Assessment of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) awareness and practices in manufacturing sector of Pakistan

Globalization and mass communication have significantly influenced the socio-economic growth of countries and organizations are under immense pressure to develop their businesses in a more socially responsible way. Consequently, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a business development concept. CSR acknowledgement is low in south Asian countries both at state and corporate levels. Pakistan, being a developing country, is no exception and the manufacturing sector, which is the third largest contributing sector to the economy, is facing the challenge of corporate social compliance. This study explores the awareness level amongst employees in the manufacturing sector and also evaluates the practices of CSR activities in these organizations. The study is mainly focused on the textile and automobile sectors and shows greater CSR awareness in the automobile sector than the textile sector; however, there are many organizations where the concept of CSR is unknown. The findings of this research will help organizations in enhancing understanding of CSR amongst employees and will also allow manufacturing industries to improve their implementation against identified weak areas. Increased levels of social compliance will ultimately help organizations in promoting their businesses in the global market

Household expenditure for dental care in low and middle income countries.

This study assessed the extent of household catastrophic expenditure in dental health care and its possible determinants in 41 low and middle income countries. Data from 182,007 respondents aged 18 years and over (69,315 in 18 low income countries, 59,645 in 15 lower middle income countries and 53,047 in 8 upper middle income countries) who participated in the WHO World Health Survey (WHS) were analyzed. Expenditure in dental health care was defined as catastrophic if it was equal to or higher than 40% of the household capacity to pay. A number of individual and country-level factors were assessed as potential determinants of catastrophic dental health expenditure (CDHE) in multilevel logistic regression with individuals nested within countries. Up to 7% of households in low and middle income countries faced CDHE in the last 4 weeks. This proportion rose up to 35% among households that incurred some dental health expenditure within the same period. The multilevel model showed that wealthier, urban and larger households and more economically developed countries had higher odds of facing CDHE. The results of this study show that payments for dental health care can be a considerable burden on households, to the extent of preventing expenditure on basic necessities. They also help characterize households more likely to incur catastrophic expenditure on dental health care. Alternative health care financing strategies and policies targeted to improve fairness in financial contribution are urgently required in low and middle income countries

Analysis and comparison of a proposed mutation operator and its effects on the performance of genetic algorithm

Genetic algorithms (GAs) are dependent on various operators and parameters. The most common evolutionary operators are parent selection, crossover, and mutation. Each operator has broad implementations with its pros and cons. A successful GA is highly dependent on genetic diversity which is the main driving force that steers a GA towards an optimal solution. Mutation operator implements the idea of exploration to search for uncharted areas and introduces diversity in a population. Thus, increasing the probability of GA to converge to a globally optimum solution. In this paper, a new variant of mutation operator is proposed, and its functions are studied and compared with the existing operators. The proposed mutation operator as well as others such as m-mutation, shuffle, swap, and inverse are tested for their ability to introduce diversity in population and hence, their effects on the performance of GA. All these operators are applied to Max one problem. The results concluded that the proposed variant is far more superior to the existing operators in terms of introducing diversity and hence early convergence to an optimum solution

Finite Element Thermal Analysis of Conformal Cooling Channels in Injection Moulding

The process cycle time in injection moulding process depends greatly on the cooling time of the plastic part, which is facilitated by the cooling channels in the injection mould. Effective cooling channel design in the mould is important because it not only affects cycle time but also the part quality. Traditional cooling channels are normally made of straight drilled holes in the mould, which have limitations in geometric complexity as well as cooling fluid mobility within the injectio n mould. Over the years, conformal cooling techniques are being introduced as effective alternative to conventional cooling. The main objective of this study is to determine an optimum design for conformal cooling channel of an injection moulded plastic part using finite element analysis and thermal heat transfer analysis. The part cooling time is optimized by conformal cooling channels in the mould using the ANSYS thermal a nalysis software. Analysis of virtual models showed that those with conformal cooling channels predicted a significant reduction of cycle time with expected improvement in part quality

PREVALENCE AND ANTHELMINTIC EFFICACY OF ABAMECTIN AGAINST GASTROINTESTINAL PARASITES IN HORSES

The prevalence and anthelmintic efficacy of Abamectin against gastrointestinal parasites under field conditions in Faisalabad (Punjab, Pakistan) was studied in 100 horses. The overall prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites was 75%, including Strongylus spp. (50%), Oxyuris equi (12%), Parascaris equorum (8%) and mixed infection (5%). Among these naturally infected animals, 15 were selected. These horses were assigned to three groups on the basis of prevalent species of gastrointestinal parasites. Each group had five animals, comprising four treatment horses and a control horse. Abamectin was evaluated against these gastrointestinal parasites with a single shot at the dose rate of 0.2 mg/kg body weight administered through subcutaneous route which resulted in 98% reduction in faecal egg count after day 14 post-treatment. Non-treated horses remained positive for gastrointestinal parasites. No adverse reactions were observed during the experimental period. It was concluded that Abamectin is highly effective against gastrointestinal parasites in horses

Exact relativistic beta decay endpoint spectrum

The exact relativistic form for the beta decay endpoint spectrum is derived and presented in a simple factorized form. We show that our exact formula can be well approximated to yield the endpoint form used in the fit method of the KATRIN collaboration. We also discuss the three neutrino case and how information from neutrino oscillation experiments may be useful in analyzing future beta decay endpoint experiments.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure