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An empirical model for root cause analysis in the audit profession
No full textAudit firms conduct root cause analysis (RCA) to learn from errors and enhance future processes. This study aims to improve the effectiveness of these efforts by introducing a root cause taxonomy that categorizes underlying causes and develops a common language within the audit profession. Developed empirically and validated with data from an audit firm in the Netherlands, spanning from 2021 to 2024, the taxonomy includes six categories: Strategy and policy; Systems and procedures; Knowledge and understanding; Time and capacity; Human factors; and Client matters. Our findings reveal that the root causes frequently manifest in conjunction with one another rather than in isolation, indicating interdependencies. While the list of root causes is not exhaustive, this taxonomy offers a structured approach that can enhance consistency within the RCA practice
A new species of Thibaudia (Ericaceae, Vaccinieae) from the Cordillera del Cóndor in Ecuador
No full textThe neotropical genus Thibaudia Ruiz & Pav. ex J.St.-Hil. (Ericaceae), comprises about 70–75 species and is distributed from Honduras in Central America, through the central Andes south to Bolivia, and eastward to Suriname and Brazil in South America. Ecuador is one of the countries with the greatest diversity of the genus, including 18 species, 12 of which are endemic. Within southeastern Ecuador, the Cordillera del Cóndor is a region characterized by exceptionally high levels of plant endemism, largely due to its unique geology. Recent botanical explorations across this area have led to the discovery of several new species in recent years. Among those was a peculiar species of Thibaudia that is distinct by having exclusively cauliflorous inflorescences in which the pedicel is articulated with the calyx and the filaments are connate. This species is here described and illustrated as Thibaudia shagmiana sp. nov.A new species, Thibaudia shagmiana, is described from the Cordillera del Cóndor in eastern Ecuador. It is distinguished by having a scrambling habit, provided with lignotubers, lanceolate leaves that are verticillate at the apex of branches, solitary and glabrous flowers, caducous bracts and bracteoles, stamens shorter than the corolla, anthers with prognathous thecae, and laterally connate tubules. The taxonomic similarities of the new species are discussed, and information about its distribution, habitat, and conservation is provided
Detection of Hedyotis corymbosa (L.) Lam. in traditional Chinese medicine Hedyotis diffusa Willd. with the Proofman-LMTIA method
No full textThere is increasing demand for the traditional Chinese medicine Hedyotis diffusa Willd. due to its effectiveness in treating hepatitis and malignant tumors of the liver, lung, and stomach. Hedyotis corymbosa (L.) Lam. has commonly become an adulterant of H. diffusa Willd. The proofreading enzyme-mediated probe cleavage coupled with ladder-shape melting temperature isothermal amplification (Proofman-LMTIA) can specifically and sensitively detect nucleic acids. In this study, the Proofman-LMTIA method was established to identify H. corymbosa (L.) Lam. for quality control of the traditional Chinese medicine Hedyotis diffusa Willd. The LMTIA primers and Proofman probe were designed using the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) of H. corymbosa (L.) Lam. as the target. The reaction temperature was optimized, and the specificity and sensitivity were determined. The repeatability and reliability were also assessed. The optimal reaction temperature of the Proofman-LMTIA method was 61 °C. The method demonstrated high specificity, repeatability, reliability, and sensitivity, with amplification completed within 20 min and a detection limit of 10 pg/μL genomic H. corymbosa (L.) Lam. This study successfully established a Proofman-LMTIA method for the detection of H. corymbosa (L.) Lam., providing an effective approach to distinguish authentic from adulterated traditional Chinese medicine
Enhancing Chatbot Responses through Improved T5 Model Incorporating Aggregated Multi-Head Attention Mechanism and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory
No full textArtificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots have become indispensable for natural language interaction, with transformer-based models driving advances in conversational agent (CA) systems. While state-of-the-art models like RoBERTa, ALSI-Transformer, MEDN-Transformer, SG-Net Transformer, BART, and GPT-3 have achieved remarkable context understanding and response generation, they still face limitations. These include challenges with context retention over extended interactions, syntactic ambiguities, and bias propagation from training data, raising concerns for ethical and interpretable AI systems. This research proposes an advanced transformer model, the Improved T5 (IT5), designed to address these issues. IT5 integrates Aggregated Multi-Head Attention (AMHA) and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) into the T5 framework to improve context retention, response nuance, and bias reduction. Additionally, a retraining mechanism updates IT5’s knowledge base with every 50 new question-answer pairs, ensuring fairness and relevance in chatbot responses. The model's performance was rigorously tested on the NarrativeQA, SQuAD, MS MARCO, and InsuranceQA datasets, where IT5 achieved top BLEU scores of 0.7533, 0.7012, 0.7155, and 0.7373, respectively. It consistently demonstrated lower WER scores of 0.1957, 0.2106, 0.2254, and 0.1953, and higher ROUGE-L scores of 0.8875, 0.8991, 0.8731, and 0.8933 across these datasets. IT5 also exceeded in accuracy (0.98, 0.97, 0.96, 0.97), precision (0.96, 0.98, 0.97, 0.96), recall (0.95, 0.96, 0.97, 0.98), and F1 scores (0.95, 0.98, 0.96, 0.96), surpassing six state-of-the-art models, namely RoBERTa, ALSI-Transformer, MEDN-Transformer, SG-Net Transformer, BART, and GPT-3. The findings demonstrate IT5’s superior ability to generate meaningful, fair, and high-quality responses, establishing it as a frontrunner for robust and ethical conversational AI across various applications
Taxonomy, phylogeny, and bioactive potential of Xylariales (Sordariomycetes, Ascomycota) from Thailand: novel species discovery, new host and geographical records, and antibacterial properties
No full textXylariales (Sordariomycetes, Ascomycota) comprise a wide range of species that exhibit considerable variation in stromatic characteristics, including conspicuous to inconspicuous perithecia and unitunicate asci. Most known species are endophytes and saprobes, recognized for producing secondary metabolites of fundamental importance in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The main objectives of this study were to identify novel species, document new host and geographical records within the families Diatrypaceae, Hypoxylaceae, and Xylariaceae in northern and central Thailand, and explore the bioactive properties of secondary metabolites produced by selected Xylariales species. Taxa were identified through morphological examination, supported by phylogenetic analyses using maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference based on LSU, ITS, rpb2, and β-tub gene sequences. These taxa are accompanied by comprehensive descriptions and illustrations. Xylariales cultures were screened for preliminary antibacterial activity against the bacterial pathogens Bacillus subtilis (Gram-positive) and Escherichia coli (Gram-negative). Based on the screening results, two newly introduced species (Annulohypoxylon chiangraiense and Hypoxylon thailandicum) and two known species (Xylaria chrysanthum and Daldinia eschscholtzii), which exhibited antibacterial activity, were selected for secondary metabolite extraction. Crude extracts from these isolates were chemically profiled using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and Q-TOF analyses, revealing a variety of potential compounds. The present study enhances our understanding of the taxonomic diversity and bioactive potential of Xylariales by introducing five new species, reporting nine new host records—including one new geographical record—and evaluating the bioactive properties of selected Xylariales cultures
A mobile trackball system for studying phonotaxis of insects in the field
No full textHere we introduce a mobile trackball system for measuring phonotactic behaviour of insects in the field. The trackball system allows generating quantitative behavioural data in the field. Experiments for determination of the phonotactic threshold of two insect species of a parasitoid-host system proofed the utility and usability of this method. The threshold of the parasitoid fly Emblemasoma auditrix (Shewell, 1976) in response to the calling song of the host cicada Okanagana rimosa (Say, 1830) could be confirmed with 61 dB SPL. The behavioural threshold of female cicadas O. rimosa could be determined for the first time to 62 dB SPL. Thus, the mobile system allowed testing of the cicada in the field, which was not possible in laboratory environment. Generally, it was possible to test animals that exhibit certain behaviours only outdoors and to test intact animals and to release them immediately after completion of the experiment. With this method, it will also be possible to test animals under real environmental conditions, for example, in respect to noise
Three new species of the genus Parandes Muir, 1925 (Hemiptera, Fulgoromorpha, Cixiidae) from China, with an updated checklist and key to species
No full textThree new species of the genus Parandes Muir, 1925 (Hemiptera, Fulgoromorpha, Cixiidae, Andini), P. elongatus Lv & Chen, sp. nov., P. guangxiensis Lv & Chen, sp. nov. and P. hamatus Lv & Chen, sp. nov., are described and illustrated from Southwest China (Yunnan and Guangxi) to give the genus six species in total. An updated identification key and checklist to all known species of Parandes are provided, as well as a map of their geographic distributions
A new species, Didymoglossum radiatum (Hymenophyllaceae), and two new records with note to the genus Didymoglossum Desv. from Thailand
No full textDuring the filmy fern (Hymenophyllaceae) diversity study in Thailand, the genus Didymoglossum was investigated using morphological data and molecular phylogenetic analyses of the chloroplast rbcL region. This study revealed a new species, Didymoglossum radiatum S.Chokrassameehirun, Kraichak & Jaruwatt., sp. nov., which is currently known only from peninsular Thailand. This taxon resembles D. tahitense in possessing peltate fronds but differs in frond size, the structure of false veinlets, and the appearance of its sori. The phylogenetic results further confirmed the distinct phylogenetic positions of D. henzaianum and D. mindorense, which were also newly recorded and described for Thailand
Invasive mosquitofish impact a threatened toothcarp through water quality impairment and resource competition
No full textInvasive non-native species are an important cause of biodiversity loss, particularly in fresh waters. The mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki are among the world’s worst invasive species: they have caused extirpations of native species and are known to sometimes cause trophic cascades and ecosystem effects. This invasive species is also known to impact threatened fishes such as the Spanish toothcarp (Aphanius iberus), which is endemic to Mediterranean Spain. However, it is unclear if the impact of mosquitofish on many fishes is more through resource competition, agonistic interactions or predation, and how often mosquitofish cause trophic cascades. To clarify these questions, we performed a 48-day mesocosm experiment in eutrophic conditions to test for interspecific effects and clarify the impact mechanism using six treatments: the two fish species alone each at two densities, and the two fish species mixed or separated with a net that prevented direct interactions among them. We observed clear fish treatment effects on several variables. At low initial fish densities, the population growth rate of mosquitofish was orders of magnitude greater than that of the Spanish toothcarp, likely contributing to its invasive success and ecological impact. At high fish densities, turbidity, chlorophyll a concentration and daytime dissolved oxygen percentage increased, whereas total phosphorus decreased; crucially, the trophic cascade caused by mosquitofish was stronger than that by toothcarp. The experiment also demonstrated that the interspecific effects of mosquitofish on toothcarp were more important than those of intraspecific competition. The invasive species produced effects on population growth rate, size structure, and fish condition (mass-length relationship) of toothcarp. Effects on population growth rate of toothcarp seem more caused by resource competition, whereas impacts on size structure and condition seem also caused by more direct interactions. The diversity of effects of mosquitofish underscores the difficulty of predicting the impact of invasive species. Our study further provides an approach to differentiate the effects of resource competition from other more direct ecological interactions and so to clarify the impact mechanism of aquatic invasive species
The role of pharmacists in asthma management: patient opinions and expectations in North Macedonia
No full textThis study aimed to assess patients’ perceptions of inhaler technique education and the pharmacist’s role in asthma care in North Macedonia. A cross-sectional survey was conducted from July to September 2024 at the University Clinic for Pulmonology and Allergology in Skopje, involving 187 adult asthma patients. Most participants (69%) reported adherence to therapy, but 13.9% had never received inhaler training, and only 27.3% had been instructed by a pharmacist. While 96.3% expressed interest in pharmacist counseling on medications, only 48.7% were open to pharmacist-led inhaler training. Significant associations were found between adherence and both gender (p = 0.040) and inhaler training. These findings suggest limited awareness of the pharmacist’s clinical role. Expanding pharmacist-led education in community pharmacies and fostering collaboration with physicians could improve asthma outcomes and promote more effective use of healthcare resources