Integrating the Supply Chain with RFID: A Technical and Business Analysis

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the technical and business implications of adopting Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in organizational settings. The year 2004 marked a significant shift toward adopting RFID because of mandates by large retailers and government organizations. The use of RFID technology is expected to increase rapidly in the next few years. At present, however, initial barriers against widespread adoption include standards, interoperability, costs, forward compatibility, and lack of familiarity. This paper describes basic components of an RFID system including tags, readers, and antennas and how they work together using an integrated supply chain model. Our analysis suggests that business needs to overcome human resource scarcity, security, legal and financial challenges and make informed decision regarding standards and process reengineering. The technology is not fully mature and suffers from issues of attenuation and interference. A laboratory experiment conducted by the authors\u27 shows that the middleware is not yet at a plug-and-play stage, which means that initial adopters need to spend considerable effort to integrate RFID into their existing business processes. Appendices contain a glossary of common RFID terms, a list of RFID vendors and detailed findings of the laboratory experiment. NOTE: BECAUSE OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS USED, THIS ARTICLE IS LONG; APPROXIMATELY 850KB IN BOTH JOURNAL AND ARTICLE VERSIO

The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony

As perhaps the single most effective method of proving the elements of a crime, eyewitness testimony has been vital to the trial process for centuries. However, the reliability of eyewitness testimony has recently come into question with the work of organizations such as The Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. This thesis examines previous experiments concerning eyewitness testimony as well as court cases in which eyewitnesses provided vital evidence in order to determine the reliability of eyewitness testimony as well as to determine mitigating or exacerbating factors contributing to a lack of reliability

Lay-Leadership: How to Develop Lay Leaders in a Local Church with Special Reference to the Hyesung Presbyterian Church in South Korea

This thesis is designed to help church leaders establish a lay leadership development process in a local church, especially in a Korean church with a size between 300 and 1,000 church members. In the first part, the fundamental knowledge of leadership is described, including the characteristics of leadership concerning lay leadership development, the reasons why a local church should develop lay leaders, and what the leaders should develop through the process. In the second part, a lay leadership development process and how to establish it in a local church is described. In the third part, Hyesung Church\u27s leadership development process is described and evaluated based on what is established in this thesis. This thesis concludes with recommendations of seven principles (7 Ps) which a local church needs to keep remembering while the church develops the process: Purpose, Philosophy, People, Process, Practice, Progression, and Persistence

An Assessment of the Smart COVID-19 Approach to Lockdown and its Empirical Evidence

COVID-19 is a new and contagious disease that has changed human lifestyle and habits globally according to the directions provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). Until some authentic remedy or vaccine becomes available, every country is providing instructions to its public to follow precautionary measures. These measures may include lockdown, social distancing, restricting movement, and educating public about COVID-19. Lockdown is the most applied and successful way to control the virus spread and it remains helpful in curtailing the spike. However, it adversely affects developing countries like Pakistan. All types of lockdown disrupt the life of the poor and the middle class. In this paper, an intelligent-smart approach is suggested for developing countries as against complete lockdown to handle the pandemic. This approach will show the long-term results needed for controlling COVID-19 without creating any major disturbance in the economy. In this paper, evidence based approaches were used to evaluate the short-term and long-term effects of the daily increasing number of cases of COVID-19 in Pakistan. The results showed that Sindh, which has the maximum number of COVID-19 cases, is better in implementing smart lockdown as compared to other administrative regions of Pakistan. As the risk of the second wave of COVID-19 is enhanced, it would be effective to continue the intelligent-smart approach with mild SOPs to avoid the disastrous effects of COVID-19 in the future. Received Date: May 14, 2020, Last Received:  December 10, 2020 Acceptance:  December  25, 2020 &nbsp

MILAMP : multiple instance prediction of amyloid proteins

Amyloid proteins are implicated in several diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, prion diseases, etc. In order to characterize the amyloidogenicity of a given protein, it is important to locate the amyloid forming hotspot regions within the protein as well as to analyze the effects of mutations on these proteins. The biochemical and biological assays used for this purpose can be facilitated by computational means. This paper presents a machine learning method that can predict hotspot amyloidogenic regions within proteins and characterize changes in their amyloidogenicity due to point mutations. The proposed method called MILAMP (Multiple Instance Learning of AMyloid Proteins) achieves high accuracy for identification of amyloid proteins, hotspot localization and prediction of mutation effects on amyloidogenicity by integrating heterogenous data sources and exploiting common predictive patterns across these tasks through multiple instance learning. The paper presents comprehensive benchmarking experiments to test the predictive performance of MILAMP in comparison to previously published state of the art techniques for amyloid prediction. The python code for the implementation and webserver for MILAMP is available at the URL: http://faculty.pieas.edu.pk/fayyaz/software.html#MILAMP

Causes of higher ecological footprint in Pakistan: Does energy consumption contribute? Evidence from the non-linear ARDL model

The impact of human activities on environmental degradation has been increasing over time, and ecological footprint measures the impact of human activities on the environment. An increase in ecological footprint has created alarming situations around the globe. This study explores the causes of Pakistan’s high ecological footprint (EFP). The asymmetric analysis of fossil fuels and renewable energy consumption on EFP has been carried out from 1990 to 2020. The results obtained from the NARDL approach revealed that the positive shocks of fossil fuel consumption increase EFP, but its negative shocks decline EFP. Meanwhile, both positive and negative shocks of renewable energy consumption decline EFP in Pakistan. This study suggests that renewable energy consumption can play a significant role in reducing the EFP in Pakistan

Librarian Behaviors, Students’ Personality and Academic Performance: A Case of Public Libraries

While technology has enabled academic libraries to go digital, it requires a librarian with great knowledge and real-world experience to perform the job well. To address this issue, a librarian equipped with skills for digitization and digitalization is key. Academic libraries have always used digitalization to encourage librarian behaviors. This research examines the effects of negative/positive librarian behavior patterns on student personality and academic performance immediately. The project is an endeavor to better understand how teachers\u27 actions impact their students\u27 performance and personality. The present study acknowledges the library education dynamics and the way that student performance and personality are linked to librarian behaviors, specifically in the context of advanced public universities (HEIs). This research involved administering surveys to Pakistani students at HEIs. The investigator requested the students of the HEIs to respond to positive and negative behavior and attitude as exhibited by the librarians. The students proposed that professors and faculty tell students how the behavior of librarians influences their own performance and personality. The investigation found that the student\u27s academic performance and personality were strongly impacted by the librarian\u27s positive feelings, while the librarian\u27s attitude was greatly influenced by the student\u27s performance. This research also offers managerial implications and directions for future study

Measuring the patient safety culture at a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan using the hospital survey on patient safety culture (HSOPSC)

Background: Patient safety is a top priority for many healthcare organisations worldwide. However, most of the initiatives aimed at the measurement and improvement of patient safety culture have been undertaken in developed countries. The purpose of this study was to measure the patient safety culture at a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan using the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC).Methods: The HSOPSC was used to measure the patient safety culture across 12 dimensions at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi. 2,959 individuals, who had been working at the hospital, were administered the HSOPSC in paper form between June and September 2019.Results: The response rate of the survey was 50%. In the past 12 months, 979 respondents (33.1%) had submitted at least one event report. Results showed that the personnel viewed the patient safety culture at their hospital favourably. Overall, respondents scored highest in the following dimensions: \u27feedback and communication on error\u27 (91%), \u27organisational learning and continuous improvement\u27 (85%), \u27teamwork within units\u27 (83%), \u27teamwork across units\u27 (76%). The dimensions with the lowest positive per cent scores included \u27staffing\u27 (40%) and \u27non-punitive response to error\u27 (41%). Only the reliability of the \u27handoffs and transitions\u27, \u27frequency of events reported\u27, \u27organisational learning\u27 and \u27teamwork within units\u27 was higher than Cronbach\u27s alpha of 0.7. Upon regression analysis of positive responses, physicians and nurses were found to have responded less favourably than the remaining professional groups for most dimensions.Conclusion: The measurement of safety culture is both feasible and informative in developing countries and could be broadly implemented to inform patient safety efforts. Current data suggest that it compares favourably with benchmarks from hospitals in the USA. Like the USA, high staff workload is a significant safety concern among staff. This study lays the foundation for further context-specific research on patient safety culture in developing countries

EFFECT OF SUPPLEMENTAL IRRIGATION ON WHEAT WATER PRODUCTIVITY UNDER RAINFED ECOLOGY OF POTHOHAR, PAKISTAN

For rainfed ecology, water is the most limiting natural resource and its effective utilization is indispensable in order to optimize crop water productivity. A field study on wheat crop was carried out to asses the impact of different irrigation depths through sprinkler irrigation system at three phonological stages viz. tilleing, anthesis and grain filling. Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) was used in the trail and had three repeats.  The area under study received 195 mm seasonal rainfall. Supplemental irrigation depths at three phonological stages, using small quantities of water through sprinkler irrigation system, significantly promoted the crop growth. The irrigation depth 25 mm gave the maximum output for biological yield (6504 ), grain yield (2030 ), thousand grain weight (28), plant height (87 ) and spike length (10 ). The highest water productivity of 0.97 kg/m3 was achieved with 25 mm supplemental irrigation depth when applied at tillering and anthesis stages