Integration and Effective Supply Chain Management: A Review of Agriculture in Pakistan and China

Agriculture is likely to require further strengthening ties between farmers and citizens to improve the efficiency of market systems and their saturation with modern technology. Increasing globalization of agriculture and the ensuing hegemony of supermarkets have brought significant profits and losses. Those on whom the state of the global market of the 21st century, should strive for a just distribution of its burdens, without encroaching on the real fruits of progress, through which millions of people have access to a healthy, diverse and affordable food. Supply chain management can be defined as the integration of key business processes from end user to the original suppliers that provide products, services and information that add value for customers and stakeholders. The integration of all business processes with all stakeholders in the supply chain seems to make no sense apart from being, of course, a major waste of resources. In fact, in certain cases, the enormity of the task may make it impossible to overcome for a company whose supply chain presents a great complexity. Thus, it seems important that companies of all sizes find a way to manage more easily and effectively chains in which they operate. However, particularly in agricultural sector, integration of supply chain process has really brought significant impact on the efficiency of the overall procedures. Keywords: Supply Chain; Efficiency Measurement; Globalization; Agriculture Secto

Supply Chain Management of Agricultural Technology Innovation: Study of Fujian and Taiwan

Fujian and Taiwan has shared a strong cross-strait agricultural relation, and the government is keen to further strengthen the trade between the two. There has been substantial growth in the Fujian trade with Taiwan in agricultural goods that has increased more than $ 2.7 billion in 2013 for a year-on-year growth of 70%. This study adopted secondary data collection method to obtain information for the research. The research was mainly qualitative to acquire in-depth information on the matter under study. The findings showed that with the help of e-commerce both Fujian and Taiwan have been benefited with low transaction costs and efficient supply chain management to ensure effective trade. Keywords: Supply Chain Management, Agriculture, E-Commerce, Trade

INSTITUTIONAL OWNERSHIP AND CORPORATE VALUE: EVIDENCE FROM KARACHI STOCK EXCHANGE (KSE) 30-INDEX PAKISTAN

The study aims to explore the relationship between institutional ownership and firm performance. To obtain the targeted objectives, the required data, ranging from 2008 to 2013 were collected from annual reports and financial statements of concerned firms. Such type of data contains endogeneity problems. In order to deal with endogeneity problem, Durbin-Wu-Houseman test was applied. Among many advance econometric techniques, OLS and 2SLS were found appropriate to estimate the coefficient of interest. Institutional ownership being endogenous variable was found significantly and positively related with firm performance. Firm performance was found negatively related with debt ratio and fix expenditures. Finally it was found that institutional investors take more interest in firms having higher dividend payout ratio

Intrusion Detection Systems for Flying Ad-hoc Networks

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more dependent on mission success than ever. Due to their increase in demand, addressing security vulnerabilities to both UAVs and the Flying Ad-hoc Networks (FANET) they form is more important than ever. As the network traffic is communicated through open airwaves, this network of UAVs relies on monitoring applications known as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) to detect and mitigate attacks. This paper will survey current IDS systems that include machine learning techniques when combating various vulnerabilities and attacks from bad actors. This paper will be concluded with research challenges and future research directions in finding an effective IDS system that can handle cyber-attacks while meeting performance requirements.Comment: 5 Pages, 1 figure, 1 table, 41 Reference

An energy scaled and expanded vector-based forwarding scheme for industrial underwater acoustic sensor networks with sink mobility

Industrial Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (IUASNs) come with intrinsic challenges like long propagation delay, small bandwidth, large energy consumption, three-dimensional deployment, and high deployment and battery replacement cost. Any routing strategy proposed for IUASN must take into account these constraints. The vector based forwarding schemes in literature forward data packets to sink using holding time and location information of the sender, forwarder, and sink nodes. Holding time suppresses data broadcasts; however, it fails to keep energy and delay fairness in the network. To achieve this, we propose an Energy Scaled and Expanded Vector-Based Forwarding (ESEVBF) scheme. ESEVBF uses the residual energy of the node to scale and vector pipeline distance ratio to expand the holding time. Resulting scaled and expanded holding time of all forwarding nodes has a significant difference to avoid multiple forwarding, which reduces energy consumption and energy balancing in the network. If a node has a minimum holding time among its neighbors, it shrinks the holding time and quickly forwards the data packets upstream. The performance of ESEVBF is analyzed through in network scenario with and without node mobility to ensure its effectiveness. Simulation results show that ESEVBF has low energy consumption, reduces forwarded data copies, and less end-to-end delay

Growth and Development of Saraiki Novel

The linguistic developments have always been coincideing with the development of human civilizations. It is, therefore, commonly believed among historians and linguistic scholars that language and its various generes are the museum of any civilization that help understand depth and breadth of its development over time. The historical development of Saraiki language over time also has been reflected into its various geners such as poetry, drama, prose, folklores or nonfiction, and media.  The present study has examined the the historical development of literary genre, novel in modern Saraiki literature and its sociocultural and linguistic implications. The study would help researcg scholars in the area of Saraiki literature and linguistics to gain deeper understanding of historical development of Saraiki novel in relation to other generes and look into its relationship with sociocultural development of people in Saraiki speaking areas

Business Process Outsourcing: A Case Study on Pakistan’s Out-Bound Call Centers

This paper attempts to explore the problems of outsourcing industry with specific focus to out bound call centers and provide a remedial solution to the problem by which this sector can play an effective role in the IT industry of Pakistan and in turn the economy as a whole. Business Process outsourcing has become a multi billion dollar Industry globally it has brought visible benefits to the economy of the country and generating tremendous employment opportunities. Over the last couple of years, the worldwide business process outsourcing market has undergone rapid transformation. Continuing pressure on cost bases at a time of growing competitiveness is driving companies to look at offshore outsourcing as a strategic alternative. Many countries are demonstrating the benefits brought by business process outsourcing. Access to global talent, economies of scale, process engineering and enhancements, increased profit margins and improvements in quality are some of the gains that companies and in turn countries have realized. Although outsourcing has bought visible benefits with employment opportunities to Pakistan also, however these benefits do not come without a cost. Key Words: Business Process Outsourcing; Bound Call Centers; Offshore Outsourcing; Strategic Alternative; Economies of Scal

Impact of Wheat Breeding Research on Punjab Economy

With the rapidly growing population of Pakistan there is emerging need of food to keep pace with it. Different research institutions are working for it. The current study was launched to see the impact of current wheat breeding programs impact on Punjab economy. For this secondary data from crop reporting services was taken. Only for the years of 2000-2006 the complete set of data regarding variety area and production was available. Results revealed that among all the major factors contributing towards yield improvement, the Varity role was about 12 percent. It was great contribution of wheat breeding

Pakistan’s alliance making with People’s Republic of China from 1990-2010: challenges and counter-measures

This empirical research sets out to explore the complex domestic dynamics that shape Pakistan’s contemporary alliance making with China. The study examines the actual and potential domestic political challenges to the endurance of Pakistan-China alliance. The research also aims to assess Pakistani security elites’ efforts and strategies to overcome those challenges. The leading approaches in international politics that seek to explain the logic of external alliances – Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism – do not elucidate Pakistan-China alliance in depth. While there is an inordinate amount of literature concerning the Pakistan-China relations, the literature on maintenance of this alliance is relatively scarce. Besides, scholars have neglected the way in which Pakistan has promoted its alliance with China domestically. This work aims to fill this gap in the literature. Interpreting from the perspective of Security Elite Domestic Propaganda and International Alliance (SEPIA), this study will show that while the alliance with China is essential for Pakistan to contain the military threat posed by India, such an alliance meets with overt challenges from the Pakistani society. Specifically, the Pakistani popular support for Uighur separatism and terrorist attacks against Chinese targets confront the Pakistani security elites with the need to promote the alliance on the domestic level through a robust propaganda campaign. This study, therefore, evaluates the propaganda strategies of the security elites to cultivate the Chinese alliance within the national society. While exposing Pakistani state propaganda, the research focuses to highlight the apprehension of the Pakistani elite towards their public. This works relies on qualitative methods including documentary analysis and elites interviews. The sources used include Pakistani cultural textbooks, security elites’ newspaper articles and lawmakers’ speeches to investigate the key propaganda themes aiming to legitimising the alliance. The autobiographies and other sources held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are also utilised

BIM-Based Energy Optimization – Case study of High-Rise Building in Pakistan

The current work analyses the energy performance of a building at the early design and planning stage for sustainability. A multistory facility has been simulated in a virtual (3D) environment using the Building Information Modelling process. Energy analysis was performed using Autodesk Insight360 in terms of kWh/m2 /yr. Sixteen (16) story building, has been assessed at its proposed location, at 8° clockwise w.r.t true North. The study observed an annual consumption of 267 kWh/m2 /yr which was further optimized by adopting different construction innovations. It has been highlighted that using virtual technology at the design stage of buildings can help to achieve an average annual energy saving of more than 50% thus supporting the goal for a sustainable future by accessing energy requirements at the early stage of design inception