Ethical Leadership and Employee Creative Performance: Discussing the mediating role of Employer Feedback Environment in Software Houses of Pakistan

Purpose: The basic purpose of this study was to explore employee creative performance, the contextual issues in the form of the leader’s style, and the feedback environment established by the leader in the Pakistani context. This study has presented a mechanism model for an understanding predictor of employee creative performance with the help of various theories. Methodology: Data was collected and analyzed from software houses registered in PSEB from 320 leader-employee dyads. Our research design was correlational. To reduce the common method biases, data was collected from two sources: leaders and their subordinates by sending the online questionnaire. To measure the uni-dimensionality and validity of construct EFA was performed through SPSS. Further, to assess the common method biases Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio (HTMT) was used. SEM was used to compute, analyze, and prove relationships of proposed hypotheses and model fitness. CFA was used to confirm the theoretical measurement model, on AMOS 24 by using the rotated factor analysis. Finding: To sustain in this era of the competitive global business environment, organizations can stimulate employee creative performance by focusing on contextual and subjective variables. As per the findings, contextual factors like feedback environment associated with the leader regarding his style should be ethical, have a vital position in an organization for improving creative performance among employees. Specifically, the current study owns its justification and contribution to the literature and practical implications in various ways. Conclusion: The study indicates that the ethical style of leadership has a strong positive (+) association with the creative performance of employees as well as with the employer feedback environment. Also the employer feedback environment has partial mediation among ethical leadership and employee creative performance

Ethical Leadership and Employee Creative Performance: Discussing the mediating role of Employer Feedback Environment in Software Houses of Pakistan

Purpose: The basic purpose of this study was to explore employee creative performance, the contextual issues in the form of the leader’s style, and the feedback environment established by the leader in the Pakistani context. This study has presented a mechanism model for an understanding predictor of employee creative performance with the help of various theories. Methodology: Data was collected and analyzed from software houses registered in PSEB from 320 leader-employee dyads. Our research design was correlational. To reduce the common method biases, data was collected from two sources: leaders and their subordinates by sending the online questionnaire. To measure the uni-dimensionality and validity of construct EFA was performed through SPSS. Further, to assess the common method biases Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio (HTMT) was used. SEM was used to compute, analyze, and prove relationships of proposed hypotheses and model fitness. CFA was used to confirm the theoretical measurement model, on AMOS 24 by using the rotated factor analysis. Finding: To sustain in this era of the competitive global business environment, organizations can stimulate employee creative performance by focusing on contextual and subjective variables. As per the findings, contextual factors like feedback environment associated with the leader regarding his style should be ethical, have a vital position in an organization for improving creative performance among employees. Specifically, the current study owns its justification and contribution to the literature and practical implications in various ways. Conclusion: The study indicates that the ethical style of leadership has a strong positive (+) association with the creative performance of employees as well as with the employer feedback environment. Also the employer feedback environment has partial mediation among ethical leadership and employee creative performance

Electronic Health (e-health) Literacy among Undergraduate University Students

E-health literacy refers to the knowledge of electronic resources and searching techniques that are required to obtain credible health information. E-health literacy can help the general population to search, acquire, appraise, use and interpret health-related information from electronic sources, as well as to be able to apply the gained information to address and solve health-related problems. A large scale cross-sectional survey was conducted to appraise the e-health literacy skills among undergraduate psychology students. The population of the study comprised of undergraduate psychology students enrolled in the public sector universities. A questionnaire was developed by conducting a thorough review of the relevant literature on e-health literacy and assessing the electronic health information seeking behaviour in the participating universities. The collected data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS-23) and presented in descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of the study concluded that majority of the respondents had moderate level of e-health literacy skills. The study recommended that the information professionals in the participating universities should play their effective role in promoting the e-health literacy among undergraduate psychology students through offering a structured program, having 02 credit hours, on e-health literacy skills

A privacy‐preserving framework for smart context‐aware healthcare applications

Internet of things (IoT) is a disruptive paradigm with wide ranging applications including healthcare, manufacturing, transportation and retail. Within healthcare, smart connected wearable devices are widely used to achieve improved wellbeing, quality of life and security of citizens. Such connected devices generate significant amount of data containing sensitive information about patient requiring adequate protection and privacy assurance. Unauthorized access to an individual’s private data constitutes a breach of privacy leading to catastrophic outcomes for an individuals personal and professional life. Furthermore, breach of privacy may also lead to financial loss to the governing body such as those proposed as part of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. Furthermore, while mobility afforded by smart devices enables ease of monitoring, portability and pervasive processing, it also introduces challenges with respect to scalability, reliability and context-awareness for its applications. This paper is focused on privacy preservation within smart context-aware healthcare with a special emphasis on privacy assurance challenges within the Electronic Transfer of Prescription (ETP). To this extent, we present a case for a comprehensive, coherent, and dynamic privacypreserving system for smart healthcare to protect sensitive user data. Based on a thorough analysis of existing privacy preservation models we propose an enhancement for the widely used Salford model to achieve privacy preservation against masquerading and impersonation threats. The proposed model therefore improves privacy assurance for cutting edge IoT applications such as smart healthcare whilst addressing unique challenges with respect to context-aware mobility of such applications

Intrusion damage assessment for multi-stage attacks for clouds

Clouds represent a major paradigm shift from contemporary systems, inspiring the contemporary approach to computing. They present fascinating opportunities to address dynamic user requirements with the provision of flexible computing infrastructures that are available on demand. Clouds, however, introducing novel challenges particularly with respect to security that require dedicated efforts to address them. This study is focused at one such challenge, that is, determining the extent of damage caused by an intrusion for a victim virtual machine. It has significant implications especially with respect to effective response to the intrusion. This study presents the efforts to address this challenge for Clouds in the form of a novel scheme for intrusion damage assessment for Clouds. In addition to its context-aware operation, the scheme facilitates protection against multi-stage attacks. The study also includes the formal specification and evaluation of the scheme, which successfully demonstrate its effectiveness to achieve rigorous damage assessment for Clouds

Void fraction of supersonic steam jet in subcooled water

For most operations in process, petroleum and power industries gas-liquid two phase flows occurs, so an accurate estimation of void fraction is vital because it affects the calculations of heat and mass transfer as well as hydrodynamics. Any inaccuracy in estimation may lead to drastic incidents along with heavy monetary loss. An effort has been made here to estimate the approximate void fraction of supersonic steam jet into the sub-cooled water. Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) has been used for the purpose along with the Electrical Impedance Tomography and Diffuse Optical Tomography Reconstruction Software (EIDORS) to generate the conductivity scans obtained by ERT setup. Before the experimentation, for further assurance on our void fraction estimations, the measurement system has been calibrated by securing scans of heated Teflon rod of diameter 6 mm, which is approximately having the same cross-sectional surface area as the steam jet have and reported in previous studies at the same hydrodynamic conditions. Images of supersonic steam jet in subcooled water have been processed by the help of EIDORS and image processing technique. The over estimation in void fraction of Teflon rod is ranging from 46.17 to 83.44% and when it is subtracted from the total void fraction of supersonic steam jet (46.51–83.79%) at steam inlet pressure of 1.5–3.0 bar and surrounding water temperature 30–60 °C respectively, the actual void fraction of Teflon rod comes out to be ranging from 0.34% to 0.35% of the total cross-sectional area of vessel. When these results are compared with the previous studies, a close agreement has been observed between these two sets of results

Performance analysis of content discovery for ad-hoc tactile networks

Tactile Internet evolves communications to encompass sensory information such as smell and haptic sensations combining ultra-low latency with extremely high availability, reliability, and security. Tactile Internet is realized through underpinning technologies such as Multi-access Edge and Fog computing which facilitate decentralized infrastructures and machine to machine (M2M) communications. Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) form the foundation layer of such infrastructures, enabling direct communication between autonomous and decentralized devices such as sensors and vehicles. Among other applications, autonomous ad hoc vehicular networks (VANETs) and vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications require efficient content discovery and quality of data transfer. The mobility patterns of vehicles within this communication model could effect the quality of data exchanged between devices in a tactile network. Several mobility models exist describing mobility patterns of mobile users in MANETs. In this paper, we present a first performance study to evaluate the impact of different mobility models on content discovery techniques for tactile Internet comprising of fast-moving vehicles and devices. This study combines direct and derived mobility metrics evaluating impact on content discovery and content dissemination using NS-3. Our simulation results indicate that unstructured techniques may not scale well within a tactile network of fast moving vehicles while maintaining low latency and could suffer from performance degradation in a saturated environment. Furthermore, simulation results also demonstrate the resilience of the unstructured content discovery protocol in mobility scenarios with proactive routing and diverse behavior

Efficacy of Insecticides against Fall Armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae) in Maize

Fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is most destructive specie of genus Spodoptera for several agricultural crops. In Pakistan\u27s Sindh province, the invasive fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda was first documented causing serious maize damage in 2019. There is need to develop management strategies against this pest in the country. The current study was conducted to check the toxicity of different insecticides against FAW in maize field. The results showed among tested insecticides, deltamethrin was recorded most toxic insecticide followed by chlorantraniliprole and emamectin benzoate. At 1d days after first spray, least number of larvae were recorded with deltamethrin (0.07 larvae/plant), chlorantraniliprole (0.11d larvae/plant) and emamectin benzoate (0.13 larvae/plant). After three days application of first spray, significantly a minimum number of larvae were recorded with deltamethrin (1.11bcd larvae/plant) chlorantraniliprole (1.13d larvae/plant) and emamectin benzoate (1.17d larvae/plant). The maximum and minimum population of larvae was recorded at 1st day of first spray and 14 days of spray, respectively. The least number of larvae were recorded at 14 days of second spray. At 14 days after 2nd spray, 0.07ab, 0.10e and 0.10de larvae per plant were recorded with deltamethrin, chlorantraniliprole and emamectin benzoate, respectively

A novel mutation in GRK1 causes Oguchi disease in a consanguineous Pakistani family

Contains fulltext : 76070.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify the underlying molecular genetic defect in a large consanguineous Pakistani family with Oguchi disease who had been given a diagnosis of autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa. METHODS: The family was genotyped with the Affymetrix 10K single nucleotide polymorphism array. Fine-mapping of a common homozygous region on chromosome 13q was performed using fluorescent microsatellite markers. Mutation analysis was done by direct sequencing of the candidate gene GRK1 located in the region. The segregation of a novel mutation in the family and the frequency of the identified mutation in the Pakistani population were determined by StuI RFLP analysis. RESULTS: Genetic mapping supported the diagnosis of typical Oguchi disease in a Pakistani family and also resulted in the identification of a novel nonsense mutation (c.614C>A; p.S205X) in exon 1 of GRK1. This mutation is predicted to result in premature termination of the protein product, thereby affecting the phototransduction cascade. A clinical reappraisal of the family revealed that all patients homozygous for this variant had Oguchi disease. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first report to describe a mutation causing typical Oguchi disease in a large consanguineous Pakistani family. This mutation segregated in eight affected members.6 p