Three Essays on the Determinants of Radicalization: A Case of North-Western Pakistan

Radicalization is as a formidable challenge for several nations. While radicalization continues to flare across the world, empirical evidence and consensus regarding its determinants remain scarce. This cumulative dissertation aims to contribute to understanding the determinants of radicalization based on three research papers. The first paper undertakes a systematic review of the existing scientific literature on radicalization. The second paper empirically tests the predictive power of the most plausible factors identified in the systematic review. The third paper empirically investigates the existence of non-linearities in the relationship between radicalization and socioeconomic factors.:1. Introduction 2. Understanding the Determinants of Radicalization: A Systematic Review 3. An Empirical Assessment of the Determinants of Radicalization: Evidence from North-Western Pakistan 4. Socioeconomic Factors and Radicalization in Pakistan: A Non-Linear Exploration 5. Reference

E-Commerce: The Mantra of Urban Centers

The research done in this paper is done to analyze the effects of different variables on Customer’s loyalty in the e-commerce business. As the act of shopping is digitalized and more and more stores shift their business towards online shopping, the e-commerce industry thrives.  The intricacies of the business in the e-commerce sector depend on a plethora of variables, and we have analyzed the effects of some on each other. Much of the business in the ecommerce sector depends on the actions and preferences of the customer. That being said, the following encircles a customer’s satisfaction as the main factor, across which multiple hypothesis are made and later on proved as well using different software and research techniques. Other factors are e-commerce security and expectations. There are a number of limitations in this research that leaves some grey area for it to be explored further. These limitations are defined at the end of the research and all the enhancements are proposed as well

Cross Talk between Nitric Oxide and Phytohormones Regulate Plant Development during Abiotic Stresses

Plants, being sessile, are concurrently exposed to various biotic and abiotic stresses. The perception of stress signals in plants involves a wide spectrum of signal transduction pathways that interact to induce tolerance against adverse environmental conditions. This functional overlapping among various stress signaling cascades also leads to the expression of genes that regulate biosynthesis or action of other hormones. Phytohormonal signals, activated by both developmental and environmental responses, play a crucial role to develop stress tolerance in plants. Nitric oxide (NO) is one of the major players in plant signaling networks. Emerging evidence supports that NO interplays with signaling pathways of auxins, gibberellins, abscisic acid, ethylene, jasmonic acid, brassinosteroids, and other plant hormones to control metabolism, growth, and development in plants. This chapter focuses on the current state of knowledge of cross talk between signaling pathways of NO and phytohormones in plants exposed to various abiotic stresses

Using multivariate regression and ANN models to predict properties of concrete cured under hot weather: a case of Rawalpindi Pakistan

Concrete is an important construction material. Its characteristics depend on the environmental conditions, construction methods, and mix factors. Working with concrete is particularly tricky in a hot climate. This study predicts the properties of concrete in hot conditions using the case study of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. In this research, variable casting temperatures, design factors, and curing conditions are investigated for their effects on concrete characteristics. For this purpose, water–cement ratio (w/c), in-situ concrete temperature (T), and curing methods of the concrete are varied, and their effects on pulse velocity (PV), compressive strength (fc), depth of water penetration (WP), and split tensile strength (ft) were studied for up to 180 days. Quadratic regression and artificial neural network (ANN) models have been formulated to forecast the properties of concrete in the current study. The results show that T, curing period, and moist curing strongly influence fc, ft, and PV, while WP is adversely affected by T and moist curing. The ANN model shows better results compared to the quadratic regression model. Furthermore, a combined ANN model of fc, ft, and PV was also developed that displayed higher accuracy than the individual ANN models. These models can help construction site engineers select the appropriate concrete parameters when concreting under hot climates to produce durable and long-lasting concrete

Socioeconomic hardships, religiosity, and radicalization: A non-linear exploration

AbstractSocioeconomic hardships are often advocated as the drivers of radicalization, but the existing research shows mixed evidence for this relationship. This study argues that socioeconomic hardships should increase the likelihood of radicalization only for sufficiently religious people, thereby implying a non-linear relationship. The study suggests that as a result of the lower opportunity costs of extreme acts during socioeconomic hardships, the likelihood of committing or supporting such acts for obtaining religiously inspired mental rewards should be the highest for the economically disadvantaged, religious individuals. The study tests this hypothesis through the non-linear threshold regression method developed by Hansen (2000), using survey data from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Results indicate that radicalization has a statistically significant positive relationship with indicators of the individual level socioeconomic conditions such as the perceptions of poor economic prospects, individual relative deprivation, injustice, and inequality only above the religiosity threshold. These findings support the hypothesis that socioeconomic hardships (or the perception of these) drive radicalization only in sufficiently religious people. This implies that apart from security-centric approaches, radicalization can also be deterred by increasing the opportunity costs of political violence through socioeconomic improvements. Moreover, promoting balanced/diverse religious views may also help check radicalization

Three Essays on the Determinants of Radicalization: A Case of North-Western Pakistan

Radicalization is as a formidable challenge for several nations. While radicalization continues to flare across the world, empirical evidence and consensus regarding its determinants remain scarce. This cumulative dissertation aims to contribute to understanding the determinants of radicalization based on three research papers. The first paper undertakes a systematic review of the existing scientific literature on radicalization. The second paper empirically tests the predictive power of the most plausible factors identified in the systematic review. The third paper empirically investigates the existence of non-linearities in the relationship between radicalization and socioeconomic factors.:1. Introduction 2. Understanding the Determinants of Radicalization: A Systematic Review 3. An Empirical Assessment of the Determinants of Radicalization: Evidence from North-Western Pakistan 4. Socioeconomic Factors and Radicalization in Pakistan: A Non-Linear Exploration 5. Reference

Three Essays on the Determinants of Radicalization: A Case of North-Western Pakistan

Radicalization is as a formidable challenge for several nations. While radicalization continues to flare across the world, empirical evidence and consensus regarding its determinants remain scarce. This cumulative dissertation aims to contribute to understanding the determinants of radicalization based on three research papers. The first paper undertakes a systematic review of the existing scientific literature on radicalization. The second paper empirically tests the predictive power of the most plausible factors identified in the systematic review. The third paper empirically investigates the existence of non-linearities in the relationship between radicalization and socioeconomic factors.:1. Introduction 2. Understanding the Determinants of Radicalization: A Systematic Review 3. An Empirical Assessment of the Determinants of Radicalization: Evidence from North-Western Pakistan 4. Socioeconomic Factors and Radicalization in Pakistan: A Non-Linear Exploration 5. Reference

Selenium Supplementation Affects Physiological and Biochemical Processes to Improve Fodder Yield and Quality of Maize (Zea mays L.) under Water Deficit Conditions

Climate change is one of the most complex challenges that pose serious threats to livelihoods of poor people who rely heavily on agriculture and livestock particularly in climate-sensitive developing countries of the world. The negative effects of water scarcity, due to climate change, are not limited to productivity food crops but have far-reaching consequences on livestock feed production systems. Selenium (Se) is considered essential for animal health and has also been reported to counteract various abiotic stresses in plants however, understanding of Se regulated mechanisms for improving nutritional status of fodder crops remains elusive. We report the effects of exogenous selenium (Se) supply on physiological and biochemical processes that may influence green fodder yield and quality of maize (Zea mays L.) under drought stress conditions. The plants were grown in lysimeter tanks under natural conditions and were subjected to normal (100% field capacity) and water stress (60% field capacity) conditions. Foliar spray of Se was carried out before the start of tasseling stage (65 days after sowing) and was repeated after one week, whereas water spray was used as a control. Drought stress markedly reduced the water status, pigments and green fodder yield and resulted in low forage quality in water stressed maize plants. Nevertheless, exogenous Se application at 40 mg L-1 resulted in less negative leaf water potential (41%) and enhanced relative water contents (30%), total chlorophyll (53%), carotenoid contents (60%), accumulation of total free amino acids (40%) and activities of superoxide dismutase (53%), catalase (30%), peroxidase (27%) and ascorbate peroxidase (27%) with respect to control under water deficit conditions. Consequently, Se regulated processes improved fodder yield (15%) and increased crude protein (47%), fibre (10%), nitrogen free extract (10%) and Se content (36%) but did not affect crude ash content in water stressed maize plants. We propose that Se foliar spray (40 mg L-1) is a handy, feasible and cost-effective approach to improve maize fodder yield and quality in arid and semi-arid regions of the world facing acute shortage of water

Energy-efficient Harvested-Aware clustering and cooperative Routing Protocol for WBAN (E-HARP)

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is an interconnection of small bio-sensor nodes that are deployed in/on different parts of human body. It is used to sense health-related data such as rate of heart beat, blood pressure, blood glucose level, Electro-cardiogram (ECG), Electro-myography (EMG) etc. of human body and pass these readings to real-time health monitoring systems. WBANs is an important research area and is used in different applications such as medical field, sports, entertainment, social welfare etc. Bio-Sensor Nodes (BSNs) or simply called as Sensor Nodes (SNs) are the main backbone of WBANs. SNs normally have very limited resources due to its smaller size. Therefore, minimum consumption of energy is an essential design requirement of WBAN schemes. In the proposed work, Energy-efficient Harvested-Aware clustering and cooperative Routing Protocol for WBAN (E-HARP) are presented. The presented protocol mainly proposes a novel multi-attribute-based technique for dynamic Cluster Head (CH) selection and cooperative routing. In the first phase of this two-phased technique, optimum CH is selected among the cluster members, based on calculated Cost Factor (CF). The parameters used for calculation of CF are; residual energy of SN, required transmission power, communication link Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR) and total network energy loss. In order to distribute load on one CH, E-HARP selects new CH in each data transmission round. In the second phase of E-HARP, data is routed with cooperative effort of the SN, which saves the node energy by prohibiting the transmission of redundant data packets. To evaluate the performance of the proposed technique, comprehensive experimentations using NS-2 simulation tool has been conducted. The results are compared with some latest techniques named as EH-RCB, ELR-W, Co-LAEEBA, and EECBSR. The acquired results show a significant enhancement of E-HARP in terms of network stability, network life time, throughput, end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio

Thinking of Going Canting Again: A Study of Revisit Intention to Chinese Restaurants

This study measures the impact of the fairness of price, quality of food, and quality of service on revisit intention of Chinese restaurants' consumers, mediated by consumer satisfaction. Purposive sampling technique is used for data collection along with snowball sampling technique. Two hundred questionnaires were answered through online Google forms. The analysis of the collected data is executed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The descriptive statistics are analyzed by SPSS software, and the influential statistics are analyzed by Smart PLS software. The analyses' findings concluded that food quality has a highly noticeable impact on consumers' revisit intention. Quality of service and Fairness of price also has a prominent effect on the consumer's revisit intention. Limitations and recommendations are also mentioned at the end of the study