63 research outputs found
The strategic role of GCC Islamic banks in Malaysia: a knowledge transfer perspective
The recent trend in the field of strategic management has been to emphasize the role of knowledge management as a basis of the competitive advantage of organizations. Historically, the searches for MNCs performance have been oriented around that knowledge is power. In organizations, this expression has become even more relevant than other social settings. Knowledge is a major factor that differentiates successful organizations from the unsuccessful ones. This study aims to investigate the strategic role in knowledge transfer, as well as to review the effect of strategic role as the constituent factor of knowledge transfer which contributes to the success of Islamic banking and financial knowledge performance in GCC Islamic banks subsidiaries in Malaysia. The data were collected through sending out questionnaires to 5 leaders of Upper Managers in GCC Islamic banks in Malaysia, administered 2-items of strategic roles namely: Contributor and Implementer. The respondents’ answers were subjected to SPSS. After that, semi-structured interviews were conducted with respondents. The results indicated that there is positive and significant influence of strategic leadership on knowledge transfer process. GCC Islamic banks subsidiaries in Malaysia are standing at the great extent level of strategic role from knowledge transfer perspective. In addition, the two factors named contributor and implementer lead to achieve the strategic role between headquarter and its subsidiary. The conclusion of this research paper recommended the advanced empirical research studies in future to develop a conceptual unifying model of Islamic banking and financial knowledge transfer within Islamic banks
Screening of Arabidopsis mutants for functional genomic studies
Eight photosynthetic Arabidopsis mutants were screened for co-segregation of a photosynthetic phenotype with the T-DNA insertion. These mutants were selected from 80 photosynthetic mutants with genetic background of Columbia-0. Two different screening approaches were used to study the T-DNA insertion in the genome of mutant Arabidopsis lines. The sulphonamide sulfadiazine was found to be an effective selective agent and a single copy of sulfonamide resistant gene was found to be completely resistant to the optimal concentration i.e., 5mg mL-1. The maximum number of Arabidopsis mutant plants had confirmed insertions. Some of the plants did not show any amplification with gene specific primer combination, and it was assumed that either they were wild type plants or they had random T-DNA insertion and the insertion was not found in the gene under study but it could be found in any where in the genome. Some mutant plants were morphologically different from the wild type plants e.g., ALP105. These plants grew as small in size and dark green in color. After PCR screening with gene specific and T-DNA border primers all such mutant plants were confirmed as heterozygous T-DNA insertion plants
COVID-19 pandemic awareness, attitudes, and practices among the Pakistani general public
Background: Outbreak of COVID-19, in many countries, has imposed a lockdown on their residents. The usefulness of extenuative actions is extremely reliant on society\u27s knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) toward pandemic control. Objective: This study aimed to explore the awareness, attitudes, and practices of the general Pakistani population to COVID-19. Methods: From June 13, 2020, until June 30, 2020, a cross-sectional online KAP survey was conducted among the Pakistani public. For data collection, a validated self-administered questionnaire was used. The survey instrument consisted of six demographic characteristics, 14 items on knowledge, four on attitudes, and six items on practices, modified from a previously published questionnaire on COVID-19. Results: The present study included 2,307 participants, 58.3% males and 41.7% of females. The majority (86.7%) sought information from social media (SM) and television, 95% had good practices, 89.9% had positive attitudes, and two-thirds (67.4%) of the respondents had adequate knowledge. The students and people from younger age groups had more positive attitudes compared with others. Highly educated w with other groups (p \u3c 0.001). In logistic regression analysis, the odds ratio indicated that the private job was negatively associated, and high monthly income was positively associated with adequate knowledge (OR = 0.595). Old age was the predictor of negative attitude, and high school degrees and master\u27s degrees were associated with good practice scores. Conclusion: The Pakistani general population has an overall positive attitude and proactive practices against COVID-19, but their knowledge is inadequate. The most important source of information was SM, followed by television. These are playing a crucial role in educating the Pakistani public
Randomize to Generalize: Domain Randomization for Runway FOD Detection
Tiny Object Detection is challenging due to small size, low resolution,
occlusion, background clutter, lighting conditions and small object-to-image
ratio. Further, object detection methodologies often make underlying assumption
that both training and testing data remain congruent. However, this presumption
often leads to decline in performance when model is applied to
out-of-domain(unseen) data. Techniques like synthetic image generation are
employed to improve model performance by leveraging variations in input data.
Such an approach typically presumes access to 3D-rendered datasets. In
contrast, we propose a novel two-stage methodology Synthetic Randomized Image
Augmentation (SRIA), carefully devised to enhance generalization capabilities
of models encountering 2D datasets, particularly with lower resolution which is
more practical in real-world scenarios. The first stage employs a weakly
supervised technique to generate pixel-level segmentation masks. Subsequently,
the second stage generates a batch-wise synthesis of artificial images,
carefully designed with an array of diverse augmentations. The efficacy of
proposed technique is illustrated on challenging foreign object debris (FOD)
detection. We compare our results with several SOTA models including CenterNet,
SSD, YOLOv3, YOLOv4, YOLOv5, and Outer Vit on a publicly available FOD-A
dataset. We also construct an out-of-distribution test set encompassing 800
annotated images featuring a corpus of ten common categories. Notably, by
harnessing merely 1.81% of objects from source training data and amalgamating
with 29 runway background images, we generate 2227 synthetic images. Subsequent
model retraining via transfer learning, utilizing enriched dataset generated by
domain randomization, demonstrates significant improvement in detection
accuracy. We report that detection accuracy improved from an initial 41% to 92%
for OOD test set.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figure
FPGA Implementation of UFMC based baseband transmitter: case study for LTE 10MHz channelization
Universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC) is a low complexity promising waveform that provides quasi-orthogonal property among subcarriers. In addition, it can achieve much better out-of-band emission performance than orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. Authors have proposed a hardware platform to implement a UFMC transmitter in this paper. Highly reduced complexity schemes for IFFT, filtering, and spectrum shifting are realized on actual hardware. This helps to achieve overall architecture of the transmitter at the cost of minimal FPGA resource usage. Hence, the overall design uses only 1038 slice registers, 1154 slice LUTs, and 64 multipliers of Xilinx Virtex-7 XC7VX330t device. A throughput of 773.5 Msamples/sec at an operational frequency of 364 MHz is achieved. This throughput is adequate for processing 50 Physical Resource Blocks (PRB) of LTE 10 MHz channelization in required time. The presented architecture provides a latency of only 2% of one LTE 10MHz channelization symbol due to the implementation of pipelining at different levels. Although the presented hardware design in its current form meets LTE 10MHz channelization throughput requirements, further increase in throughput is possible due to the scalable nature of the architecture. To the best of our knowledge, this work is first ever FPGA solution for UFMC transmitter presented in the literature
Modeling the impact of corporate social responsibility on sustainable purchase intentions: insights into brand trust and brand loyalty
Green innovation performance deals with the strengthening of
the organizations for their competence in enhancement of their
green image. Current research examines the role of corporate
social responsibility (CSR) in improving sustainable purchase
intentions. In addition, it explores the mediating roles of brand
trust and brand loyalty. It also reveals that how CSR is crucial for
green innovation performance in Pakistan. This research uses the
structural equation model (SEM) analysis technique to investigate
the linkage between constructs in the complex research model.
This uses a self-administrated survey-based questionnaire and a
convenience sampling technique for data collection. The unit of
analysis is buyers from textile and clothing brands consisting 373
respondents. The findings revealed that corporate social responsibility had a beneficial impact on Pakistani purchasers’ long-term
purchase intentions. Green innovation performance can also be
improved by improving CSR. The link between CSR, sustainable
buying intentions, and green innovation technology is partially
mediated by brand loyalty. Brand trust was identified as a possible link between CSR and brand loyalty. Brand trust and loyalty,
interestingly, modulate the link between CSR and sustainable purchase intentions as well as CSR and green innovation performance in a sequential manner. The article’s findings will be useful
for academics, specialists, and policymakers as these provide
glimpse into textile, clothing, and fashion brands with a focus on
CSR to improve green innovation performance, as well as highlighting the most relevant studies on the topic and showcasing
trends in research and gaps in the field
Substitution spectra of SARS-CoV-2 genome from Pakistan reveals insights into the evolution of variants across the pandemic
Changing morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19 across the pandemic has been linked with factors such as the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants and vaccination. Mutations in the Spike glycoprotein enhanced viral transmission and virulence. We investigated whether SARS-CoV-2 mutation rates and entropy were associated COVID-19 in Pakistan, before and after the introduction of vaccinations. We analyzed 1,705 SARS-CoV-2 genomes using the Augur phylogenetic pipeline. Substitution rates and entropy across the genome, and in the Spike glycoprotein were compared between 2020, 2021 and 2022 (as periods A, B and C). Mortality was greatest in B whilst cases were highest during C. In period A, G clades were predominant, and substitution rate was 5.25 × 10-4 per site per year. In B, Delta variants dominated, and substitution rates increased to 9.74 × 10-4. In C, Omicron variants led to substitution rates of 5.02 × 10-4. Genome-wide entropy was the highest during B particularly, at Spike E484K and K417N. During C, genome-wide mutations increased whilst entropy was reduced. Enhanced SARS-CoV-2 genome substitution rates were associated with a period when more virulent SARS-CoV-2 variants were prevalent. Reduced substitution rates and stabilization of genome entropy was subsequently evident when vaccinations were introduced. Whole genome entropy analysis can help predict virus evolution to guide public health interventions
Genome-Wide Identification, and In-Silico Expression Analysis of YABBY Gene Family in Response to Biotic and Abiotic Stresses in Potato (Solanum tuberosum)
An epidemiological, strategic and response analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Asia: A population-based observational study
Introduction: South Asia has had a dynamic response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The overall burden and response have remained comparable across highly-burdened countries within the South Asian Region. Methodology: Using a population-based observational design, all eight South Asian countries were analyzed using a step-wise approach. Data were obtained from government websites and publicly-available repositories for population dynamics and key variables. Results: South Asian countries have a younger average age of their population. Inequitable distribution of resources centered in urban metropolitan cities within South Asia is present. Certain densely populated regions in these countries have better testing and healthcare facilities that correlate with lower COVID-19 incidence per million populations. Trends of urban-rural disparities are unclear given the lack of clear reporting of the gaps within these regions. COVID-19 vaccination lag has become apparent in South Asian countries, with the expected time to complete the campaign being unfeasible as the COVID-19 pandemic progresses. Conclusion: With a redesigning of governance policies on preventing the rise of COVID-19 promptly, the relief on the healthcare system and healthcare workers will allow for adequate time to roll out vaccination campaigns with equitable distribution. Capacity expansion of public health within the Region is required to ensure a robust healthcare response to the ongoing pandemic and future infectious disease outbreak
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