Impact of Financing on Sales Growth

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to examine the impact of credit supply and long term financing on sales growth in manufacturing sector.Design/methodology/approach: It is causal study; in which secondary data from audited annual reports of manufacturing firms are included. Findings: It is proved that long term financing has significant negative effect on sale growth. While, trade credit and lagged sales growth are found to increase sales.Practical implications: It has practical implication from manager’s perspectives. It is beneficial for managers to increase their firm’s growth efficiently by managing the supply of trade credit. It will also enhance their skill to manage long term loans so that firm’s sales can’t effected badly. Originality Value: It is the unique study as it provide evidence that how sales growth of the manufacturing sector can be effected by granting trade credit and taking long term financing followed by trade-off theory

Research and development of stock management strategies to optimise growth potential in on-growing of Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, and Atlantic halibut, Hippoglossus hippoglossus

Aquaculture is an essential developing sector for world food production, however the attainment of sexual maturity during commercial on-growing is a major bottleneck to industry expansion. Sexual maturation brings a commercial loss due to reduced growth performance as well as reduced immune function. Furthermore, serious concerns exist over potential genetic interaction with native stocks through broadcast spawning or spawning interaction by escapees. In the north Atlantic region, the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus) are key aquaculture species in which industry expansion is limited by pre-harvest sexual maturation. However, through a species specific combination of modern technologies and refinement in management practices it is possible that this sexual maturation can be controlled and on-growing potential enhanced. Thus the overall aim of this thesis was to conduct novel research that will improve our understanding of the underlying mechanisms that regulate sexual maturation, whilst also advancing the optimisation of technologies for the management of maturation in cod and halibut. In Atlantic cod, owing to the inconsistent inhibition of maturation in commercial conditions, ever increasing intensities of light and in some cases narrow spectrum technologies are being used to try to combat this problem. Firstly, this PhD project investigated the potential welfare impacts of high intensity artificial lighting which have not been studied to date (Chapter 2). The work specifically investigated the effect of traditional metal halide and novel green cathode lighting on the stress response, innate immunity, retina structure, feeding activity and light perception of Atlantic cod. Results indicated that although acute responses to light were observed, there were no clear significant long term effects of any of the lighting treatments on these parameters. Regarding light perception, interestingly even when subjected to high intensity constant lighting (metal halide mean tank intensity: 16.6 watts m-2), cod still demonstrated a day/night rhythm in melatonin release which suggests perception of the overlying ambient photoperiod. The second trial of this PhD project investigated the efficacy of shading of ambient photoperiod in addition to constant lighting to inhibit maturation of cod outdoors (Chapter 3). This aimed at improving the performance of artificial lighting regimes in the open cage system during commercial on-growing by reducing the relative difference between day/night light intensities. The trial was conducted over a one year period where a low and high shade treatment were tested in outdoor tanks. Shading increased the relative night time illumination to 6.6% and 31.3% of daytime levels respectively, compared to <2% in an unshaded set-up. Both shading treatments were effective at suppressing sexual development in cod as confirmed through measurements of gonadosomatic index, histological analysis of gonadal development, oocyte diameter measurements and sex steroid profiles as well as measurements of growth. In addition to research at the applied level in Atlantic cod, this thesis has also extended to the fundamental level and explored one of the potential mechanisms relaying photoperiod signal to the endogenous regulation of sexual maturation in cod, namely the kisspeptin system (Chapter 4). Partial sequences for the signal peptide Kiss2 and its receptor Kissr4 were isolated and described showing similarity to other teleost species such as the medaka, Oryzias latipes and stickleback, Danio rerio. Novel molecular qPCR assays were designed and developed to measure the expression of both genes in male and female cod over a maturation cycle and compared to cod under constant lighting which remained immature. Interestingly, expression patterns of kiss2 and kissr4 did not reveal any clear association with season or photoperiod treatment. However, pituitary expression of gonadotropins (FSH, follicle stimulating hormone; LH, luteinising hormone) did show a differential expression in relation to treatment from early winter approximately 4-6 months after the photoperiod change. These new results are in contradiction with the hypothesis that the kisspeptin system would be involved in the initiation of gametogenesis, as shown in mammals. However, the FSH/LH data defines a window during which time kisspeptin or another GnRH stimulating mechanism must be active, this compels the need further investigation. In Atlantic halibut farming, all-female production removes the concerns of production losses through sexual maturation. Accordingly, this thesis investigated the potential/feasibility of generating monosex populations by FACS (fluorescence activated cell sorting) semen sexing based on cellular DNA content, as proven in terrestrial agriculture. Results however did not show any clear differences between the DNA of sperm in a range of species tested (Atlantic halibut, cod, sea bass, perch) suggesting that this technique may not be applicable in such species. The project also focussed on the production of a population of sex reversed halibut broodstock (neomales) that will generate, in the long term, a basis for traditional monosex population generation in the UK. Two in feed MDHT (17α-methyldihydrotestosterone) treatments were tested with the aim to reduce the use of hormone. Results were very successful with a hormone treatment of 5ppm MDHT generating a 97% phenotypic male population thus suggesting the presence of sex-reversed halibut which can be used for future monosex production. Overall, this work aimed to develop and/or refine potential remediation techniques for sexual maturation in two key commercially important farmed marine fish species, cod and halibut, as well as further our understanding on the regulation of puberty. The knowledge gained from this work provides a means to optimise the techniques employed in the industry and has the potential to increase production and profitability without compromising farmed animal welfare, thus ultimately promoting the sustainable expansion of the Atlantic cod and halibut aquaculture.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceScottish Aquaculture Research Forum (027)GBUnited Kingdo

Prevalence of non-communicable diseases and their risk factors at a semi-urban community, Pakistan

Introduction: Pakistan is currently facing the double burden of communicable (38%) and non- communicable diseases (49%) according to WHO NCD Country Profiles 2014. About 50% of all deaths are attributed to NCD's. The objective of this study was to determine the burden of noncommunicable diseases in semi urban community of Islamabad. Methods: We carried a cross sectional study to estimate the burden of noncommunicable diseases in an urban setting, a community based cross sectional survey covering 1210 households was carried out over a period of three months. Households were selected through consecutive non-probability sampling, among which adult females and males who were permanent resident of the community were interviewed through a structured questionnaire in urdu language. SPSS version 21 was used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics were calculated. Results: About 38.7% individuals had High BP / IHD, 34.4% had oro-dental health problems, 24.3% were physically disabled and 14.6% had diabetes. Among the risk factors, 48.2% were tobacco user, 13.60% were drug abuser and 1.8% alcoholics. Conclusion: We conclude that the prevalence of non-communicable diseases is quite high in the above setting as compared to the National indicators, which demands timely intervention to curtail the existing burden of NCD.Pan African Medical Journal 2016; 2

Price and Income Elasticities of Crude Oil Demand: Cross Country Analysis

Volatility in crude oil price is the main issue in this era. Great volatility in price of crude oil affects the demand of oil directly and indirectly in developing countries because these countries are oil importing countries especially Pakistan, India and China. Crude oil therefore contributes to and thereby influences the GDP of the country as a source of energy. It is very critical and essential for any country to explore and produce gas to improve energy shortage, for some deliberate importance of gas because natural gas is very clean, cheap and sustainable source to produce energy within a country. This study aimed to analyze the price and income elasticities of crude oil demand in developing countries time series data used from the period of 1971-2014. ADF test was used to check the stationary of variables and it is seem that all variable are not stationary at level. ARDL used for co integration and all variables of the models have long run relation with dependent and explanatory variables. Price and income elasticities of crude oil demand were measured in short and long run for developing countries and it was concluded that long run elasticities of price and income were less inelastic or some cases like China was elastic than short run elasticities of price and income of crude oil demand. It was suggested that oil importer countries should explore the alternatives of oil within a country to fulfill the domestic demand

Molecular diagnostics for foodborne pathogen (Salmonella spp.) from poultry

Background: Salmonella species (spp.) are among major food-borne pathogens all over the world. Salmonella typhimurium is the main cause of food poisoning in humans. The fundamental objective of this study is to develop a rapid and reliable method to detect Salmonella (a foodborne pathogen) in raw poultry meat by using molecular approaches. Methods: Total 200 samples of raw poultry meat were collected from different regions of Lahore and analyzed for the presence of Salmonella spp. fimA gene.  Similarly, sent genes were selected for the detection of Salmonella typhimurium and Salmonella enteritidis respectively. PCR technique was optimized for diagnosis of contamination.Results: Out of 200 samples, 2% samples had shown successful amplification of fimA gene representing the presence of serovar Salmonella typhimurium. PCR assay combined with enrichment can enhance the efficiency for detection of Salmonella in poultry. Conclusion: A robust, simple and convenient PCR based method has been developed for the detection of one of the major food-borne pathogen Salmonella typhimurium. 

Performance Analysis of Boosting Classifiers in Recognizing Activities of Daily Living

Physical activity is essential for physical and mental health, and its absence is highly associated with severe health conditions and disorders. Therefore, tracking activities of daily living can help promote quality of life. Wearable sensors in this regard can provide a reliable and economical means of tracking such activities, and such sensors are readily available in smartphones and watches. This study is the first of its kind to develop a wearable sensor-based physical activity classification system using a special class of supervised machine learning approaches called boosting algorithms. The study presents the performance analysis of several boosting algorithms (extreme gradient boosting—XGB, light gradient boosting machine—LGBM, gradient boosting—GB, cat boosting—CB and AdaBoost) in a fair and unbiased performance way using uniform dataset, feature set, feature selection method, performance metric and cross-validation techniques. The study utilizes the Smartphone-based dataset of thirty individuals. The results showed that the proposed method could accurately classify the activities of daily living with very high performance (above 90%). These findings suggest the strength of the proposed system in classifying activity of daily living using only the smartphone sensor’s data and can assist in reducing the physical inactivity patterns to promote a healthier lifestyle and wellbeing

Adaptive Backstepping Integral Sliding Mode Control for 5DOF Barge-Type OFWT under Output Constraint

This article presents a new control solution for a dynamical model of a translational oscillator with a rotational actuator (TORA) based on multi-body dynamics for a barge-type offshore floating wind turbine (OFWT). TORA has been employed as an active structural control strategy. The solution of bounding the output movements of platform pitch and tower bending angle to a certain limit, along with mitigating the OFWT vibrations due to environmental disturbances and uncertainties, is presented in this novel control framework. This new control algorithm consists of a high-gain observer (HGO)-based adaptive backstepping integral sliding mode control (ISMC) and a barrier Lyapunov function (BLF). This guarantees satisfying the constraints on the states and effectively resolves the problem of the unavailability of the system states. The proposed control law based on the BLF has been compared with an adaptive backstepping ISMC to show the efficiency of the output-constraint control scheme. Through MATLAB/SIMULINK numerical simulations and their numeric error table, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme has been examined. The results confirm the validity and efficiency of the proposed control approaches

Wireless E-Nose Sensors to Detect Volatile Organic Gases through Multivariate Analysis

Gas sensors are critical components when adhering to health safety and environmental policies in various manufacturing industries, such as the petroleum and oil industry; scent and makeup production; food and beverage manufacturing; chemical engineering; pollution monitoring. In recent times, gas sensors have been introduced to medical diagnostics, bioprocesses, and plant disease diagnosis processes. There could be an adverse impact on human health due to the mixture of various gases (e.g., acetone (A), ethanol (E), propane (P)) that vent out from industrial areas. Therefore, it is important to accurately detect and differentiate such gases. Towards this goal, this paper presents a novel electronic nose (e-nose) detection method to classify various explosive gases. To detect explosive gases, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) sensors are used as reliable tools to detect such volatile gases. The data received from MOS sensors are processed through a multivariate analysis technique to classify different categories of gases. Multivariate analysis was done using three variants—differential, relative, and fractional analyses—in principal components analysis (PCA). The MOS sensors also have three different designs: loading design, notch design, and Bi design. The proposed MOS sensor-based e-nose accurately detects and classifies three different gases, which indicates the reliability and practicality of the developed system. The developed system enables discrimination of these gases from the mixture. Based on the results from the proposed system, authorities can take preventive measures to deal with these gases to avoid their potential adverse impacts on employee health