Financial performance of Islamic and conventional banks during and after US sub-prime crisis in Pakistan: a comparative study

Islamic banking system that is based on Shariah principles is considered more resilient to the financial shocks due to its interest free nature. This study is aimed to compare the financial performances and investigate whether Islamic banks are more profitable, liquid, less risky and operationally efficient compared to conventional banks during and after US Sub-prime crisis in Pakistan. The time span used for the study was from 2007 to 2012. Thirteen financial ratios composed of five Islamic and five conventional banks to measure the financial performance in terms of profitability, risk and solvency, liquidity and capital adequacy. Independent sample t-test is used to determine the significance of mean differences of selected ratios. The results of profitability measures indicate that Islamic banks remained less profitable; however, liquidity performances of Islamic banks were better than conventional banks. However, overall operational efficiency measures are not in favour of Islamic banks. The study concluded that conventional banks performed more efficiently and profitably as compared to Islamic banks. The opportunity of future empirical study is recommended at the end of this paper

Classification of Arrhythmia by Using Deep Learning with 2-D ECG Spectral Image Representation

The electrocardiogram (ECG) is one of the most extensively employed signals used in the diagnosis and prediction of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). The ECG signals can capture the heart's rhythmic irregularities, commonly known as arrhythmias. A careful study of ECG signals is crucial for precise diagnoses of patients' acute and chronic heart conditions. In this study, we propose a two-dimensional (2-D) convolutional neural network (CNN) model for the classification of ECG signals into eight classes; namely, normal beat, premature ventricular contraction beat, paced beat, right bundle branch block beat, left bundle branch block beat, atrial premature contraction beat, ventricular flutter wave beat, and ventricular escape beat. The one-dimensional ECG time series signals are transformed into 2-D spectrograms through short-time Fourier transform. The 2-D CNN model consisting of four convolutional layers and four pooling layers is designed for extracting robust features from the input spectrograms. Our proposed methodology is evaluated on a publicly available MIT-BIH arrhythmia dataset. We achieved a state-of-the-art average classification accuracy of 99.11\%, which is better than those of recently reported results in classifying similar types of arrhythmias. The performance is significant in other indices as well, including sensitivity and specificity, which indicates the success of the proposed method.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, accepted for future publication in Remote Sensing MDPI Journa

PENGARUH MEDIA PEMBELAJARAN AUDIO VISUAL TERHADAP KEAKTIFAN BELAJAR SISWA DALAM PEMBELAJARAN EKONOMI (Sub Tema Koperasi Kelas X MIPA 3 di SMAN 6 Bandung)

Judul penelitian ini “Pengaruh Media Pe mbelajaran Audio-Visual Terhadap Keaktifan Belajar Siswa Dalam Pe mbelajaran Ekonomi Sub Te ma Koperasi di Kelas X MIPA 3 SMAN 6 Bandung”. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui p enerapan media pembelajaran audio- visual dan keaktifan belajar siswa dalam pe mbelajaran ekonomi sub tema koperasi di kelas X MIPA 3 SMAN 6 Bandung serta untuk mengetahui p engaruh media pembelajaran audio- visual terhadap keaktifan belajar siswa dalam pe mbelajaran ekonomi sub tema koperasi di kelas X MIPA 3 SMAN 6 Bandung. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah asosiatif kausal. Subjek dalam penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas X MIPA 3 SMAN 6 Bandung yang berjumlah 33 siswa. Analisis data yang digunakan adalah analisis verifikatif data melalui perhitungan rata- rata (mean) skor dengan bantuan SPSS release 21.0 for Windows. Hasil penelitian rekapitulasi skor rata- rata tanggapan responden mengenai media pembelajaran audio- visual sebesar 4,13, sedangkan mengenai keaktifan belajar siswa sebesar 4,20, dengan demikian dapat disimpulkan bahwa ta nggapan responden terhadap media pembelajaran audio- visual dan keaktifan belajar “ Sangat Baik”. Berdasarkan analisis data yang telah dilakukan maka diperoleh hasil penelitian pengaruh penerapan media pembelajaran audio- vis ual yaitu koefisien determinasi R Square sebesar 0,607%. Hal ini dinyatakan variabel X mempunyai pengaruh sebesar 60,70 % terhadap variabel Y dan sisanya 40% dipengaruhi faktor lain. Faktor yang memberikan pengaruh kepada variabel Y sebanyak 60,70% disebabkan oleh indikator variabel X berupa fungsi media pembelajaran dan keunggulan media audio- visual. Kesimpulan penelitian dapat diterima, sebagai ak hir penelitian, penulis menyampaikan saran j ika memiliki siswa yang cenderung memiliki karakteristik pasif, guru sebaiknya menggunakan variasi model pembelajaran yang menarik yang dipadukan dengan media pembelajaran audio- visual yaitu pemutaran video yang berkaitan dengan materi pelajaran yang akan disampaikan karena cara ini dapat membuat siswa lebih aktif untuk belajar dan akan meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa. Kata Kunci: Media Pembelajaran Audio-Visual dan Keaktifan Belajar Siswa

Chapter 14: Strategies for Mitigating Bias in Training and Development

This chapter will examine the importance of mitigating bias in training and development, which provides internal and external scanning, thus mitigating bias in selection, promotion, compensation, information sharing, and implicit biases. Further, bias in training and development arises when training participants are intentionally or unintentionally targeted because of individual aspects of the “Big 8,†consisting of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, religion/spirituality, nationality, and socioeconomic status. Akin to research, information bias results from misleading training participants by providing incomplete information or showing imaging that is not representative of a diverse group of people. Additionally, DEIB training and development leadership and risk factors are addressed

Sentiment classification of Roman-Urdu opinions using Naïve Bayesian, Decision Tree and KNN classification techniques

AbstractSentiment mining is a field of text mining to determine the attitude of people about a particular product, topic, politician in newsgroup posts, review sites, comments on facebook posts twitter, etc. There are many issues involved in opinion mining. One important issue is that opinions could be in different languages (English, Urdu, Arabic, etc.). To tackle each language according to its orientation is a challenging task. Most of the research work in sentiment mining has been done in English language. Currently, limited research is being carried out on sentiment classification of other languages like Arabic, Italian, Urdu and Hindi. In this paper, three classification models are used for text classification using Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (WEKA). Opinions written in Roman-Urdu and English are extracted from a blog. These extracted opinions are documented in text files to prepare a training dataset containing 150 positive and 150 negative opinions, as labeled examples. Testing data set is supplied to three different models and the results in each case are analyzed. The results show that Naïve Bayesian outperformed Decision Tree and KNN in terms of more accuracy, precision, recall and F-measure

Scope of Social Work Practice for Families of Children with Down Syndrome

Social work practice takes place at micro, mezzo, and macro levels between persons with disabilities in families and other social institutions, such as schools, health systems, and welfare systems. Drawing from multidisciplinary theoretical sources, the article brings together social work and family therapy to develop a possible social work intervention for families of children with Down syndrome. The primary purpose of these interventions is to aid clients in alleviating problems and improving their well being. Social workers must think creatively about interventions that may help the individuals, couples, families, and groups or communities they serve. This research is using the literature study method. The results confirm that numerous concerns have to be addressed faced by children with Down syndrome. Toward various issues and challenges faced by people with Down syndrome and their families, social workers have the professional responsibility to provide services and intervention to increase the children with Down syndrome's social functioning and overall well-being of parents

Financial Performance of Islamic and Conventional Banks During and After US Sub-prime Crisis in Pakistan: A Comparative Study

Islamic banking system that is based on Shariah principles is considered more resilient to the financial shocks due to its interest free nature. This study is aimed to compare the financial performances and investigate whether Islamic banks are more profitable, liquid, less risky and operationally efficient compared to conventional banks during and after US Sub-prime crisis in Pakistan. The time span used for the study was from 2007 to 2012. Thirteen financial ratios composed of five Islamic and five conventional banks to measure the financial performance in terms of profitability, risk and solvency, liquidity and capital adequacy. Independent sample t-test is used to determine the significance of mean differences of selected ratios. The results of profitability measures indicate that Islamic banks remained less profitable; however, liquidity performances of Islamic banks were better than conventional banks. However, overall operational efficiency measures are not in favour of Islamic banks. The study concluded that conventional banks performed more efficiently and profitably as compared to Islamic banks. The opportunity of future empirical study is recommended at the end of this paper