The brand personality of nonprofit service organizations is a focal cue for individuals engaging in pro-social behavior. However, the positive effect of brand personality on donors’ intention to engage pro-socially may be affected in cases in which NPOs provide monetary incentives to those donors. Relying on social exchange theory, the authors examine how monetary incentives and brand personality commonly affect the intention to donate and whether this effect varies based on the perceived trustworthiness of the NPO. The results of two (...) experimental studies show that branding and incentivizing decisions should not be developed independently because monetary incentives do indeed undermine the positive effects of brand personality on the intention to donate. However, the effectiveness of incentives varies with the perceived level of trust in the NPO: highly trusted NPO services are harmed by monetary incentives, whereas less-trusted NPOs may even benefit. (shrink)

Knowing that language is often used as a classifier of human intelligence and the development of systems that understand human language remains a challenge all the time (Kryeziu & Shehu, 2022). Natural Language Processing is a very active field of study, where transformers have a key role. Transformers function based on neural networks and they are increasingly showing promising results. One of the first major contributions to transfer learning in Natural Language Processing was the use of pre-trained word embeddings (...) in 2010 (Joseph, Lev, & Yoshua, 2010). Pre-trained models like ELMo (Matthew, et al., 2018) and BERT (Delvin, et al., 2019) are trained on large corpora of unlabeled text and as a result learning from text representations has achieved good performance on many of the underlying tasks on datasets from different domains. Pre-training in the language model has proven that there has been an improvement in some aspects of natural language processing, based on the paper (Dai & Le, 2015). In present paper, we will pre-train BERT on the task of Masked Language Modeling (MLM) with the Albanian language dataset (alb_dataset) that we have created for this purpose (Kryeziu et al., 2022). We will compare two approaches: training of BERT using the available OSCAR dataset and using our alb_dataset that we have collected. The paper shows some discrepancies during training, especially while evaluating the performance of the model. (shrink)

Aquaculture plays a significant role in both economic development and food production. Maintaining an ecological environment with good water quality is essential to ensure the production efficiency and quality of aquaculture. Effective management of water quality can prevent abnormal conditions and contribute significantly to food security. Detecting anomalies in the aquaculture environment is crucial to ensure that the environment is maintained correctly to meet healthy and proper requirements for fish farming. This article focuses on the use of deep learning techniques (...) to detect anomalies in water quality data in the aquaculture environment. Four deep learning anomaly detection techniques, including Autoencoder, Variational Autoencoder, Long-Short Term Memory Autoencoder, and Spectral-Residual Convolutional Neural Network, were analysed using multiple real-world sensor datasets collected from IoT aquaculture systems. Extensive experiments were conducted for temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH parameters, and the evaluation analysis revealed that the Long-Short Term Memory Autoencoder anomaly detection method showed promising results in detecting anomalies for the temperature and oxygen datasets, while the Spectral-Residual Convolutional Neural Network demonstrated the best performance on the pH datasets. (shrink)

In the last period, especially during the COVID-19 pandemics, individuals as well as institutions globally and in North Macedonia particularly, have failed to correctly respond to the new challenges related to cyber security, online attacks, and fake news. Being that in a state of isolation and quarantine most governmental institutions have heavily relied on online tools to communicate among each other and with the public, it is quite evident that they have not been well prepared to adopt new technologies. This (...) paper aims to bridge together the needs for technology during the COVID-19 pandemics versus the security challenges that many forget to mention. The primary focus of this paper is to elaborate on the security challenges associated with technology with several examples from incidents around the world and from North Macedonia. As such, it represents a perspective paper with focus on current and emerging advances on IT security for running the “new normal” world. (shrink)

Peer Assessment is a potentially promising pedagogical approach for enhancing the e-learning and supporting student self-regulated learning. The purpose of this paper is by reviewing the research on current trends on the use of ICT in Education, in particular on peer assessment in e-learning, to propose a new peer assessment methodology using the social media platforms in the digital environment. We conclude that a blended approach is more suitable as it is not possible to have a fully automatic peer assessment (...) methodology. The proposed online model needs to be subject of particular careful monitoring and evaluation from teachers. (shrink)

Choice experiment (CE) is a questionnaire based method that the accuracy of research questionnaire determines the validity of the research outcomes. Attribute selection has a prime importance in every CE studies. If respondents do not understand or do not have preference for a certain attribute, the attribute non-attendance problem might happen that biases overall results of the research. Qualitative approaches such as literature review, focus group discussion, and in depth discussion commonly applied in CE researches. However, especially in the developing (...) countries context where ethnical and cultural diversity is a challenge in conducting survey based questionnaires, qualitative methods are not sufficient in selecting attributes. Present study investigates the application of relative importance index (RII) in respondents¡¯ preference for attributes in a modal shift study in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The 5 point Likert scale questions were employed to enhance respondents¡¯ preferences for initial 24 selected attributes. The results of this study showed that from 24 pre-selected attributes, only 18 of them had RII>0.5 and could be included in the final CE design. The results of this study could help researchers to control for unobserved problems in selecting the attributes which could not be discovered through qualitative approaches. -/- . (shrink)

It was, until recently, accepted that the two classes of acetylcholine (ACh) receptors are distinct in an important sense: muscarinic ACh receptors signal via heterotrimeric GTP binding proteins (G proteins), whereas nicotinic ACh receptors (nAChRs) open to allow flux of Na+, Ca2+, and K+ ions into the cell after activation. Here we present evidence of direct coupling between G proteins and nAChRs in neurons. Based on proteomic, biophysical, and functional evidence, we hypothesize that binding to G proteins modulates the activity (...) and signaling of nAChRs in cells. It is important to note that while this hypothesis is new for the nAChR, it is consistent with known interactions between G proteins and structurally related ligand‐gated ion channels. Therefore, it underscores an evolutionarily conserved metabotropic mechanism of G protein signaling via nAChR channels.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

It was, until recently, accepted that the two classes of acetylcholine (ACh) receptors are distinct in an important sense: muscarinic ACh receptors signal via heterotrimeric GTP binding proteins (G proteins), whereas nicotinic ACh receptors (nAChRs) open to allow flux of Na+, Ca2+, and K+ ions into the cell after activation. Here we present evidence of direct coupling between G proteins and nAChRs in neurons. Based on proteomic, biophysical, and functional evidence, we hypothesize that binding to G proteins modulates the activity (...) and signaling of nAChRs in cells. It is important to note that while this hypothesis is new for the nAChR, it is consistent with known interactions between G proteins and structurally related ligand‐gated ion channels. Therefore, it underscores an evolutionarily conserved metabotropic mechanism of G protein signaling via nAChR channels.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

Language is a live organism and as every other living being develops and is enriched with new words and terms, which enter the life of society together with the new tool, i.e. they enter in and mix with the order of Albanian words. Such a thing is inevitable and in some cases even useful, but every word that is lined up in the order of Albanian words must be well filtered. “The introduction of new words and exclusion of old ones (...) is a natural process, and it happens in any language. This is what happened with the Greek borrowings in Latin, with the Arabic borrowings in Greek, with the Latin borrowings in many European languages, with the Persian borrowings in Turkish, with the Turkish borrowings in Albanian, etc.” - Prof. Hajri Shehu emphasizes in a scientific interview. In recent decades, with the expansion of the Internet, many foreign words began to enter and be used in the Albanian language. English took up more space than expected; in addition to penetrating through various tool notions, it also replaced centuries-old native words of Albanian. The paper has been divided into three parts and in each part an issue has been dealt with: the first part talks about the use of foreign words and the existing words in Albanian; the second part deals with the use of emoticons used instead of words and the third part deals with writing errors in the Albanian language. These are some of the issues that have created a great concern for the Albanian language in this century and they certainly need to be addressed seriously to prevent the dangers that may threaten it. (shrink)

This paper is a comparative study of two northern Nigerian Muslim societies (the Ebira in central Nigeria and the Hausa in the North-west) in which the youths contested religious traditionalists in the 20th century and in the process brought about transformation in their societies. In the religious sphere, which was hitherto considered an affair of the elderly, the youth have equally come to assume a dominant place, especially in their assertive activist posture. In these two case studies, the youths have (...) managed to assume leadership in religion and subsequently have used religion to transform and redefine their roles and status in the societies in a manner that challenged the existing norms. That could be seen as a tradition in the religious convention of the northern Nigerian area that occurs repeatedly through this period. In the 19th century, the Shehu Usmanu Danfodiyo and his cohorts in their youthfulness championed a reform and transformation that continue to inspire other reforms to date in the region. Religious actors in the contemporary Muslim societies of Nigeria are young men and women. It is important to note that these youths are people who possessed both Islamic and Western education and often have international networks and connections, largely through the educational institutions they have attended and/or literature they have studied. Among the Ebira, for instance, the youth subscribed to the religion of Islam, and converted their parents who largely professed African traditional religion to Islam. In Hausaland on the other hand, the youth, unlike the elderly, subscribed to “modern” rather than the “traditional” Islam that the latter do. In both cases therefore, the young engaged the elderly in a struggle to change their conception and practices of Islam. The process has had a tremendous impact on the relationship between the groups in an atmosphere being somehow defined or determined by the young adults in the two northern Nigerian societies being examined. (shrink)