Corporate Governance and the Insolvency Risk of Financial Institutions

We investigate whether corporate governance is related to insolvency risk of financial institutions. Using a large sample of U.S. financial institutions over the 2005-2010 period, we find that corporate governance is positively related with insolvency risk of financial institutions as proxied by Merton\u27s distance to default measure and credit default swap spread. We also find that better corporate governance increased insolvency risk relatively more for larger financial institutions and during the period of the global financial crisis. Our findings suggest that too-big-to fail and deposit insurance policies encourage excessive risk taking by financial institutions

BRIDGING THE GAP AMONG ISLAMIC NATIONS THROUGH INTERNATIONALIZATION AT HOME (IAH)

Globalization has a profound impact on the higher education institutions to build graduates capable to work and compete in the fourth industrial revolution and Muslim nations have no exception to this movement. The students graduated from overseas gain global exposure through multicultural and diverse cross-cultural learning environment. However, the ratio of non-mobile student among Muslim countries is high who are in need to train with adeptness and capabilities in accordance with the global competitive challenges. The industrial requirements of human capital are changing now as they are demanding the employees capable to work effectively in multicultural environment and with diverse teams. Thus, the present study aimed to identify the current need for Internationalization at Home  (IaH) in higher education institutions in Muslim countries to create an environment of mutual collaboration through exchange programs of student and staff. The increased implementation of IaH among these nations would assist in producing Muslim global graduates. The contemporary trends and challenges have been explored through an in-depth literature survey to dig out the best practices. The study emphasized that IaH practices are appropriate solution for the provision of global acquaintance to non-mobile Muslim students. This is probably the pioneer study on the concept of ‘Internationalization at Home’ in Muslim countries which would assist higher education institutuions (HEIs) and Ministries of Higher Education to formulate strategies and plans for the formation of mutual collaboration through the development of an association of universities in Muslim countries

Robust MPPT Control of Stand-Alone Photovoltaic Systems via Adaptive Self-Adjusting Fractional Order PID Controller

The Photovoltaic (PV) system is an eco-friendly renewable energy system that is integrated with a DC-DC buck-boost converter to generate electrical energy as per the variations in solar irradiance and outdoor temperature. This article proposes a novel Adaptive Fractional Order PID (A-FOPID) compensator with self-adjusting fractional orders to extract maximum power from a stand-alone PV system as ambient conditions change. The reference voltage is generated using a feed-forward neural network. The conventional FOPID compensator, which operates on the output voltage error of the interleaved buck-boost converter, is employed as the baseline maximum-power-point-tracking (MPPT) controller. The baseline controller is retrofitted with an online state-error-driven adaptation law that dynamically modifies the fractional orders of the controller’s integral and differential operators. The adaptation law is formulated as a nonlinear hyperbolic scaling function of the system’s state error and error-derivative variables. This augmentation supplements the controller’s adaptability, enabling it to manipulate flexibly the tightness of the applied control effort as the operating conditions change. The efficacy of the proposed control law is analyzed by carrying out customized simulations in the MATLAB Simulink environment. The simulation results show that the proposed MPPT control scheme yields a mean improvement of 25.4% in tracking accuracy and 11.3% in transient response speed under varying environmental conditions

Fault-tolerant scheme for robotic manipulator -Nonlinear robust back-stepping control with friction compensation

Emerging applications of autonomous robots requiring stability and reliability cannot afford component failure to achieve operational objectives. Hence, identification and countermeasure of a fault is of utmost importance in mechatronics community. This research proposes a Fault-tolerant control (FTC) for a robot manipulator, which is based on a hybrid control scheme that uses an observer as well as a hardware redundancy strategy to improve the performance and efficiency in the presence of actuator and sensor faults. Considering a five Degree of Freedom (DoF) robotic manipulator, a dynamic LuGre friction model is derived which forms the basis for design of control law. For actuator's and sensor's FTC, an adaptive back-stepping methodology is used for fault estimation and the nominal control law is used for the controller reconfiguration and observer is designed. Fault detection is accomplished by comparing the actual and observed states, pursued by fault tolerant method using redundant sensors. The results affirm the effectiveness of the proposed FTC strategy with model-based friction compensation. Improved tracking performance as well robustness in the presence of friction and fault demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed control approach

Assessing vulnerability and capacity of flood affected communities in Punjab, Pakistan : case study: district Jhang and Muzaffargarh

In Punjab, the continuous floods in the last six years especially in 2010 and 2014, due to climatic and non-climatic reasons, have exposed physical, socio-economic, and environmental vulnerabilities. The flood disaster management in Punjab is primarily focused on rescue, relief, and dependence of structural measures. The assessment of vulnerability is limited to district level (in form of mapping) which is incapable of identifying essential socio-economic drivers of vulnerability and local ability to cope and adapt. The mega flood of 2010 inflicted several changes in government structure and within communities. This research study assessed the vulnerability and capacity of flood affected communities as well as fluctuation in their vulnerability and capacity by analyzing planned and unplanned post flood responses. The study also determined the role of spatial planning in reducing flood vulnerabilities. To conduct the study, a vulnerability assessment framework was modified from sustainable livelihood and BBC framework. Qualitative and quantitative analysis and their triangulation were conducted to apprehend the pertaining issues. Interviews with officials of disaster management and spatial planning institutes were conducted to analyze changes after 2010 flood and government interventions. Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA) for two flood events (2010 and 2014) and household survey provided the vulnerability and capacity assessment of four flood affected communities in two severely affected districts (Jhang and Muzaffargarh) of Punjab. The results indicated that government interventions were limited to financial aid and early warning. These measures remained victim to political biasness, mismanagement, and lack of coordination and communication between departments. Other formal changes (legislation, policies, plans etc.) seemed to be less effective due to top-down approach, lack of technical man power; disaster management knowledge and financial constraints. Spatial planning appeared ineffective in mitigating flood risk as it was limited to urban areas and deficient incorporation of DRR measures in development plans. The results of PRA and household survey indicated that vulnerability of immovable assets increased or remained the same after 2014 flood disaster, but reduced significantly for moveable assets. Complex relationships existed within and between various dimensions of vulnerability that fluctuated vulnerability of related elements and factors. These relationships demonstrated that lack of physical infrastructure and awareness were the key drivers of vulnerability in Punjab

Hardware realization and PID control of multi-degree of freedom articulated robotic arm

A robotic manipulator is the most important component in an industrial environment for autonomous execution of tasks. Given the repoted fact that a PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) will continue to be the main workhorse in the automation sector, the present paper deals with designing and realizing this control law. A custom-developed pseudo-industrial platform AUTAREP (AUTonomous Articulated Robotic Educational Platform) centered on a 6DOF (Six Degree of Freedom) manipulator is considered. The derived kinematic and dynamic models of the arm form the basis of MATLAB-based control simulation. The control law after discretization is also implemented on embedded hardware. When subject to various inputs, result of trajectory tracking in the form of output responses, demonstrate superior performance in transient as well as steady state. The stability and convergent behavior of the outputs is also observed, thus highlighting efficacy of proposed approach

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY : SPECIAL SOCIAL-ENTREPRENEURS @HIGHER EDUCATION PROGRAMME IN MALAYSIA

Social entrepreneurship is defined as activities created by an innovative social value to achieve societal needs and financial sustainability. It is a business concept that involve conducting business that does not emphasis much on profit but for the benefit of mankind. Special Social Entrepreneur @Higher Education (SSEHE) is a programme mastered by Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) that collaborated with four other universities in Malaysia. The aim of SSEHE is to get handicapped youths to get together and follow talks and discussion in order to create awareness on how they can stand on their own to make a living. The main objectives of SSEHE are transforming the mindset of the disabled youths that they can be independent by involving in entrepreneurial activities, introducing the basic entrepreneurial knowledge to the disabled youths, opening job opportunities to the disabled youths and helping the disabled youths to start and/or expand their business. SSEHE has high hope to continue this programme in the future so that disabled youths are aware that they can use their skills to make a living for themselves and their loved ones

Volatile Fatty Acid and Water Extraction from Rumen Fluid by Forward Osmosis

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Nature offers elegant, efficient, and sustainable solutions to most of our problems. One such problem is to convert the most abundant natural resource of lignocellulosic biomass into a fermented solution for subsequent biochemicals extraction. An efficient, economical and eco-friendly technique or system has not been developed yet to address this problem. Nature has offered a robust solution to this problem in the form of ruminant's digestive system where a fermented solution (rumen fluid) is produced from the digestion of biomass in the fore-stomach (or rumen) with the help of diverse microbiota followed by volatile fatty acids (VFAs) absorption from the rumen fluid in the small intestine along with water absorption in the omasum and large intestine. This study aims to replicate the two important processes taking place inside the ruminant's digestive system with a membrane-based forward osmosis (FO) process. First is the use of FO for acetic acid extraction from rumen fluid by mimicking the VFAs absorption in the small intestine. Under the optimum conditions, the FO process using the cellulose triacetate (CTA) membrane exhibited negligible water flux and extracted 27% of the maximum attainable acetic acid from the synthetic solution within 8 hours of operation. The optimised conditions were used to elaborate the FO extraction of acetic acid from a real rumen fluid. The second is employing FO for dewatering rumen fluid by simulating the water absorption in the omasum and the large intestine. High water flux and a low reverse solute flux (RSF) were observed using concentrated artificial saliva as a draw solution and clean water as the feed. Membrane fouling was observed with the deposition of mainly biomolecules from the rumen fluid on the membrane surface. Besides, this study also covers the membrane biofouling that can occur as a result of resource recovery from rumen fluid in a long term FO operation and evaluates the various membrane cleaning strategies for flux recovery. The results suggest that fouling is driven mostly by the gravity-driven deposition of foulants on the membrane surface. DNA sequencing showed that key microbial taxa from rumen fluid such as Prevotellaceae, Ruminococcaceae, and Acidaminococcaceae were also identified within the fouling layer. A combination of chemical cleaning using 0.1% NaOCl and osmotic backwashing using NaCl 1M solution was most effective with 70.0% flux recovery while hydraulic cleaning was the least effective and could only recover 14.1% flux