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The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the nature of smoothing returns practices in a sample of 79 Islamic banks across 19 countries during the period 2001‐2006.

Previous researchers' methods, based on the variation and determination coefficients, are used in this study to detect the smoothing practices.

Results indicate that the revenues from the “Shariah‐based products” derived from the profit and loss sharing principle show higher variability than the “Shariah compliant revenues” and that income from this source is relatively lower. They also show that a large number of Islamic banks engage in natural income smoothing. Based on the determination coefficient results, 70 per cent of banks were found to have less smoothed total revenue than their net income. Results based on variation coefficient further confirm this finding, with 67 banks having a coefficient of total revenue higher than that of the net income.

The results suggest that Islamic banks should strengthen the use of smoothing techniques, such as the profit equalization reserves (PER) and the investment risk reserves (IRR), as they allow them to further stabilize the revenues payout for the investment account holders (IAH) and therefore mitigate withdrawal risk. Standardizing the smoothing techniques could be a solution to overcome the variability of this category of revenue.

This work is the first of its kind for Islamic banks. It extends previous research by examining whether or not managers may smooth their results naturally or intentionally. It also helped to bridge the gap in the literature by providing the empirical evidence on the smoothing returns in Islamic finance.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the practice of income smoothing in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) emerging markets; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar. Then, to examine the impact of income smoothing on the earnings quality to decide whether income smoothing can serve as either a tool to enhance earnings quality or a tool for opportunistic behavior. Audit quality and corporate governance as additional factors are considered in this study.

The study methodology measures income smoothing behavior based on the coefficient of variation method. Earnings quality is measured as an outcome of the explained variations in stock returns by earnings based on the efficient market hypothesis. Audit quality is measured based on brand as higher quality assigned to auditor from any of the Big 4, while the corporate governance is addressed based on the extent of governmental ownership. The initial study sample comprises 55 companies over a ten year period, from 1999 to 2008; the final sample represents approximately 64 percent of the industrial sector that have public data during the study.

The results suggest that income smoothing behavior in the GCC markets has many variations in practice. Income smoothing, on average, improves earnings quality in three countries out of four, but not significantly for the whole sample based on earnings level. The earnings changes model demonstrated a positive and significant impact of income smoothing on earnings quality. Audit quality and earnings quality have a positive relationship within the region, and companies dominated by the government perform well in accordance with the earnings-return model.

The study is limited to the industrial sector of the GCC.

The study opens the door to future applications to other sectors within the GCC, same sectors and other sectors for Middle East countries and other emerging markets.

The study may foster a better understanding of accounting practices in the GCC and Middle East. The study reveals variations in different aspects among GCC countries, this matter should be considered in separate studies across different areas.

The study makes an original contribution to being the first to explore this topic in the GCC. Additionally, this study shows that the GCC markets have different characteristics in the practice and impact of income smoothing on earnings’ quality. Further, audit quality and corporate governance was investigated for each country and for the region, in addition to the interaction between these factors with the income smoothing and earnings quality.

Due to the inability to directly apply an intra-oral image with esthetic restoration to restore tooth shape in the computer-aided design system, this paper aims to propose a method that can use two-dimensional contours obtained from the image for the three-dimensional dental mesh model restoration.

First, intra-oral image and smiling image are taken from the patient, then teeth shapes of the images are designed based on esthetic restoration concepts and the pixel coordinates of the teeth’s contours are converted into the vertex coordinates in the three-dimensional space. Second, the dental mesh model is divided into three parts – active part, passive part and fixed part – based on the teeth’s contours of the mesh model. Third, the vertices from the teeth’s contours of the dental model are matched with ones from the intra-oral image and with the help of matching operation, the target coordinates of each vertex in the active part can be calculated. Finally, the Laplacian-based deformation algorithm and mesh smoothing algorithm are performed.

Benefitting from the proposed method, the dental mesh model with esthetic restoration can be quickly obtained based on the intra-oral image that is the result of doctor-patient communication. Experimental results show that the quality of restoration meets clinical needs, and the typical time cost of the method is approximately one second. So the method is both time-saving and user-friendly.

The method provides the possibility to design personalized dental esthetic restoration solutions rapidly.

The purpose of this paper is to study earnings management practices of Islamic banks and conventional banks in the Middle East region. First, the authors examine factors that may influence Islamic banks managers' use of discretion in reporting loan loss provisions (LLP). Second, the authors investigate differences that may exist between Islamic banks and non-Islamic banks in terms of discretionary loan loss provisions (DLLP) used to manipulate accounting earnings.

This empirical study uses an unbalanced panel data of 21 Islamic banks, 18 conventional banks with Islamic windows and 33 conventional banks, from seven Middle East countries during a period that ranges from 2000 to 2008. The authors use a two-stage approach in order to examine factors that may influence the use of discretion by Islamic banks' managers.

The empirical results reveal that Islamic banks use DLLP for both earnings and capital management. External financing is also found to be a determinant of DLLP. Additional findings show no significant differences among Islamic banks, conventional banks with Islamic windows and conventional banks in using DLLP. These three groups of banks behave similarly in terms of discretion based on DLLP.

The findings are potentially useful for regulators, auditors and investors. This study provides regulators with insights to strengthen their financial regulations in order to improve accounting quality. In addition, it helps auditors when considering the provisioning policies adopted by banks in order to detect specific manipulations of accounting earnings. The results may also help investors to focus on the impact of managerial discretion on accounting earnings for evaluation purposes.

This study contributes to the literature on Islamic banking. On the one hand, it extends prior research by examining the discretionary component of LLP, instead of being restricted to total LLP. On the other hand, it compares the use of discretion among three groups of banks: full Islamic banks, conventional banks with Islamic windows and full conventional banks.

The purpose of this paper is to present an efficient algorithm for multi-layer garment fitting simulation based on the geometric method to solve the low time cost problem during penetration detection and processing. This is more practical to design a CAD system to preview the multi-layer garment fitting effect in daily life.

The construction of a multi-layer garment based on existing 3D garments is a suitable method because this method is similar to the daily method of multi-layer dressing. The major problem is the penetration phenomenon between different garments because these 3D garment’s geometric shapes are constructed in different situations. In this paper, an efficient algorithm of multi-layer garment simulation is reported. A face-face intersection detection algorithm is designed to detect the penetration region between multi-layer garments fast and a geometric penetration processing algorithm is presented to solve the penetration phenomenon during multi-layer garment simulation.

This method can quickly detect the penetration between faces, and then deal with the penetration for multi-layer garment construction. Experimental results show that this method can not only remove the penetration but basically maintain the trend of wrinkles efficiently. At the same time, the garments used in the experiment have almost more than 5,800 faces, but the resolving time is under five seconds.

The main originalities of the multi-layer garment virtual fitting algorithm based on the geometric method are highly efficient both in terms of time cost and fitting effect. Based on this method, the technology of multi-layer garment virtual fitting can be used to design a novel CAD system to preview the multi-layer garment fitting effect in real time. This is a pressing requirement of virtual garment applications.

This paper aims to deal with the problem of programming robots in industrial contexts, where the need of easy programming is increasing, while robustness and safety remain fundamental aspects.

A novel approach of robot programming can be identified with the manual guidance that permits to the operator to freely move the robot through its task; the task can then be taught using Programming by Demonstration methods or simple reproduction.

In this work, the different ways to achieve manual guidance are discussed and an implementation using a force/torque sensor is provided. Experimental results and a use case are also presented.

The use case shows how this methodology can be used with an industrial robot. An implementation in industrial contexts should be adjusted accordingly to ISO safety standards as described in the paper.

This paper presents a complete state-of-the-art of the problem and shows a real practical use case where the approach presented could be used to speed up the teaching process.

Modeling of multi-phase flows for Rayleigh-Taylor instability and natural convection in a square cavity has been investigated using an incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (ISPH) technique. In this technique, incompressibility is enforced by using SPH projection method and a stabilized incompressible SPH method by relaxing the density invariance condition is applied. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The Rayleigh-Taylor instability is introduced in two and three phases by using ISPH method. The author simulated natural convection in a square/cubic cavity using ISPH method in two and three dimensions. The solutions represented in temperature, vertical velocity and horizontal velocity have been studied with different values of Rayleigh number Ra parameter (103=Ra=105). In addition, characteristic based scheme in Finite Element Method is introduced for modeling the natural convection in a square cavity.

The results for Rayleigh-Taylor instability and natural convection flow had been compared with the previous researches.

Modeling of multi-phase flows for Rayleigh-Taylor instability and natural convection in a square cavity has been investigated using an ISPH technique. In ISPH method, incompressibility is enforced by using SPH projection method and a stabilized incompressible SPH method by relaxing the density invariance condition is introduced. The Rayleigh-Taylor instability is introduced in two and three phases by using ISPH method. The author simulated natural convection in a square/cubic cavity using ISPH method in two and three dimensions.

This paper aims to conduct numerical simulations of unsteady natural/mixed convection in a cavity with fixed and moving rigid bodies and different boundary conditions using the incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (ISPH) method.

In the ISPH method, the pressure evaluation is stabilized by including both of divergence of velocity and density invariance in solving pressure Poisson equation. The authors prevented the particles anisotropic distributions by using the shifting technique.

The proposed ISPH method exhibited good performance in natural/mixed convection in a cavity with fixed, moving and free-falling rigid body. In natural convection, the authors investigated the effects of an inner sloshing baffle as well as fixed and moving circular cylinders on the heat transfer and fluid flow. The heated baffle has higher effects on the heat transfer rate compared to a cooled baffle. In the mixed convection, a free-falling circular cylinder over a free surface cavity and heat transfer in the presence of a circular cylinder in a lid-driven cavity are simulated. Fixed or moving rigid body in a cavity results in considerable effects on the heat transfer rate and fluid flow.

The authors conducted numerical simulations of unsteady natural/mixed convection in a cavity with fixed and moving rigid bodies and different boundary conditions using the ISPH method.

A study on heat and mass transfer behavior for an anisotropic porous medium embedded in square cavity/annulus is conducted using incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (ISPH) method. In the case of square cavity, the left wall has hot temperature T_h and mass C_h and the right wall have cool temperature T_c and mass C_c and both of the top and bottom walls are adiabatic. While in the case of square annulus, the inner surface wall is considered to have a cool temperature T_c and mass C_c while the outer surface is exposed to a hot temperature T_h and mass C_h. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The governing partial differential equations are transformed to non-dimensional governing equations and are solved using ISPH method. The results present the influences of the Dufour and Soret effects on the fluid flow and heat and mass transfer.

The effects of various physical parameters such as Darcy parameter, permeability ratio, inclination angle of permeability and Rayleigh numbers on the temperature and concentration profiles together with the local Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are presented graphically. The results from the current ISPH method are well-validated and have favorable comparisons with previously published results and solutions by the finite volume method.

A study on heat and mass transfer behavior on an anisotropic porous medium embedded in square cavity/annulus is conducted using Incompressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (ISPH) method. In the ISPH algorithm, a semi-implicit velocity correction procedure is utilized, and the pressure is implicitly evaluated by solving pressure Poisson equation (PPE). The evaluated pressure has been improved by relaxing the density invariance condition to formulate a modified PPE.

There is a growing literature in nonparametric econometrics in the recent two decades. Given the space limitation, it is impossible to survey all the important recent developments in nonparametric econometrics. Therefore, we choose to limit our focus on the following areas. In Section 2, we review the recent developments of nonparametric estimation and testing of regression functions with mixed discrete and continuous covariates. We discuss nonparametric estimation and testing of econometric models for nonstationary data in Section 3. Section 4 is devoted to surveying the literature of nonparametric instrumental variable (IV) models. We review nonparametric estimation of quantile regression models in Section 5. In Sections 2–5, we also point out some open research problems, which might be useful for graduate students to review the important research papers in this field and to search for their own research interests, particularly dissertation topics for doctoral students. Finally, in Section 6 we highlight some important research areas that are not covered in this paper due to space limitation. We plan to write a separate survey paper to discuss some of the omitted topics.