Do financial development and economic openness matter for economic progress in an emerging country? Seeking a sustainable development path

While emerging economies face the challenge of competing with developed nations, they are capable of catching up to the developed world. In this context, financial development and the degree of economic openness may provide better living conditions for the current generation without giving up future generations' prosperity. Therefore, this research's prime intention is to investigate the impact of economic openness and financial development on economic progress, employing Pakistan's time-series data from 1975-2018. To examine the long-term association between economic openness, financial development, and economic progress, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration tests were performed and the results present a long-term association between these variables. Findings from ARDL estimates indicate that the relationship between financial development and economic progress is significantly positive in the long term. Contrastingly, the relationship between economic openness and economic progress is significantly positive in the short term. A fully modified ordinary least square technique was applied to check the robustness of the long-term links. The Granger causality test revealed that economic progress is motivated by both economic openness and financial development in an emerging economy such as Pakistan. Thus, policies boosting financial development and economic openness are proposed to put the emerging economies on a path of sustainable economic development

Do Financial Development and Economic Openness Matter for Economic Progress in an Emerging Country? Seeking a Sustainable Development Path

While emerging economies face the challenge of competing with developed nations, they are capable of catching up to the developed world. In this context, financial development and the degree of economic openness may provide better living conditions for the current generation without giving up future generations’ prosperity. Therefore, this research’s prime intention is to investigate the impact of economic openness and financial development on economic progress, employing Pakistan’s time-series data from 1975–2018. To examine the long-term association between economic openness, financial development, and economic progress, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration tests were performed and the results present a long-term association between these variables. Findings from ARDL estimates indicate that the relationship between financial development and economic progress is significantly positive in the long term. Contrastingly, the relationship between economic openness and economic progress is significantly positive in the short term. A fully modified ordinary least square technique was applied to check the robustness of the long-term links. The Granger causality test revealed that economic progress is motivated by both economic openness and financial development in an emerging economy such as Pakistan. Thus, policies boosting financial development and economic openness are proposed to put the emerging economies on a path of sustainable economic development

Automatic Ship Object Detection Model Based on YOLOv4 with Transformer Mechanism in Remote Sensing Images

Despite significant advancements in object detection technology, most existing detection networks fail to investigate global aspects while extracting features from the inputs and cannot automatically adjust based on the characteristics of the inputs. The present study addresses this problem by proposing a detection network consisting of three stages: preattention, attention, and prediction. In the preattention stage, the network framework is automatically selected based on the features of the images’ objects. In the attention stage, the transformer structure is introduced. Taking into account the global features of the target, this study combines a self-attention module in the transformer model and convolution operation to integrate image features from global to local and for detection, thus improving the ship target accuracy. This model uses mathematical methods to obtain results of predictive testing in the prediction stage. The above improvements are based on the You Only Look Once version 4 (YOLOv4) framework, named “Auto-T-YOLO”. The model achieves the highest accuracy of 96.3% on the SAR Ship Detection dataset (SSDD) compared to the other state-of-the-art (SOTA) model. It achieves 98.33% and 91.78% accuracy in the offshore and inshore scenes, respectively. The experimental results verify the practicality, validity, and robustness of the proposed model

Blockchain-Enabled Transaction Scanning Method for Money Laundering Detection

Currently, life cannot be imagined without the use of bank cards for purchases or money transfers; however, their use provides new opportunities for money launderers and terrorist organizations. This paper proposes a blockchain-enabled transaction scanning (BTS) method for the detection of anomalous actions. The BTS method specifies the rules for outlier detection and rapid movements of funds, which restrict anomalous actions in transactions. The specified rules determine the specific patterns of malicious activities in the transactions. Furthermore, the rules of the BTS method scan the transaction history and provide a list of entities that receive money suspiciously. Finally, the blockchain-enabled process is used to restrict money laundering. To validate the performance of the proposed BTS method, a Spring Boot application is built based on the Java programming language. Based on experimental results, the proposed BTS method automates the process of investigating transactions and restricts money laundering incidents

Simulation, synthesis and band-gap engineering of 2nd group doped ZnO nanostructures

Nano-materials are considered as a fundamental constituent in almost every field of medical science to engineering. However, the field of application of nano-material largely depends on its structural, chemical and optical properties of nano-material. Doping of nano-materials results in changes their particle size and band-gap which effects its applications. In this work, the effect of change in band-gap and particle size has been studied for 2nd group element doped ZnO (Zinc Oxide) nanostructures synthesized on AAO (Anode Aluminum Oxide) template having a pore size of 180.5 nm fabricated using chemical bath deposition and Anodization respectively. Fuzzy logic rule based system is used to study the effect of 2nd group element doping in ZnO nano-structure fabricated on AAO template with a fix pore size on the band-gap and output nanostructure. With addition of 2nd group element in ZnO nano-structure, a variation in rod length and band-gap has been observed. A decrease of rod length and an increase in band-gap have been observed by the addition of 2nd group including Be, Mg, Ca and Sr elements in ZnO nano-crystal. The fuzzy logic results are in accordance with the experimental system which shows the effectiveness of the simulations