node in using the assignment pattern to design the nodes addresses.
Audit Committee Accounting Expertise and the Mitigation of Strategic Auditor Behavior

Our study is motivated by the theory of credence goods in the auditing setting. We propose that audit committee accounting expertise should reduce information asymmetries between the auditor and the client, thereby limiting auditors' ability to over-audit and under-audit. Consistent with this notion, our results indicate that when audit committees have accounting expertise, clients (1) pay lower fees when changes in standards decrease required audit effort; (2) pay a smaller fee premium in the presence of remediated material weaknesses; and (3) have a reduced likelihood of restatement when audit market competition is high. Our findings in the under-auditing setting generally are strongest among non-Big 4 engagements, consistent with non-Big 4 auditors being less sensitive to market-wide disciplining mechanisms such as reputation, legal liability, and professional regulation. We also provide evidence that the nature of audit committee members' accounting expertise differentially impacts the committee's ability to curtail over- and under-auditing. JEL Classifications: M40; M41; M42.
Designing Synchronous Online Interactions and Discussions.

With increased improvements to technology for online teaching, synchronous instruction continues to grow. Increasing student interaction has been an important component to enhance a sense of community in online learning and improve student satisfaction. There is a paucity of research on how to effectively manage online interaction and increase student engagement during synchronous sessions. Three instructors draw on their online teaching experience and discuss how they maximize student interaction during synchronous online discussions according to elements of a community of inquiry.
A Fuzzy Control Strategy for the Acrobot

This paper describes a fuzzy control strategy combining model free and model based fuzzy control to control an acrobot. The model free fuzzy controller designed for the upswing ensures that the energy of the acrobot increases with each swing. The model based fuzzy controller based on a Takagi Sugeno fuzzy model is designed for balance control.
Analysis of host and herpesvirus interactions using bioinformatics.

Bioinformatics methods have become central to analysing and organising the sequence data continually produced by new and existing sequencing projects. The field of bioinformatics covers both the static aspects of organising and presenting these raw data, by compiling existing knowledge into accessible databases, ontologies, and libraries; and the more dynamic aspects of knowledge discovery informatics for interpreting and mining existing data. The aim of this thesis is to utilise such methods to analyse the herpesvirus-host relationship. In Chapter 2 comparative host and herpesvirus genome analysis is used to compare the sequences of all currently sequenced herpesvirus open reading frames to the conceptually translated human genome with the aim of identifying herpesvirus-human (host) sequence homologues. Collating in one search all currently known host homologues provides the first complete assessment of herpesvirus-host homologues. This search identified 55 previously identified herpesvirus-host homologues, and 4 previously unknown herpesvirus-host homologues. The work performed in Chapter 2 highlighted the need for consistent annotation of genomes and gene products to allow greater comparative genomics. It is not feasible to manually curate large numbers of genes whose relationships to each other are not immediately clear. Therefore, Chapters 3 and 4 focus upon the use of the Gene Ontology; a resource that is made publicly available for the purpose of annotating gene products with unified vocabulary derived from a structured directed acyclic graph. The Gene Ontology was extended to allow host-pathogen interaction annotation by a) adding 187 new terms relating specifically to virus function and structure (Chapter 3), and b) using both the new and existing terms to annotate the entire Human Herpesvirus 1 genome using references from the available literature (Chapter 4). Finally, Chapter 5 examines the utility of the Gene Ontology when analysing such large-scale host and herpesvirus gene expression datasets as produced experimentally by DNA microarray studies. Using such automated annotation methods a cluster of 12 proteins were identified that increase mitochondrial function in HUVEC cells 24 hours post HCMV infection. A cluster of nine proteins that function in the MAPK pathway were also identified using the Gene Ontology that provide evidence for HCMV inhibition of the MAPK pathway.
The Duplicate News Web Page Detection Algorithm Based on Feature Words Group

News pages are always nightmares of the redundant messages on the internet.On one hand,redundant messages could increase searching burden of search engine.On the other hand,they would lower user's experience.So it is necessary to deal with these news pages.The algorithm will decompose a news report into words according to grammar.It will constitute feature words group by picking up the highest frequency words from 7 categories of part-of-speech.It finishes retrieving feature words group and comparing them between different web pages by building word-level inverted index.It finishes detecting and managing duplicate or near-duplicate web pages by building class inverted index.This algorithm utilizes the original module of the search engine in the implementation process, and it keeps simplicity of the system avoiding the introduction of the new module.The algorithm is proven efficient in our experiment testing: the recall rate of web pages reaches 93.5%,and the precision rate reaches 88.4%. The redundant pages that have defects in their classification and identification largely influence the improvement of accuracy rate.
Achieving the G20 goal of resilient market-based finance

The 2007-09 financial crisis revealed fundamental weaknesses in the global financial system which authorities and market participants failed to identify and address until it was too late. One such weakness was the growth of complex financing structures and long intermediation chains outside the banking system, which had spread risk across the global financial system. When the crisis struck, the opaqueness of this shadow banking system, coupled with a growing realisation of the degree to which risks had been mispriced, led to a rapid deterioration in market confidence and a sharp tightening of financing conditions that affected businesses and households. In the decade since the crisis, authorities have sought to transform shadow banking activities into resilient market-based finance. Considerable progress has been made, with more effective oversight and regulatory frameworks now helping to better monitor and mitigate the risks associated with non-bank finance. However, the landscape of shadow banking activities continues to evolve. Consequently, identifying and assessing new and emerging risks remains essential in future. This article considers factors that contributed to the crisis, explores the significant reforms that have changed the financial system for the better, identifies emerging risks that authorities need to consider, and explores how macroprudential policies can address these risks.
Evolving an Accelerated School Model through Student Perceptions and Student Outcome Data

A mixed methods convergent evaluation informed the redesign of an innovative public school that uses an accelerated model to serve grades 7-9 students who have been retained in grade level and are at risk for dropping out of school. After over 25 years in operation, a shift of practices/policies away from grade retention and toward social promotion required the school to adapt their model to best served students with high risk factors for dropping out of school who have been socially promoted, rather than retained in grade level. This study provided the qualitative (perspectives of former students ( N = 8) and quantitative (demographic and outcome variables for students ( N = 164) who completed the program between 2007-2009) data to ground the evolution of the school model. Five critical aspects of the school model emerged from the former students: teacher as warm demander, diverse and creative practices, being one community, student self-efficacy, and upholding diversity and equity. Quantitative analyses revealed the key finding that the number of times a student accelerated to the next grade in their courses was a positive predictor of all the high school outcomes studied. Data mixed during interpretation generated recommendations to continue strong practices and strengthen the following: have students set, monitor, and share progress; increase clear and high expectations; engage the adult community in setting, tracking and assessing goals; and increase culturally competent practices. These findings can also be used by schools serving students who may be at risk for dropping out of school.
Pulmonary rehabilitation: a year in review

Educational aims To present innovative papers from the field of pulmonary rehabilitation published in 2005 and to discuss the important points and conclusions from each. Summary This paper summarises the findings of important papers that have been published over the last year. Two recently published studies have addressed the effects of different durations of pulmonary rehabilitation programme (PRP), indicating the greater benefits obtained by longer programmes. Three other papers have described the effects of pulmonary rehabilitation on pulmonary mechanics and oxidative stress, indicating that exercise is able to reduce the mechanical disadvantage of the respiratory system and some aspects of oxidative stress associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Other papers have discussed the effects of a number of breathing strategies, such as pursed-lip breathing (PLB), or training techniques, such as arm or inspiratory muscle training. Finally, the addition of drug therapy to pulmonary rehabilitation and the role of outcome measures in providing rehabilitation programmes were examined in two other studies.
Blind Equalization and Multiuser Detection in Dispersive CDMA Channels

In this paper, the blind multiuser detection in the dispersive code division multiple access(CDMA) is discussed. The application of the theory of blind multiple input multiple output(MIMO) channel identification and equalization makes it possible to recover information symbols without any prior knowledge of the channel or the user's signature waveforms.
Cross-Lingual Mapping of Lexical Ontologies with Automatic Translation

In the Web, multilingual data are growing fast and exist in a large number of sources. Ontologies have been proposed for the ease of data exchange and integration across applications. When data sources using different ontologies have to be integrated, mappings between the concepts described in these ontologies have to be established. Cross-lingual ontology mapping is the task of establishing mappings between concepts lexicalized in different languages. Cross-lingual ontology mapping is currently considered an important challenge, which plays a fundamental role in establishing semantic relations between concepts lexicalized in different languages, in order to align two language-based resources; to create multilingual lexical resources with rich lexicalizations; or to support a bilingual data annotation. Most of the cross-lingual mapping methods include a step in which the concepts’ lexicalizations are automatically translated into different languages. One of the most frequently adopted approaches in the state-of-the-art to obtain automatic translations includes the use of multilingual lexical resources, such as machine translation tools, which have been recognized as the largest available resources for translations. However, translation quality achieved by machine translation is limited and affected by noise; one reason of this quality is due to the polysemous and synonymous nature of natural languages. The quality of the translations used by a mapping method has a major impact on its performance. The main goal of this thesis is to provide an automatic cross-lingual mapping method that leverages lexical evidence obtained from automatic translations, in order to automatically support the decision in mapping concepts across different languages, or even to support semi-automatic mapping workflows. In particular, in establishing mappings between very large, lexically-rich resources, e.g., lexical ontologies. The major contributions of this thesis can be summarized as follows: I presents a classification-based interpretation for cross-lingual mappings; I analyze at a large-scale the effectiveness of automatic translations on cross-lingual mapping tasks; I classifies concepts in lexical ontologies based on different lexical characteristics; I proposes an automatic cross-lingual lexical mapping method based on a novel translation-based similarity measure and a local similarity optimization algorithm; finally, I implements a Web tool that supports a semi-automatic mapping approach based on the proposed method.
Decentralization and Distributed Innovation: Fintech, Bitcoin and ICO's

This paper will review some of the innovation thoughts such as creative destruction, innovation paradox and leapfrog economics, and explore the idea of decentralisation and distributed innovation. Examples of growth of FinTech companies in China and FinTech policy response from Singapore will be used to illustrate the efforts in innovation. We look at the growth of decentralisation and distributed technology such as Bitcoin and ICO's and examine if there is value in them as innovation for sustainable development. The paper argues that Decentralisation may eventually solve the pain points of catch-up theory of Creative Destruction in Development Economics. Decentralisation via the Token Economy has great potential to level the playing field for those that are small, less endowed, and with a weaker degree of access.
Online neuron reconstruction

In this thesis, I designed an algorithm that traces neurons through the images of various datasets extracted from mouse brains. The algorithm is implemented in Python and relies on the output of a recently developed Fully Convolutional Neural Network (implemented in C) that runs on the underlying images. The images themselves are generated using state of the art technologies that provide high resolution and extremely accurate representations of the original brain matter. The algorithm is part of the combined efforts of MIT’s Computational Connectomics Group. Thesis Supervisor: Nir Shavit Title: Professor
Information system for project managers in Chinese construction small and medium sized enterprises

Yuan, Z and Khosrowshahi, F (2005) Information system for project managers in chinese construction small and medium sized enterprises. In: Khosrowshahi, F (Ed.), 21st Annual ARCOM Conference , 7-9 September 2005, SOAS, University of London. Association of Researchers in Construction Management, Vol. 1, 549-58.
The Effect of Information Limitations on Information Usage of Tehrani Youth Users

This research tries to study the effect of information limitation on the users’ tendency toward using Internet information amongst adolescents and youth in Tehran. After reviewing research theoretical and practical literature, using internet has been defined as using it for gathering information for task and professional purposes like scientific use and news reading. Theoretical explanation of the information limitation effect on users’ tendency has been possible based on sociological and communication theories. In relationship between two mentioned variables, two moderator variables – social and economical status and use experiencehas been studied . The research method is survey and research data has been gathered using questionnaire. Our population is 15 to 29 years old adolescents and youth in Tehran. Assessing data gathered from 384 respondents show that adolescents and youth have average tendency toward information using. Hypothesis testing shows that information limitation has a negatively significant correlation with users’ attitude. Based on the research, users’ experience and social and economical status don’t have a significant correlation with the information limitation effect on the users’ tendency.