Capital structure and debt maturity: Evidence from listed companies in Saudi arabia

This study examines the determinants of capital structure in general and the determinants of corporate debt- maturity in particular for 56 listed companies in Saudi Arabia. To achieve this objective the study was set to test a number of hypotheses regarding the determinants of capital structure and debt maturity. These hypotheses were related to the effects of profitability, growth opportunities, asset maturity, size, liquidity and age. Total debt ratio was found to be positively and significantly related to the percentage growth in total assets and negatively and significantly related to liquidity and asset structure. Growth opportunities variable was found to be positively and significantly related to long - term debt and was negatively and significantly related to short term debt. The relationship between asset maturity and long term debt was found to be negative and significant. Therefore, there is no support of the hypothesis that debt maturity decreases as the proportion of growth potentials increase. Size was found to be positively and significantly related to long term debt and negatively and significantly related to short term debt implying that larger firms borrow on long term and small ones borrow on short term. Profitability, age liquidity appeared to have no statistical significance on the different types of debt. The implications of these results have been examined and future research directions have been suggested

Comparative Study to Measure the Quality of Big Scholarly Data and Its Hypothetical Mapping towards Granular Computing

Nowadays, researchers are interested on granular computing in order to solve the big data problem. The volume of Big Scholarly Data (BSD) is rapidly growing. In order to evaluate the research performance, it’s becoming essential to evaluate the impact of BSD. Traditionally, journals have been ranked by their journal impact factor (JIF). However, several impact evaluation methods have been used by different BSD digital systems, such as the citation analysis, G-Index, H-index, i10-index, jurnal impact (JIF), and the Eigenfactor. In this paper, a detailed study of these different impact evaluation methods is shown along with their advantages and disadvantages. From this study, we can say that although the evaluation methods appear highly correlated but they lead to large differences in BSD impact evaluation. We conclude that no one evaluation method is superior and the present research gap is to develop standard rubrics and standard benchmarks in order to evaluate these existing methods. Furthermore, we have hypothetically modeled a new fuzzy granular approach as evolving structural fuzzy model (ESFM) which consider the concept of granular computing. Therefore, information granules exhibit the expressive and functional depiction of the global concept

Chronic Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation: A Case Report

In health there is a balance between the coagulation and anti-coagulation systems, but in disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) the coagulation mechanism is activated inappropriately and in a diffuse way. This may lead to thrombosis, but more often haemorrhage occurs when the clotting factors are exhausted. DIC may present as acute, subacute, and rarely chronic form. Here we present a case of chronic DIC following pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) as a consequence of repeated menstruation regulation (MR). We treated her with fresh frozen plasma, fresh blood, doxycycline with significant clinical improvement.DOI: 10.3329/bsmmuj.v1i1.3696 BSMMU J 2008; 1(1): 33-3

Improved wolf algorithm on document images detection using optimum mean technique

Detection text from handwriting in historical documents provides high-level features for the challenging problem of handwriting recognition. Such handwriting often contains noise, faint or incomplete strokes, strokes with gaps, and competing lines when embedded in a table or form, making it unsuitable for local line following algorithms or associated binarization schemes. In this paper, a proposed method based on the optimum threshold value and namely as the Optimum Mean method was presented. Besides, Wolf method unsuccessful in order to detect the thin text in the non-uniform input image. However, the proposed method was suggested to overcome the Wolf method problem by suggesting a maximum threshold value using optimum mean. Based on the calculation, the proposed method obtained a higher F-measure (74.53), PSNR (14.77) and lowest NRM (0.11) compared to the Wolf method. In conclusion, the proposed method successful and effective to solve the wolf problem by producing a high-quality output image

Comparative performance of two extractants in colorimetric determination of soil organic matter in paddy soil

Commonly used soil organic carbon (SOC) determination methods are expensive, time consuming, require equipment and skilled personnel making them impractical to use at field level. Therefore, a laboratory analytical study was carried out to identify a suitable extractant for SOC extraction as part of an ongoing effort to develop a low cost quick method for determining soil organic matter (SOM) at field level. For this purpose, 38 soil samples were collected from different Agro Ecological Zone (AEZ) to represent typical rice based cropping pattern covering a sufficient range in texture, soil organic matter, pH, and type of management. Two extractants e.g. NaOH-Pyrophosphate + HCl and NaOH-EDTA were used to extract organic carbon from soil and two wavelength e.g. 300 and 400 nm were used to measure the absorbance of organic carbon in spectrophotometer. Soil organic carbon measurements by CNS analyzer were used as reference measurement to compare the extracting efficiency of SOC by the selected extractants. Both the extract and wavelength showed different degrees of error in OC measurement. The error sum square of NaOH-Pyrophosphate + HCl and NaOH-EDTA measured at 300 nm wavelength were 15.21 and 13.35 whereas at 400 nm it was 227.37 and 19.95, respectively. Consequently, the average error percentages at 300 nm were -33 and -8 while at 400 nm it was - 187 and -16. Based on the error sum square and error percentage, NaOH-Pyrophosphate + HCl performed better than the NaOH-EDTA, and 400 nm wavelength came out better than the 300 nm wavelength. In addition, both the extracts produced coloured solutions which were easily visible or detectable by naked eye and the colour intensity increased with the increase in SOC content. Variations in colour among the soils depending on organic matter content indicate that it would be possible to develop a new low cost method for SOM determination at field level by using NaOH-Pyrophosphate + HCl as the extractant. Further research is warranted to confirm this finding

Evaluating manurial value of bioslurry for tomato cultivation in subtropical floodplain soil

Bioslurry is an anaerobically decomposed product, which comes out of the digester after extraction of biogas (chiefly CH4). Recently a huge amount of bioslurry is being produced in Bangladesh for enormous installation of biogas plants. Utilization of bioslurry is yet to be addressed adequately though it has potential value as a good quality organic fertilizer. Therefore, a field experiment supported by a laboratory analysis was conducted in floodplain soil of Bangladesh to evaluate the performance of bioslurry along with chemical fertilizers on the yield of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). The experiment was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with six treatments viz., Control (no fertilizer/manure), N200P90K180 (100% Recommended Fertilizer Dose, RFD), N120P54K108 (60% RFD) + Poultry manure (PM), N120P54K108 (60% RFD) + Poultry slurry, N120P54K108 (60% RFD) + Cowdung (CD), N120P54K108 (60% RFD) + Cowdung slurry, each treatment replicated thrice. Chemical analysis of cowdung, cowdung bioslurry, poultry manure and poultry bioslurry showed that the organic carbon, N, P, K and S varied from 10.1-35.1, 0.70-2.52, 0.18- 1.28, 0.86- 3.80 and 0.13- 0.61% respectively. Cowdung and poultry manure had the higher organic carbon content as well as higher nutrient concentration compared to cowdung bioslurry and poultry bioslurry. Nutrient concentration particularly N, P and S in cowdung and cowdung bioslurry was found lower than the poultry manure and poultry bioslurry. The fruit yield of tomato increased by 81-225% due to the application of different slurry, manure and chemical fertilizers compared to no application of manure or fertilizer (control). The highest fruit yield (27.2 t ha-1) of tomato was obtained from N120P54K108 + Poultry slurry treatment. Hence application of poultry bioslurry in combination with 60% recommended dose of fertilizers can help improve the production of tomato in sub-tropical floodplain soil

STUDY OF PROBIOTICS ON THE SEED PRODUCTION OF BLACK TIGER SHRIMP Penaeus monodon

Currently, antibiotics are widely used in shrimp hatcheries to control bacterial infections. Appearance of antibiotic resistant pathogens and restriction on the use of antibiotics have led to the development of alternatives to antibiotics in hatchery systems. In light of this, an attempt was undertaken to investigate the effects of probiotics on the larval rearing of Penaeus monodon, compared with control tanks (without probiotics). The results showed that several issues significantly improved with administering probiotics in the experimental tanks compared with the tanks without probiotics. For example, the concentration of ammonia was estimated to be 1.25 mg/L that was less than half of what was measured in the control tanks. The size variation was observed more in the control tanks than in the experimental tanks. Moreover, the muscle gut ratio of PL15 was about 85 to 92% in the probiotic treated tank and 70 to 80% in the control tank during the eight cycles of production. The fouling organisms were more in the control tank compared to the experimental tanks. The average length of PL15 was maximum when reared in the experimental tanks compared to the control tanks. The final survival rate of PL15 from the control and experimental tank was 35 and 52%, respectively. The present investigation indicated that probiotics played an important role in the growth, survival and health status of P. monodon larvae

HEAVY METAL TOXICITY IN FISHES OF POLLUTED LAKES OF DHAKA CITYAND ITS IMPACTS ON HUMAN HEALTH

The City of Dhaka is not built up plan wise from the beginning yet till date. The land uses are not following the urbanization rules correctly. Due to the laggings of proper water and air flow and basic treatment of household and industrial utilizing water, some of the major health issues are concerned. This research works is on the focus of heavy metal contamination in fishes of two major lakes in Dhaka city called Dhanmondi Lake and Gulshan Lake. The research is focusing mainly the study on Cr, Cd and Pb concentration in fishes along with other elements. Concentration of Cr is found in ranges of 3.45 μg/gm – 10.25 μg/gm, Cd is 2.17 μg/gm – 9.78 μg/gm and Pb is 1.132 – 7.102 μg/gm. The major element K and Ca with other trace elements are also projected. The data acquisition setup is calibrated using 2.2 MeV proton beam in the current ranges of 5nA to 15nA. The Van-de Graff Accelerator of Atomic Energy Centre, Dhaka has been used for sample irradiation. The IBA technique Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) has been applied using Si(Li) detector (SL30165) and other ORTEC nuclear electronics. The calibration and standardization of PIXE setup has been done using X-ray source, and IAEA standard CuSx (thin), Soil-7 (thick)