Corporate Profile, Shareholding Position and Firm Profitability: Empirical Results from Pharmaceutical and Chemical Companies of Bangladesh

The study inspects the effect of corporate profile and shareholding position on firm profitability studying 31 listed pharmaceutical and chemical companies of Bangladesh. The analysis uses five measurements—earning per share (EPS), net profit margin (NPM), return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and basic earning power (BEP)—along with four moderating variables to define firm profitability. The findings demonstrate a positive association of independent directors and firm profitability, while female board-members generate negative results. Board size and the participation of sponsors-promoters produce no meaningful effect. The existing shareholding patterns reveal negative impacts on firm profitability. While public investors and institutes negatively affect the most, the foreign investors and sponsors-directors affect the least. The study suggests to increase the proportion of foreign shareholding and independent directors, decrease the portion of public shareholding and female directors, and opt for the new investment sources to align with positive profitability. Keywords: Profitability, Performance, Corporate profile, Shareholding structure, Corporate governance, Board structure. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-20-05 Publication date:October 31st 2021

Improving Blood Donor Diversity Through Focused Recruitment Interventions

Study Design: Beginning in May 2016, the Jefferson Blood Donor Center began collecting donor self-identified race/ethnicity: White, Black or African American, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Multiracial, Other, Unknown (Figure 1). We retrospectively quantified the racial/ethnic groups represented in each month’s donor population. In January 2017,the following intervention strategies were implemented: Emailing donors who self-identified as part of a racial/ethnic minority group Contacting racially/ethnically-focused student groups to organize blood drives with the Jefferson Blood Donor Center Partnering with the Jefferson Medical Oncology Society MarrowthonDrive to encourage blood donations Presentation to the local chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses Interventions still to come Featuring the Jefferson Blood Donor Center in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s Diversity Newsletter The quantification of racial/ethnic groups were stratified to pre-intervention months and post-intervention months. Poster presented at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Housestaff Quality Improvement and Patient Safety conference.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/patientsafetyposters/1038/thumbnail.jp

Incorporating SMEs in the Capital Market of Bangladesh: Obstacles, Initiatives and Potentials

The Stock Exchanges of Bangladesh have initiated a new window for small and medium enterprises so that they can get finance by issuing securities. Though 80% of the business in Bangladesh are SMEs, which are responsible for 25% of nation’s GDP and 35.49% of the total workforce, limited access to formal financing impedes their effective operations and long-term growth. As a new platform, the insights related to obstacles of listing and fundraising, regulatory issues, and the future potentials remain uncovered due to lack of research initiatives. This study addresses these insights by analyzing both primary and secondary data. The study findings outline that SMEs now have the opportunity to trade-off between loans from creditors and financing by issuing securities. The decision mostly depends on whether a firm has enough collateral to avail loan from creditors, or it is prepared enough with proper documentation, standard books of accounts and regulatory issues of the capital market. While estimated fundraising costs through the capital market stand at 0.6% to 1.03%, banks and financial institutions charge 13% to 17% for interest along with 1% to 2% for processing fees and stamp duty. However, the capital market demands limited liability company, asset valuation, standard books of accounts, tax filing, reporting and disclosure issues. The regulators have developed the platform as a learning ground by following ‘Go Easy’ principles so that the SMEs can exercise reporting and governance issues, and contribute to institute a transparent and sustainable capital market in the future. Keywords: SME, financing, capital market, small capital platform, stock exchange DOI: 10.7176/JESD/12-2-03 Publication date: January 31st 202

The effectiveness of feature selection method in solar power prediction

This paper empirically shows that the effect of applying selected feature subsets on machine learning techniques significantly improves the accuracy for solar power prediction. Experiments are performed using five well-known wrapper feature selection methods to obtain the solar power prediction accuracy of machine learning techniques with selected feature subsets. For all the experiments, the machine learning techniques, namely, least median square (LMS), multilayer perceptron (MLP), and support vector machine (SVM), are used. Afterwards, these results are compared with the solar power prediction accuracy of those same machine leaning techniques (i.e., LMS, MLP, and SVM) but without applying feature selection methods (WAFS). Experiments are carried out using reliable and real life historical meteorological data. The comparison between the results clearly shows that LMS, MLP, and SVM provide better prediction accuracy (i.e., reduced MAE and MASE) with selected feature subsets than without selected feature subsets. Experimental results of this paper facilitate to make a concrete verdict that providing more attention and effort towards the feature subset selection aspect (e.g., selected feature subsets on prediction accuracy which is investigated in this paper) can significantly contribute to improve the accuracy of solar power prediction

حرية المرأة بين نصوص الوحي والمنظمات النسوية في بنغلاديش: دراسة تحليلية تقويمية = Freedom of women: a critical comparison between the women’s organisations in Bangladesh and the Islamic scripture

This article discusses viewpoints of several women's organizations in Bangladesh pertaining to the issue of the freedom of women. The central issues of the study relate to the concepts of women’s freedom. Following the inductive, analytical and comparative methods, the two researchers discusses these concepts in light of what is available in Islamic scripture and what is maintained and demanded by women’s organizations in Bangladesh. Then they conduct a comparative study between the two sources. The result of the study reveals fundamental differences between the commandments of Islamic scripture and the stance of feminist organizations of Bangladesh regarding the concepts of woman’s rights and her equality with man. The study also explains the necessity of an appropriate understanding of the term “woman’s rights”. This research finds that both Islamic scripture and women’s organizations in Bangladesh have given emphasise on providing women their freedom

Filtration and Synthesis of Different types of Human Voice Signals: An application of digital signal processing

An observation of the effect in audio signal by using digital filter plays an important role in the field of digital signal processing (DSP). Day by day the digital form of signal is becoming more preferable than the analog one which is increasing the need of DSP in the rapidly changing world. Yet, there are many attractive schemes for designing a digital filter; we adopt windowing technique for design a FIR low pass filter in the frequency domain for the short period. However, the main task of our work is to perform filtration of the different types of practical human voice signals by using digital filter and synthesis of those signals to reduce the memory size (kB) by remaining the same quality of the signal. We used MATLAB for the design of digital filter and synthesis of those audio signals. MATLAB provides different options for signal synthesis. Finally, this paper gives an idea about reconstructed signals and filtrated signals. Keywords: Digital filter, Cutoff frequency, Fourier transform, Inverse Fourier transforms, normalized frequency

Generalized Dynamical Modeling of Multiple Photovoltaic Units in a Grid-Connected System for Analyzing Dynamic Interactions

This paper aims to develop the generalized dynamical model of multiple photovoltaic (PV) units connected to the grid along with the dynamic interaction analysis among different PV units. The dynamical models of multiple PV units are developed by considering three different configurations through which these PV units are connected to the grid. These configurations include: (a) the direct connection of multiple PV units to the grid; (b) the connection of multiple PV units to the grid through a point of common coupling (PCC); and (c) the connection of PV units without a PCC. The proposed modeling framework provides meaningful insights for analyzing dynamic interaction analysis where these interactions from other PV units are expressed in terms of voltages and line impedances rather than the dynamics of currents. The dynamic interactions among different PV units for all these configurations are analyzed using both analytical and simulation studies. Simulations are carried out on an IEEE 15-bus test system and dynamic interactions are analyzed from the total harmonic distortions (THDs) in the current responses of different PV units. Both analytical and simulation studies clearly indicate that the effects of dynamic interactions are prominent with the increase in PV units

Information-based interactive services and support system

The fact that information-based interaction designed requires user involvement, Service Desk System (SDS) is necessary for collecting, tracking and processing requests for IT service support. The system can be dynamic, where many approaches can be used depending on the objective of the tasks at hand. Currently, Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology (KICT), International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) SDS do not cover a lot of evolving user's tasks. As a result, the main aim of this study is to propose interactive SDS for students and staffs at KICT, IIUM. The architectural framework of the system has been formulated to include all the necessary requirements that might have arisen over time. There are some drawbacks in the process of the current system which affects the whole management process of the organization. With the aid of the framework, a prototype has been implemented. This prototype is established using the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), PHP with the support of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS3), Bootstrap and JavaScript along with MySQL as the database. The developed system is an online (web-based) system which allows users to request information in order for the administrator to respond promptly, which shows the efficiency and reliability of the syste