Analyzing the Impact of Leverage and Adjustment Costs on Various Measures of Corporate Performance: Insights from Listed Firms of Pakistan

This paper is a first attempt to look into the issue of the effect of leverage and adjustment costs on various measures of corporate performance for 374 non-financial firms listed on Karachi Stock Exchange of Pakistan. The Arellano and Bond dynamic panel data estimation technique (a variant of GMM) is used to capture the role of adjustment costs and the dynamic behavior of corporate performance. A panel data set spanning 1988 to 2008 is used for the purpose. The results, thus obtained, are essentially mixed. The coefficients of the adjustment variable (lagged corporate performance) are positive for ROCE (Return on capital employed) and EPS (Earnings per Share) but ironically negative for ROE (Return on Equity). Similarly the effect of leverage on ROCE is negative but insignificant and positive significant when EPS is used as a measure of corporate performance. Whereas the relationship between leverage and ROE (another measure used in the paper for corporate performance) is negative and significant which implies that high leverage force the managers to perform optimally due to higher interest burden and agency cost. The positive effect of the size of firm on performance is confirmed for all the three measures of corporate performance. Furthermore, the positive and statistically significant impact of short term liabilities implies that high short term liabilities exert pressure on corporate managers to perform efficiently in the competitive market.Corporate Performance, leverage, adjustment costs, panel data, Pakistan

Convergence Model of Governance: A Case Study of the Local Government System of Pakistan

The future of devolution plan in Pakistan may be analysed in view of our Convergence model. This model views stability of the local Govt. system drawn on Devolution Plan 2001. It claims that as there would be more volatile and non-committed (floating) number of agents in the political market and governance system, there is more probability of divergence; i.e. the system will remain unstable. Contrary to that more is the systematic trend in political market and governance system more is the probability that the convergence in the system occurs and that in turn leads to stability of the over all system. In this ‘Convergence’ Model different types of agents have been highlighted on the basis of their political ffiliation and being in competition as ruling elite and/or their allies and non-ruling elite and/or their allies. The agents have interactive relationship horizontally and vertically with other agents i.e. either they are ally or otherwise. The composition of this structure of the agents and clients is based on the principle of bottom top pproach i.e. Union council’s members, Nazim and their political competitors, Tehsil council and Nazim, District Nazim and his allied district assembly members and their political competitors, Member provincial Assembly and their political rivals, Member National Assembly/Senator, and their political rival and the ruling political elites, Provincial Government and their political rivals, and Political elites ruling Federal Government and their political rivals.

Encapsulated stem cells for cancer therapy

Stem cells have inherent tumor‑trophic migratory properties and can serve as vehicles for delivering effective, targeted therapy to isolated tumors and metastatic disease, making them promising anti‑cancer agents. Encapsulation of therapeutically engineered stem cells in hydrogels has been utilized to provide a physical barrier to protect the cells from hostile extrinsic factors and significantly improve the therapeutic efficacy of transplanted stem cells in different models of cancer. This review aims to discuss the potential of different stem cell types for cancer therapy, various engineered stem cell based therapies for cancer, stem cell encapsulation process and provide an in depth overview of current applications of therapeutic stem cell encapsulation in the highly malignant brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), as well as the prospects for their clinical translation

Tibial Shaft Fractures: A Biomechanical and Clinical Approach

Among the problems associated with the use of tibial functional bracing for the management of tibial shaft fractures, are post-fracture ankle stiffness and the duration of immobilisation. This study was undertaken to investigate in detail these two problems. It involved the design and assessment of a new type of brace called the 2 in 1 functional brace. The study was designed in 3 parts. Part 1 deals with the problem of clarifying the biomechanical function of the brace. It led to the development of a method for estimating the three dimensional forces and moments carried by the limb-brace complex at the level of the fracture. For this five volunteer patients, treated with a 2 in 1 brace for tibial shaft fractures, were each tested on 3 separate occasions. This study led to the conclusion that the brace is neither an off-loading, nor an anti-buckling device, but functions with a combination of these two mechanisms. The data also highlighted the importance of the removable "foot-piece" in the design of the brace for optimum healing of tibial fractures. The information obtained allowed rationalisation of the new design. Part 2 of the study concentrated on the problem of determining the optimum duration of immobilisation in the brace. A non-invasive method of assessing healing by measurement of fracture stiffness was developed. This method gave encouraging results and it was decided to computerise the system. The efficacy of the system was assessed clinically in a trial on 10 patients. The results were encouraging and it is recommended that the system be tested in a larger controlled trial, before its routine use. Part 3 of the study tested the new design of brace in a clinical trial on 80 patients. The trial was conducted to test the efficacy of the design in a clinical environment and to assess its effect on the stiffness of the ankle and sub-talar joints following fracture healing. The brace gave good clinical results with a mean healing time of 97.5 days in the series. The ranges of lower limb joint motion were found to be near normal at a mean follow-up of 16 months, indicating the success of the design in decreasing the incidence of post-fracture ankle and sub-talar joint stiffness. The conclusions from the study suggest that a controlled trial is justified to compare the efficacy of the "2 in 1 brace" against other methods of managing tibial shaft fractures. The data from this series showed that the nature (simple or open) of the fracture, axial stability of the fracture, fracture fragment apposition, treatment modality and time of brace application did affect the outcome of fracture healing

Regularized Surface and Point Landmarks Based Efficient Non-Rigid Medical Image Registration

Medical image registration is one of the fundamental tasks in medical image processing. It has various applications in field of image guided surgery (IGS) and computer assisted diagnosis (CAD). A set of non-linear methods have been already developed for inter-subject and intra-subject 3D medical image registration. However, efficient registration in terms of accuracy and speed is one of the most demanded of today surgical navigation (SN) systems. This paper is a result of a series of experiments which utilizes Fast Radial Basis Function (RBF) technique to register one or more medical images non-rigidly. Initially, a set of curves are extracted using a combined watershed and active contours algorithm and then tiled and converted to a regular surface using a global parameterization algorithm. It is shown that the registration accuracy improves when higher number of salient features (i.e. anatomical point landmarks and surfaces) are used and it also has no impact on the speed of the algorithm. The results show that the target registration error is less than 2 mm and has sub-second performance on intra-subject registration of MR image real datasets. It is observed that the Fast RBF algorithm is relatively insensitive to the increasing number of point landmarks used as compared with the competing feature based algorithms

Integrated Use of Phosphorus, Animal Manures and Biofertilizers Improve Maize Productivity under Semiarid Condition

Phosphorus unavailability and lack of organic matter in the soils under semiarid condition are the major reasons for low crop productivity. Field trial was conducted to investigate the impact of different animal manures (poultry, cattle, and sheep manures) and phosphorus levels (40, 80, 120, and 160 kg P2O5 ha−1) on yield and yield components of hybrid maize (CS-200) with (+) and without (−) phosphate-solubilizing bacteria (PSB) seed treatment at the Agronomy Research Farm of The University of Agriculture Peshawar, during summer 2014. Our results confirmed that the application of poultry manure significantly (P ≤ 0.05) increased yield and yield components of maize. Phosphorus applied at the rate of 120 kg P2O5 ha−1 increased ear length, grains ear−1, and shelling percentage, while the highest rate of 160 kg P ha−1 increased grains weight, grain yield, and harvest index. Maize seeds treated with PSB (+) before sowing had produced higher yield and yield components than untreated seeds (−). We concluded from this study that combined application of 160 kg P2O5 ha−1 + poultry manure and seed treatment with PSB (+) could improve crop productivity and profitability under semiarid condition

Experimental study on silver nanoparticles: synthesis, photo-degradation and analysis

The aim of present study was waste water treatment via advanced oxidation process (AOP). Wet chemical precipitation method was used to prepare silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs). The Ag NPs were employed for photo catalytic degradation of Congo red (CR) dye in aqueous medium. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) investigation shows agglomerated form of Ag NPs. The average sizes of agglomerations are below 600 nm. Energy dispersive X-rays spectroscopy (EDX) and ultraviolet light visible spectroscopy (UV/Vis) also established the formation of Ag NPs. The photo-degradation study reveals that Ag NPs degraded by 73% of CR dye in 480 min. Catalytic dosage study shows the dye degradation was increased vice versa as increased the amount of Ag NPs and then almost level off after 0.025 g of catalyst. In pH study it was observed that degradation of CR dye increased as pH increased. The recovered catalyst study also significantly degraded the CR dye