Credit Where Due: A Debate

This paper reviews earlier work in order to get a single point of consensus regarding current global crises, which overlap the economy of whole world. We find contradictory explanations for the current episode of crises where different methodologies had been adopted in scrutinizing the situation. Overall few put the blame on macroeconomic variables and little on financial vulnerabilities. Some suggest for monetary policy reevaluation and others for fiscal policy to fill in the gap. We find fiscal policy a superior instrument for scheming such circumstances. We propose that interest free financial system would be a better option as an alternative. Keywords: Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy, Credit Issues, Interest free solution

Characteristics of Poverty In Pakistan

Poverty is a multidimensional conception and usually it is defined by focusing narrowly on income poverty or broadly by including lack of access to opportunities for raising standards of living. Strategies aimed at poverty reduction need to identify factors that are strongly associated with poverty and agreeable to modification by policy. This study uses integrated Household Survey (2009-10) data collected by Federal Bureau of Statistics Pakistan to examine probable determinants of poverty status, employing bivariate models. In general, this study tries to seek in depth knowledge of the key factors like demographic factors and human capital variables that account for poverty differentials in Pakistan. The demographic variables show significant impact on poverty status of the household, especially dependency ratio, sex of the head of the household, family type and household size. These all are found to be of supreme important in defining poverty. The educational attainment of the head of the household is also found to be very important factor that is associated with poverty. If policy makers target the education of head of household in order to get rid of this evil vicious circle of poverty then it might be establish more effective, powerful and sustainable tool. Keywords;   Poverty status, Demographic variables, human capital variables, Poverty Differential

Maintenance Management of Aging Oil and Gas Facilities

Oil and gas operators are now being driven to now operate beyond their originally conceived design life and field life. Asset life extension (ALE) beyond these thresholds presents unique safety and business risk challenges for the oil and gas industry. With aging equipment and facilities, operators face increasing challenges in maintaining equipment reliability and integrity as well as operational safety. Aging factors do not only involve hardware but also human and organizational factors. Factors include corrosion, erosion, fatigue, equipment obsolescence, normalization of deviance (accepting degraded conditions as being normal), changes in codes and standards and lack of data to forecast future risks. The challenge is magnified if there is a large fleet or large amount of aging assets that needs to be managed. In this chapter, a responsible approach to ALE, where assets can continue to be operated safely and resources are adequately managed, is provided herein

A qualitative study on violent extremists and news media : how Malaysian online news framed violent extremist groups involved in the Syrian civil war

e news has been a place for violent extremist groups to gain recognition internationally. The Syrian Civil war which had involved notorious and internationally recognised violent extremist groups is an example of this phenomenon. However, a limited number of studies had uncovered the thematic variation on how Malaysian online news frames violent extremist groups involved in the Syrian Civil War. Therefore, the present study explored whether the Malaysian news coverage of the violent conflicts that involved violent extremist groups active during the Syrian civil war may shed light on how mainstream news covers violent extremist groups. The present study employed a qualitative search and analysis of two popular online newspapers in Malaysia to identify the types of news frames on the news published during the peak of the Syrian civil war and when a notorious violent extremist group, Daesh (alternatively known as Islamic State (IS) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)), had shaken and threatened the world. A total of 272 news articles published between 2010 to 2020 were collected and analyzed. Analysis of the news frames revealed twelve different news frames. The frame with the highest occurrence was labelled as “Western destructive interventions”. The frame detailed out Western nations’ involvement in the war which caused damage to livelihood and civilizations in Syria and justified the violent extremist groups’ activities. The present study concludes that the Malaysian news media framing on violent extremist groups and other parties involved in the Syrian Civil War could have two varied forms, positive (heroic or humanized) or negative (destructive or demonized). The main contribution of this study is that it provides an insight into how Malaysian news media cover a conflict involving Muslim extremist groups. Additionally, the study adds to previous research on how violent extremist groups is framed in digital news

Statistical modeling for prediction of diabetes in Malaysians

Type II Diabetes Mellitus is one of the silent killer diseases worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 347 million people are suffering from diabetes throughout the world. To overcome the sharp rise in the disease, various diagnostic or prediction models were developed through various techniques such as artificial intelligence, classification and clustering, pattern recognition and statistical methods. The study led to the related open issues of identifying the need of a relation between the major factors that lead to the development of diabetes. This is possible by investigating the links found between the independent and dependant variables in the dataset. This paper investigates the effect of binary logistic regression applied on a dataset. The results show that the most effective method was the enter method which gave a prediction accuracy of almost 93%

The Missing Link Between High Performance Work Practices And Perceived Organizational Politics

A vast majority of research characterizes organizational politics as an aversive phenomenon and thus recommends exploring the factors that minimize its intensity. This study primarily endeavored to examine the role of high performance work practices (HPWPs) in controlling organizational politics. The moderating influence of Machiavellian personalities on HPWPs- politics was also evaluated. Through a questionnaire survey, 243 responses were obtained from engineers working in a local industrial area of capital city of Pakistan. The results showed an inverse relationship between HPWPs and perceived organizational politics (POP), and the moderating role of Machiavellianism was substantiated. Practical implications are presented based on the study results

Reaction of US and Chinese Stock Markets to COVID-19 News

The COVID-19 outbreak slowed down global economic activities substantially, resulting in unrest in the financial markets, especially in the beginning of the pandemic outbreak. This study aims to investigate if COVID-19 caused abnormal returns in the US and the Chinese stock markets in the beginning of the pandemic outbreak. Event study methodology is adopted for this purpose. This study finds that a significant negative impact appeared immediately after the Wuhan lockdown in the Chinese markets, while the US markets were slow to pick up. The former was more severely hurt after lockdown, while the latter was more brutally affected after COVID-19 was labeled a global threat. COVID-19 also played a significant role in connecting these two stock markets. The US and China should collaborate further in combating this novel and notorious global pandemic

Tribological characteristics comparison of formulated palm trimethylolpropane ester and polyalphaolefin for cam/tappet interface of direct acting valve train system

Purpose There is a continuous drive in automotive sector to shift from conventional lubricants to environmental friendly ones without adversely affecting critical tribological performance parameters. Because of their favorable tribological properties, chemically modified vegetable oils such as palm trimethylolpropane ester (TMP) are one of the potential candidates for the said role. To prove the suitability of TMP for applications involving boundary-lubrication regime such as cam/tappet interface of direct acting valve train system, a logical step forward is to investigate their compatibility with conventional lubricant additives. Design/methodology/approach In this study, extreme pressure and tribological characteristics of TMP, formulated with glycerol mono-oleate (GMO), molybdenum dithiocarbamate (MoDTC) and zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP), has been investigated using four-ball wear tester and valve train test rig. For comparison, additive-free and formulated versions of polyalphaolefin (PAO) were used as reference. Moreover, various surface characterization techniques were deployed to investigate mechanisms responsible for a particular tribological behavior. Findings In additive-free form, TMP demonstrated better extreme pressure characteristics compared to PAO and lubricant additives which are actually optimized for conventional base-oils such as PAO, are also proved to be compatible with TMP to some extent, especially ZDDP. During cylinder head tests, additive-free TMP proved to be more effective compared to PAO in reducing friction of cam/tappet interface, but opposite behavior was seen when formulated lubricants were used. Therefore, there is a need to synthesize specialized friction modifiers, anti-wear and extreme pressure additives for TMP before using it as engine lubricant base-oil. Originality/value In this study, additive-free and formulated versions of bio-lubricant are tested for cam/tappet interface of direct acting valve train system of commercial passenger car diesel engine for the very test time. Another important aspect of this research was comparison of important tribological performance parameters (friction torque, wear, rotational speed of tappet) of TMP-based lubricants with conventional lubricant base oil, that is, PAO and its formulated version

Tribological characteristics comparison of formulated palm trimethylolpropane ester and polyalphaolefin for cam/tappet interface of direct acting valve train system

Purpose: There is a continuous drive in automotive sector to shift from conventional lubricants to environmental friendly ones without adversely affecting critical tribological performance parameters. Because of their favorable tribological properties, chemically modified vegetable oils such as palm trimethylolpropane ester (TMP) are one of the potential candidates for the said role. To prove the suitability of TMP for applications involving boundary-lubrication regime such as cam/tappet interface of direct acting valve train system, a logical step forward is to investigate their compatibility with conventional lubricant additives. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, extreme pressure and tribological characteristics of TMP, formulated with glycerol mono-oleate (GMO), molybdenum dithiocarbamate (MoDTC) and zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP), has been investigated using four-ball wear tester and valve train test rig. For comparison, additive-free and formulated versions of polyalphaolefin (PAO) were used as reference. Moreover, various surface characterization techniques were deployed to investigate mechanisms responsible for a particular tribological behavior. Findings: In additive-free form, TMP demonstrated better extreme pressure characteristics compared to PAO and lubricant additives which are actually optimized for conventional base-oils such as PAO, are also proved to be compatible with TMP to some extent, especially ZDDP. During cylinder head tests, additive-free TMP proved to be more effective compared to PAO in reducing friction of cam/tappet interface, but opposite behavior was seen when formulated lubricants were used. Therefore, there is a need to synthesize specialized friction modifiers, anti-wear and extreme pressure additives for TMP before using it as engine lubricant base-oil. Originality/value: In this study, additive-free and formulated versions of bio-lubricant are tested for cam/tappet interface of direct acting valve train system of commercial passenger car diesel engine for the very test time. Another important aspect of this research was comparison of important tribological performance parameters (friction torque, wear, rotational speed of tappet) of TMP-based lubricants with conventional lubricant base oil, that is, PAO and its formulated version