REVISITING THE ENIGMA OF WORKING CAPITAL, PROFITABILITY AND RISK: EVIDENCE FROM PAKISTAN

This study investigates the relationship between working capital management and firm profitability. We incorporate moderating effect of systematic and unsystematic risk to ascertain the impact of risk on working capital decisions. The study uses secondary data of 244 listed non-financial firms over 10 years from 2009 to 2018. The findings reveal that inventory turnover, receivable collection period and cash conversion cycle negatively influence firm performance. However, accounts payable period has significant and positive effect on firm performance. Systematic risk negatively moderates the relationship between accounts payable period and return on assets and positively moderates relationship among accounts collection period, cash conversion cycle and return on assets. Unsystematic risk has insignificant effect on the relationship between working capital and profitability

REVISITING THE ENIGMA OF WORKING CAPITAL, PROFITABILITY AND RISK: EVIDENCE FROM PAKISTAN

This study investigates the relationship between working capital management and firm profitability. We incorporate moderating effect of systematic and unsystematic risk to ascertain the impact of risk on working capital decisions. The study uses secondary data of 244 listed non-financial firms over 10 years from 2009 to 2018. The findings reveal that inventory turnover, receivable collection period and cash conversion cycle negatively influence firm performance. However, accounts payable period has significant and positive effect on firm performance. Systematic risk negatively moderates the relationship between accounts payable period and return on assets and positively moderates relationship among accounts collection period, cash conversion cycle and return on assets. Unsystematic risk has insignificant effect on the relationship between working capital and profitability

EFFECTS OF FUND ATTRIBUTES ON FUND RETURN: AN ANALYSIS OF CLOSE-END MUTUAL FUNDS OF PAKISTAN

Mutual funds have become an attractive investment option particularly for small investors to diversify their portfolio. The aim of this study is to explore the determinants of close ended mutual funds return in Pakistan. For this purpose secondary data is used from 2007-2013. Multiple regression analysis is carried out to measure the determinants (fund size, liquidity, expense ratio and fund turnover) of fund return. The findings of the study revealed that expense ratio and fund turnover significantly influences the return of the fund. Moreover, fund size is positively related to fund return whereas expense ratio, fund turnover and liquidity are inversely related to fund return

DOES WORKING CAPITAL MANAGEMENT AFFECT CORPORATE PROFITABILITY?

Managing working capital efficiently and effectively is critical for modern organizations as it directly affects firm’s profitability, liquidity and riskiness. A vast majority of empirical studies have focused on developed countries whereas in case of developing countries like Pakistan it is somewhat under researched. The economy of Pakistan is passing through challenging times with rising inflation, energy crisis, poor law and order etc. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to investigate whether working capital policies adopted by listed organizations within the sugar industry of Pakistan (PSX) are efficient or not in these challenging conditions and what kind of effect (positive or negative) they have on the profitability of the firm. Data from 2006 to 2015 was collected for this study and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) technique was used to analyse the effect of working capital management on firm profitability. Empirical results of the study show that all four components of working capital used in this study have statistically significant and negative relationship with firm’s profitability.Â

FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF METFORMIN HCL RELEASE FROM TOPICAL PREPARATION USING TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF MEMBRANE

Objective: Present study was carried to formulate and evaluate the transdermal ointment containing the metformin HCl active ingredient and to assess their Physicochemical studies. Methods: Metformin HCl ointment was prepared with various thymol oil concentrations. Ointments were assessed with different characterizations; Physical appearance, viscosity, pH, drug content, Consistency, homogeneity, consistency. Differential scanning calorimetry analysis, XRD studies. It was used in vitro via using Franz cells along with the use of two membranes i.e. Nylon and cellulose membrane. Results: SEM and XRD studies showed that there were no physical and chemical interactions between excipients and drug. All the formulations showed good physicochemical characteristics. The formulation showed different releases. It was observed that nylon had better release properties as compared to cellulose. Conclusion: In the study conducted here, it was observed that Nylon membrane showed better discriminating power to compare among the formulation. This indicates that it has gotten prime importance to watch the effect of the membrane upon the release pattern of the various formulations. In order to improve the formulation, we can use in vitro diffusion cell experiments of transdermal drug delivery

EFFECTS OF FUND ATTRIBUTES ON FUND RETURN: AN ANALYSIS OF CLOSE-END MUTUAL FUNDS OF PAKISTAN

Mutual funds have become an attractive investment option particularly for small investors to diversify their portfolio. The aim of this study is to explore the determinants of close ended mutual funds return in Pakistan. For this purpose secondary data is used from 2007-2013. Multiple regression analysis is carried out to measure the determinants (fund size, liquidity, expense ratio and fund turnover) of fund return. The findings of the study revealed that expense ratio and fund turnover significantly influences the return of the fund. Moreover, fund size is positively related to fund return whereas expense ratio, fund turnover and liquidity are inversely related to fund return

Towards SDN-based smart contract solution for IoT access control

Access control is essential for the IoT environment to ensure that only approved and trusted parties are able to configure devices, access sensor information, and command actuators to execute activities. The IoT ecosystem is subject to various access control complications due to the limited latency between IoT devices and the Internet, low energy requirements of IoT devices, the distributed framework, ad-hoc networks, and an exceptionally large number of heterogeneous IoT devices that need to be managed. The motivation for this proposed work is to resolve the incurring challenges of IoT associated with management and access control security. Each IoT domain implementation has particular features and needs separate access control policies to be considered in order to design a secure solution. This research work aims to resolve the intricacy of policies management, forged policies, dissemination, tracking of access control policies, automation, and central management of IoT nodes and provides a trackable and auditable access control policy management system that prevents forged policy dissemination by applying Software Defined Network (SDN) and blockchain technology in an IoT environment. Integration of SDN and blockchain provides a robust solution for IoT environment security. Recently, smart contracts have become one of blockchain technology’s most promising applications. The integration of smart contracts with blockchain technology provides the capability of designing tamper-proof and independently verifiable policies. In this paper, we propose a novel, scalable solution for implementing immutable, verifiable, adaptive, and automated access control policies for IoT devices together with a successful proof of concept that demonstrates the scalability of the proposed solution. The performance of the proposed solution is evaluated in terms of throughput and resource access delay between the blockchain component and the controller as well as from node to node. The number of nodes in the IoT network and the number of resource access requests were independently and systematically increased during the evaluations. The results illustrate that the resource access delay and throughput were affected neither linearly nor exponentially; hence, the proposed solution shows no significant degradation in performance with an increase in the number of nodes and/or requests

DOES WORKING CAPITAL MANAGEMENT AFFECT CORPORATE PROFITABILITY?

Managing working capital efficiently and effectively is critical for modern organizations as it directly affects firm’s profitability, liquidity and riskiness. A vast majority of empirical studies have focused on developed countries whereas in case of developing countries like Pakistan it is somewhat under researched. The economy of Pakistan is passing through challenging times with rising inflation, energy crisis, poor law and order etc. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to investigate whether working capital policies adopted by listed organizations within the sugar industry of Pakistan (PSX) are efficient or not in these challenging conditions and what kind of effect (positive or negative) they have on the profitability of the firm. Data from 2006 to 2015 was collected for this study and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) technique was used to analyse the effect of working capital management on firm profitability. Empirical results of the study show that all four components of working capital used in this study have statistically significant and negative relationship with firm’s profitability.

Comparison of casting versus elastic nail for the treatment of pediatric tibial diaphyseal fractures

Objective: To assess outcomes of Titanium elastic nail (regarding radiologic union, a discrepancy of limb length, malalignment, pain and complications) in treating pediatric tibial fractures in comparison with the traditional Casting method.Methodology: This randomized controlled trial study was conducted in Department of Orthopaedics, Shaikh Zayed Hospital, Lahore through emergency /Outdoor patient department from May 2018 to Feb 2019. The total number of patients were categorized into two groups, 14 each group. In Group A, patients underwent treatment by elastic nails and patients in group B, underwent treatment with cast method. Post op X-Rays (serial) were done and Leg length inequality, Malalignment, pain and radiological union were assessed radiologically. Follow up of the patients was done in the outpatient department of Orthopaedic department after 1,3 and 6 months. The comparison for this among both groups was done by using Chi-square test. P value ≤ 0.05 was considered significant.Results: The mechanism of injury was statistically same in both groups, p-value > 0.05. In group-A, 7(50.0%) cases had Transverse, 4(28.6%) had Oblique and 3(21.4%) cases had comminuted fracture while in group-B there were 5(35.7%) cases who had Transverse, 2(14.3%) had Spiral, 4(28.6%) cases had Oblique and 3(21.4%) cases had Comminuted fracture, p-value > 0.05. In both groups, the leg length inequality, frequency of malalignment, pain severity and complications were statistically same, p-value was > 0.05.Conclusion: Similar outcomes of Titanium elastic intramedullary nailing as compared to cast application in terms of bone union, alignment and infection rates