Revisiting the nexus between exchange rate, exports and economic growth: further evidence from Asia

The economic growth of developing countries has been associated with their exports, and the existing research suggests that exchange rates significantly influence the exports. This study used panel data to investigate the potential nexus of gross domestic product (GDP), exports and exchange rates in Asian countries over the period of 1981–2016. The results portray that nexus between exchange rate and exports holds true for Export-led Growth (ELG) and Growth-led Exports (GLE) hypotheses. This study used the Wald test under Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) with all necessary specifications tests to identify the possible nexus of variables, and applied the fixed effects model along with control variables. The results imply that an undervalued currency enhances exports and has a significant impact on economic growth. Additionally, the results of Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) model with financial crises dummy suggested that the estimations are robust. Keeping in view the aforementioned findings, a timely and balanced policy can play a pivotal role in improving the long term nexus of exchange rates, exports and economic growth

Detection of Human Salivary Amylase Level Deposited on Fruits with First Bite Mark

Background: Human body fluids are vital for criminological examinations. The recovery, conservation, and investigation of body fluids or its stains are critical in measurable forensic cases. The amylase testing is being utilized as a possible test to locate the crime scene saliva stains for more than three decades. This investigation was intended to decide the human salivary amylase accumulated on fruit after the first bite where the level of salivary amylase was concluded by Radial Gel Diffusion method.Methods: Three sorts of organic fruits (apple, peach, and apricot) and 20 people (10 male and 10 female) were chosen for this investigation. The specimens were assembled from bite mark area following time intervals 0 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours and 48 hours.Results: Experimental outcomes demonstrated that the diameter of amylase activity in male specimens was more noteworthy than female. Apples, as well as apricot pit samples, indicated amylase activity till 48 hours; however, the specimens collected from peach demonstrated amylase activity until 12 hours, after first bite mark.Conclusion: This study demonstrated that salivary amylase testing might be valuable for DNA evidence, where DNA investigations for every case might be restricted because of cost issues.Keywords: Amylase; Saliva; Investigation; Bite mark; Preservatio

Investments in environmental preservation: is the government crowding in green enterprises? Evidence from a-listed companies in China

Government investment in environmental protection (Govin) plays a key role in stimulating private green investment (Prinv) to preserve the ecological environment with economic profits. To examine the effect of Govin on Prinv, this study uses data from 2010 to 2020 on green A-listed companies in China and estimates a dynamic panel model by using both the difference generalized method of moments and system generalized method of moments. The results indicate that Govin has a crowding-in effect on Prinv, and this conclusion is confirmed by several robustness tests. Furthermore, we identify revenues as a potential mechanism variable to explain how Govin affects Prinv. In addition, this study finds regional and enterprise ownership differences in the crowding in effect of Chinese Govin. Finally, based on these outcomes, the study suggests that the government should rationally and dynamically adjust the contents of public environmental investment and optimise its structure to effectively promote the development of green, low-carbon, and circular economie

Comparison of Closed Reduction and Plaster Cast versus Kirschner Wire Fixation for the Management of Colle’s Fracture

Objective: To evaluate the functional outcomes of closed reduction and plaster cast versus kirschner wire fixation in treatment of colle’s fracture.Study Design:  Randomized Control Trial.Place and Duration: Study was conducted in the department of Orthopedic surgery Bahawal Victoria Hospital Bahawalpur from April 2017 to April 2018.Methodology: A total of sixty patients with colle’s fracture enrolled in the study. Adult patients of age more than 20 years, both genders with unstable distal radius end fracture were included in the study. Patients unfit for medical treatment, compound fracture with vascular injury and who were not willing for surgery were excluded from the study. Patients were divided into two groups with lottery method. Complications after surgery and outcomes (excellent, good, and poor) were assessed. SPSS version was used to analyze data. P value ≤ 0.05 was considered as significant.Results: mean age and time of union of Group A was 42.90±3.53 years and 3.80±1.58 respectively. There were more males than females i.e. 70% and 30% respectively. Majority of the patients’ outcome was good in both the groups’ i.e. 46.7% and 53.3% respectively. The differences were statistically insignificant.Conclusion:Results of our study reveals that both treatment methods are equally effective less costly mode of treatment should be adopted for management of colle’s fracture. Keywords: Close Reduction, Plaster Cast, Kirschner Wire, Collles’ Fractur

Savior: A Reliable Fault Resilient Router Architecture for Network-on-Chip

[EN] The router plays an important role in communication among different processing cores in on-chip networks. Technology scaling on one hand has enabled the designers to integrate multiple processing components on a single chip; on the other hand, it becomes the reason for faults. A generic router consists of the buffers and pipeline stages. A single fault may result in an undesirable situation of degraded performance or a whole chip may stop working. Therefore, it is necessary to provide permanent fault tolerance to all the components of the router. In this paper, we propose a mechanism that can tolerate permanent faults that occur in the router. We exploit the fault-tolerant techniques of resource sharing and paring between components for the input port unit and routing computation (RC) unit, the resource borrowing for virtual channel allocator (VA) and multiple paths for switch allocator (SA) and crossbar (XB). The experimental results and analysis show that the proposed mechanism enhances the reliability of the router architecture towards permanent faults at the cost of 29% area overhead. The proposed router architecture achieves the highest Silicon Protection Factor (SPF) metric, which is 24.4 as compared to the state-of-the-art fault-tolerant architectures. It incurs an increase in latency for SPLASH2 and PARSEC benchmark traffics, which is minimal as compared to the baseline router.This work was supported by the Spanish 'Ministerio de Ciencia Innovacion y Universidades' and FEDER program in the framework of the 'Proyectos de I+D d Generacion de Conocimiento del Programa Estatal de Generacion de Conocimiento y Fortalecimiento Cientifico y Tecnologico del Sistema de I+D+i, Subprograma Estatal de Generacion de Conocimiento' (ref: PGC2018-095747-B-I00).Hussain, A.; Irfan, M.; Baloch, NK.; Draz, U.; Ali, T.; Glowacz, A.; Dunai, L.... (2020). Savior: A Reliable Fault Resilient Router Architecture for Network-on-Chip. Electronics. 9(11):1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9111783S118911Borkar, S. (1999). Design challenges of technology scaling. IEEE Micro, 19(4), 23-29. doi:10.1109/40.782564Latif, K., Rahmani, A.-M., Nigussie, E., Seceleanu, T., Radetzki, M., & Tenhunen, H. (2013). Partial Virtual Channel Sharing: A Generic Methodology to Enhance Resource Management and Fault Tolerance in Networks-on-Chip. Journal of Electronic Testing, 29(3), 431-452. doi:10.1007/s10836-013-5389-5Borkar, S. (2005). Designing Reliable Systems from Unreliable Components: The Challenges of Transistor Variability and Degradation. IEEE Micro, 25(6), 10-16. doi:10.1109/mm.2005.110Ali, T., Noureen, J., Draz, U., Shaf, A., Yasin, S., & Ayaz, M. (2018). Participants Ranking Algorithm for Crowdsensing in Mobile Communication. ICST Transactions on Scalable Information Systems, 5(16), 154476. doi:10.4108/eai.13-4-2018.154476Ali, T., Draz, U., Yasin, S., Noureen, J., shaf, A., & Zardari, M. (2018). An Efficient Participant’s Selection Algorithm for Crowdsensing. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 9(1). doi:10.14569/ijacsa.2018.090154Poluri, P., & Louri, A. (2016). Shield: A Reliable Network-on-Chip Router Architecture for Chip Multiprocessors. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 27(10), 3058-3070. doi:10.1109/tpds.2016.2521641Valinataj, M., & Shahiri, M. (2016). A low-cost, fault-tolerant and high-performance router architecture for on-chip networks. Microprocessors and Microsystems, 45, 151-163. doi:10.1016/j.micpro.2016.04.009Kim, J., Nicopoulos, C., Park, D., Narayanan, V., Yousif, M. S., & Das, C. R. (2006). A Gracefully Degrading and Energy-Efficient Modular Router Architecture for On-Chip Networks. ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, 34(2), 4-15. doi:10.1145/1150019.1136487Polian, I., & Hayes, J. P. (2011). Selective Hardening: Toward Cost-Effective Error Tolerance. IEEE Design & Test of Computers, 28(3), 54-63. doi:10.1109/mdt.2010.120Mohammed, H., Flayyih, W., & Rokhani, F. (2019). Tolerating Permanent Faults in the Input Port of the Network on Chip Router. Journal of Low Power Electronics and Applications, 9(1), 11. doi:10.3390/jlpea9010011Wang, L., Ma, S., Li, C., Chen, W., & Wang, Z. (2017). A high performance reliable NoC router. Integration, 58, 583-592. doi:10.1016/j.vlsi.2016.10.016Shafique, M. A., Baloch, N. K., Baig, M. I., Hussain, F., Zikria, Y. B., & Kim, S. W. (2020). NoCGuard: A Reliable Network-on-Chip Router Architecture. Electronics, 9(2), 342. doi:10.3390/electronics9020342Poluri, P., & Louri, A. (2015). A Soft Error Tolerant Network-on-Chip Router Pipeline for Multi-Core Systems. IEEE Computer Architecture Letters, 14(2), 107-110. doi:10.1109/lca.2014.2360686Feng, C., Lu, Z., Jantsch, A., Zhang, M., & Xing, Z. (2013). Addressing Transient and Permanent Faults in NoC With Efficient Fault-Tolerant Deflection Router. IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, 21(6), 1053-1066. doi:10.1109/tvlsi.2012.2204909Liu, J., Harkin, J., Li, Y., & Maguire, L. P. (2016). Fault-Tolerant Networks-on-Chip Routing With Coarse and Fine-Grained Look-Ahead. IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, 35(2), 260-273. doi:10.1109/tcad.2015.2459050Runge, A. (2015). FaFNoC: A Fault-tolerant and Bufferless Network-on-chip. Procedia Computer Science, 56, 397-402. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2015.07.226Binkert, N., Beckmann, B., Black, G., Reinhardt, S. K., Saidi, A., Basu, A., … Wood, D. A. (2011). The gem5 simulator. ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, 39(2), 1-7. doi:10.1145/2024716.202471

Development in Heavy Metal Ions Detection: Antimony-Hydroxyapatite Modified Electrodes Coupled with Square Wave Anodic Stripping Voltammetry

The occurrence of heavy metal ions in environmental matrices presents serious risks to human health and ecosystems. An electrochemical sensor for the simultaneous detection of lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) ions in aqueous samples is presented in this study. The sensor was optimized through material composition, electrolyte, deposition, and electrochemical parameters using a modified carbon paste electrode (CPE) comprising hydroxyapatite (HAp) and antimony (Sb). Calibration studies showed high sensitivity (0.574 ± 0.32 ppb) and strong linearity (R2 = 0.993) for Pb detection. Repeated studies showed that the minimum standard deviation (RSD) was ±3.73%, confirming the reliability of the results. Real sample analysis of tap water with the developed method had less than 5% deviation in results as compared to results obtained from atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). Furthermore, promising results were obtained from simultaneous detection of Pb(II) and Cd(II) ions, thus the sensor showed reliability for practical applications

Waste Management and Prediction of Air Pollutants Using IoT and Machine Learning Approach

[EN] Increasing waste generation has become a significant issue over the globe due to the rapid increase in urbanization and industrialization. In the literature, many issues that have a direct impact on the increase of waste and the improper disposal of waste have been investigated. Most of the existing work in the literature has focused on providing a cost-efficient solution for the monitoring of garbage collection system using the Internet of Things (IoT). Though an IoT-based solution provides the real-time monitoring of a garbage collection system, it is limited to control the spreading of overspill and bad odor blowout gasses. The poor and inadequate disposal of waste produces toxic gases, and radiation in the environment has adverse effects on human health, the greenhouse system, and global warming. While considering the importance of air pollutants, it is imperative to monitor and forecast the concentration of air pollutants in addition to the management of the waste. In this paper, we present and IoT-based smart bin using a machine and deep learning model to manage the disposal of garbage and to forecast the air pollutant present in the surrounding bin environment. The smart bin is connected to an IoT-based server, the Google Cloud Server (GCP), which performs the computation necessary for predicting the status of the bin and for forecasting air quality based on real-time data. We experimented with a traditional model (k-nearest neighbors algorithm (k-NN) and logistic reg) and a non-traditional (long short term memory (LSTM) network-based deep learning) algorithm for the creation of alert messages regarding bin status and forecasting the amount of air pollutant carbon monoxide (CO) present in the air at a specific instance. The recalls of logistic regression and k-NN algorithm is 79% and 83%, respectively, in a real-time testing environment for predicting the status of the bin. The accuracy of modified LSTM and simple LSTM models is 90% and 88%, respectively, to predict the future concentration of gases present in the air. The system resulted in a delay of 4 s in the creation and transmission of the alert message to a sanitary worker. The system provided the real-time monitoring of garbage levels along with notifications from the alert mechanism. The proposed works provide improved accuracy by utilizing machine learning as compared to existing solutions based on simple approaches.This research work was funded by the Ministry of Education and the Deanship of Scientific Research, Najran University. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, under code number NU/ESCI/19/001.Hussain, A.; Draz, U.; Ali, T.; Tariq, S.; Glowacz, A.; Irfan, M.; Antonino Daviu, JA.... (2020). Waste Management and Prediction of Air Pollutants Using IoT and Machine Learning Approach. Energies. 13(15):1-22. https://doi.org/10.3390/en13153930S1221315Lionetto, M. G., Guascito, M. R., Caricato, R., Giordano, M. E., De Bartolomeo, A. R., Romano, M. P., … Contini, D. (2019). Correlation of Oxidative Potential with Ecotoxicological and Cytotoxicological Potential of PM10 at an Urban Background Site in Italy. Atmosphere, 10(12), 733. doi:10.3390/atmos10120733Wiedinmyer, C., Yokelson, R. J., & Gullett, B. K. (2014). Global Emissions of Trace Gases, Particulate Matter, and Hazardous Air Pollutants from Open Burning of Domestic Waste. Environmental Science & Technology, 48(16), 9523-9530. doi:10.1021/es502250zYan, F., Zhu, F., Wang, Q., & Xiong, Y. (2016). Preliminary Study of PM2.5 Formation During Municipal Solid Waste Incineration. Procedia Environmental Sciences, 31, 475-481. doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2016.02.054Curtis, L., Rea, W., Smith-Willis, P., Fenyves, E., & Pan, Y. (2006). Adverse health effects of outdoor air pollutants. Environment International, 32(6), 815-830. doi:10.1016/j.envint.2006.03.012Gollakota, A. R. K., Gautam, S., & Shu, C.-M. (2020). Inconsistencies of e-waste management in developing nations – Facts and plausible solutions. Journal of Environmental Management, 261, 110234. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.110234Anitha, A. (2017). Garbage monitoring system using IoT. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 263, 042027. doi:10.1088/1757-899x/263/4/042027Sirsikar, S., & Karemore, P. (2015). Review Paper on Air Pollution Monitoring system. IJARCCE, 218-220. doi:10.17148/ijarcce.2015.4147Tavares Neto, R. F., & Godinho Filho, M. (2013). Literature review regarding Ant Colony Optimization applied to scheduling problems: Guidelines for implementation and directions for future research. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 26(1), 150-161. doi:10.1016/j.engappai.2012.03.011Ali, T., Irfan, M., Alwadie, A. S., & Glowacz, A. (2020). IoT-Based Smart Waste Bin Monitoring and Municipal Solid Waste Management System for Smart Cities. Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering, 45(12), 10185-10198. doi:10.1007/s13369-020-04637-wSilva, B. N., Khan, M., & Han, K. (2018). Towards sustainable smart cities: A review of trends, architectures, components, and open challenges in smart cities. Sustainable Cities and Society, 38, 697-713. doi:10.1016/j.scs.2018.01.053Gutierrez, J. M., Jensen, M., Henius, M., & Riaz, T. (2015). Smart Waste Collection System Based on Location Intelligence. Procedia Computer Science, 61, 120-127. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2015.09.170Carbon Monoxide Dangers in the Boiler Room www.pmmag.com/articles/97528-carbonmonoxide-danger-in-the-boiler-roomDe Vito, S., Massera, E., Piga, M., Martinotto, L., & Di Francia, G. (2008). On field calibration of an electronic nose for benzene estimation in an urban pollution monitoring scenario. Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, 129(2), 750-757. doi:10.1016/j.snb.2007.09.060Guiry, J., van de Ven, P., & Nelson, J. (2014). Multi-Sensor Fusion for Enhanced Contextual Awareness of Everyday Activities with Ubiquitous Devices. Sensors, 14(3), 5687-5701. doi:10.3390/s140305687Ali, T., Draz, U., Yasin, S., Noureen, J., shaf, A., & Zardari, M. (2018). An Efficient Participant’s Selection Algorithm for Crowdsensing. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 9(1). doi:10.14569/ijacsa.2018.090154Ali, T., Noureen, J., Draz, U., Shaf, A., Yasin, S., & Ayaz, M. (2018). Participants Ranking Algorithm for Crowdsensing in Mobile Communication. ICST Transactions on Scalable Information Systems, 5(16), 154476. doi:10.4108/eai.13-4-2018.15447

Harnessing Sustainable Motivation: A Grounded Theory Exploration of Public Service Motivation in Local Governments of the State of Oregon, United States

Employee motivation has always been a matter of concern for both public and private sector organizations. Since the industrial revolution in the late 18th century, organizations have struggled to foster workforce motivation and morale to enhance productivity. While a plethora of literature focuses on private sector motivation research, public sector organizations receive only modest scholarly attention. However, a new concept has emerged in public management literature during the late 1980s and 1990s, later known as public service motivation (PSM). The debate about PSM is premised on the notion that the motivation of public sector employees is quite different from their private sector counterparts because of their orientation to public service. Perry and Wise (1990) expressed this concept in the theory of PSM. Subsequently, a growing stream of scholarship has emerged which explores the many aspects of antecedents and outcomes related to PSM. However, questions remain about how to best keep the motivation of public sector employees sustainably high, and about what factors embolden or enervate the motivation and morale of public sector employees. This study focuses on the sustainable work motivation of local government employees. Its arguments and discussions draw from PSM theory, total quality management (TQM) principles, and inspiration from Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study examines and attempts to uncover the career trajectories of local government employees in the State of Oregon, United States, through a rigorous grounded theory method (GTM) of inquiry. The study reveals a number of factors that facilitate and/or inhibit employees’ PSM. We expect the findings to be useful for both practitioners and government human resource policymakers in understanding the subtlety and vicissitudes of public sector employee careers and motivations

Financial Crises and Key Economic Sectors of China and India: A Comparative Review of 1991-2010

Economic growth of emerging Asian economies like China and India has been a topic of interest for researchers. However, most of the existing studies have focused on economic growth trends of China and India. The aim of this paper is to identify the core sectors of both economies and analyse the impact of the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the global financial crisis of 2008 on the performance of those sectors. We also intend to explore the impact of the aforementioned financial crises on the overall economic growth of both nations. Our review consists of five years’ average and critical analysis of the existing studies to identify the key sectors of economy and to analyse the impact of financial crises. The results indicate that industry and service sectors are the highest contributors in the GDP of China and India respectively. We also found heterogeneous impact of financial crises on the key sectors of both nations’ economy

Identification of Determinants for Globalization of SMEs using Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Networks

SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) sector is facing problems relating to implementation of international quality standards. These SMEs need to identify factors affecting business success abroad for intelligent allocation of resources to the process of internationalization. In this paper, MLP NN (Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network) has been used for identifying relative importance of key variables related to firm basics, manufacturing, quality inspection labs and level of education in determining the exporting status of Pakistani SMEs. A survey has been conducted for scoring out the pertinent variables in SMEs and coded in MLP NNs. It is found that ?firm registered with OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and ?size of firm? are the most important in determining exporting status of SMEs followed by other variables. For internationalization, the results aid policy makers in formulating strategie