The Impact of Leverage Levels on Firm’s Performance and Profitability: a case of Pakistani Industries

This paper examines the relationship between the leverage levels, performance and profitability of the 19 Pakistanis firms with in three sectors, commercial banking, cement and fertilizer sector starting from 2004 to 2010. The purpose was to check the trends which are being followed by these industries and how much their capital structure policy is dynamic and relating to their sale, earnings, performance and stock values. Arithmetic Mean (A.M), standard derivation (S.D) were used to check the trend of data and then correlation was used sector wise to check the relationship of dependent and independent variables. At the end Regression test was employed on data .Study finds that there is relationship between leverage ratio i.e. DTCM (independent variable) and its determinants i.e size, tangibility, return on asset and RET except cash. A debt does not represent a suitable form of financing with value-enhancing investment projects of the firms, as an alternative, such firms issue equity. On the other hand, when there is a lack of profitable projects, a firm prefers issuing debts and increasing dividends. Management can increase the performance and profit indicators just by changing the debt equity structure

Teachers' Beliefs About Teaching Reading to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Students in Saudi Higher Education

This study explores teachers’ beliefs about teaching reading and reading instructional practices. The study seeks to answer the questions such as what the English language teachers believe about teaching reading in English to the Saudi EFL learners and how they form/develop their beliefs in this particular context. The study also tries to find out why teachers hold particular sets of beliefs about teaching reading in English and what reading instructional practices do teachers of apparently different beliefs use with Saudi EFL learners. The main objective of the study is mainly achieved by conducting a survey questionnaire with 75 and audio-recording active interviews with five practising English language teachers who are currently working in Saudi higher education. Thus the study is a combination of both the qualitative and the quantitative research methodologies. The findings of the study show that the teachers’ beliefs are not stagnant, rather they are flexible and are guided by what works well and less well for their learners. A clear consensus is also seen about the significance of teachers’ beliefs in teaching reading and teachers have no doubt about the importance of reading in the learners’ overall English language learning. Though there is a general belief of the teachers that their role should be of a facilitator, practically a teacher has to perform a very active role and lead the reading activities in a reading class. This research study not only brings some useful data to the higher education institutes in Saudi Arabia to help them figure out teachers’ beliefs on various aspects of teaching reading but also presents some recommendations on how to improve teaching of reading in the context of Saudi Arabia. The findings of the study can be useful to the English language teachers and researchers in identifying the beliefs of one of the key elements of the educational system

Enhanced Handover Mechanism in Long Term Evolution (LTE) Networks

Femtocell is a low power base station, wireless access point designed especially for homes and small organizations. It is promising technology for operators to improve their capacity and for users to give indoor coverage. As mobile users are increasing day by day so the legacy system is unable to provide such a high data rates to all these users. In this case femtocells play a key role to offload the data traffic from macro base station. The implementation of femtocell has posed so many challenges like interference, localization, access control and mobility management. The aim of this paper is to present an enhanced algorithm for handover in Hand-In scenario. In already existing algorithms handover is decided on the basis of a single parameter but here we have simulated an algorithm that considers multiple parameters instead of a single parameter for handover. Through this algorithm, the most suitable femtocell will be selected for handover, hence number of handovers will be decreased. Simulation results show that the system performance has been improved.

Prion Protein Strain Diversity and Disease Pathology

The infectious agents, prions, are composed mainly of conformational isomers of the cellular prion protein (PrPc) in its abnormal accumulated scrapie forms (PrPSc). The distinct prion isolates or strains have been associated with different PrPSc prion protein conformations and patterns of glycosylation and are associated with disease progression and severity. In humans, sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) is the most common form and has been divided into six subtypes, based on PrPSc electrophoretic mobility and allelic variation at codon 129, among which sCJD MM1 and sCJD VV2 are the two most commonly occurring subtypes with known clinical manifestations. The strain-specific response of PrPSc suggests both the molecular classification and the pathogenesis of prion diseases along with posttranslational modification of PrP in humans and animals

Socio-economic and environmental drivers of green innovation: evidence from nonlinear ARDL

The adoption of green technology is imperative to realise sustainable development. Considering the same, this study explores the drivers of Green Innovation (GI) based on the theoretical foundation of the Triple Bottom Line (environmental, social, and economic factors) with the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) and institutional governance (INST) in Pakistan. This study employs a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) framework on quarterly data from Q1-1996 to Q4- 2019. The results reveal that positive shocks in human capital (HCI) instigate GI by 1.05%, while negative shock undermines GI by 0.93%. Similarly, positive shocks in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions increase GI by 0.63%, while any negative shock undermines GI by 0.01%. On the other hand, positive shock in ICT leads to 0.55% advanced GI; however, this effect turned stronger in negative shocks, which leads to reduced GI by 0.78% in the long-run. These results confirm the asymmetricity because positive and negative shocks in HCI, CO2 emissions, and ICT instigated GI differently. Finally, INST and GDP contribute to enhancing GI by 0.12% and 1.69%, respectively. The results indicate that the Pakistan government should improve institutional governance, adapt, and focus on sustainable practices with ICT integration to promote green technologies

Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: An Empirical Analysis of Banking Sector in Pakistan

The basic aim of this study is to explore most common constructs for quality of banking services, which influence customer satisfaction and examine the impact of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty in the context of banking relationships. The questionnaire was used to collect the data from 192 valid respondents by convenience sampling method. SPSS was used to analyze the data and AMOS was used to test the model. The results of the study show that there is a positive and significant link between customer satisfaction and constructs of service quality like tangibility, reliability, competence conflict handling and further study inferred that customer satisfaction is positively significant related to customer loyalty

Suicidal bus bombing of French nationals in Pakistan: physical injuries and management of survivors

Abstract BACKGROUND: Suicidal bombing is particularly devastating and an increasingly common form of terrorist violence. In this paper, we present an epidemiologic description of the physical injuries of patients who survived the suicidal bombing attack in the context of the limited medical resources of a developing nation. METHODS: The management of individual patients was reviewed from a preprinted trauma form. Information on the nature of injuries, operative management and hospital course was recorded and data analyzed using the Trauma Registry. RESULTS: Twelve survivors out of 36 bomb blast victims brought to the Aga Khan University Hospital were transferred from primary receiving hospitals. The average number of injuries per patient was eight. The mean Injury Severity Score was 10.8. The majority of patients had secondary and tertiary blast injuries. Most of the survivors had calcaneal injuries; these have not been reported in the literature in similar terrorist attacks. Twelve operative interventions were undertaken. All of the 12 patients were stabilized and evacuated within 24 h of admission. CONCLUSIONS: All of the 12 patients transferred to the Aga Khan University Hospital survived. Unlike the reported injuries, calcaneal fractures were most commonly encountered in the survivors

ACC-deaminase producing plant growth promoting rhizobacteria and biochar mitigate adverse effects of drought stress on maize growth

Availability of good quality irrigation water is a big challenge in arid and semi arid regions of the world. Drought stress results in poor plant growth and low yield; however, the rhizobacteria, capable of producing 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC)-deaminase are likely to improve crop growth and productivity under drought stress. Similarly, biochar could also ameliorate the negative impacts of drought stress. Therefore, this pot experiment was conducted to evaluate the role of ACC-deaminase producing plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) alone and in combinations with timber-waste biochar in improving maize growth under drought stress. The ACC-deaminase producing rhizobacteria, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterobacter cloacae, Achromobacter xylosoxidans and Leclercia adecarboxylata were studied along with two rates (0.75 and 1.50% of the soil weight) of biochar under three moisture levels i.e., normal moisture, mild drought stress and severe drought stress. The E. cloacae in conjunction with higher rate of biochar produced a significant improvement i.e., up to 60, 73, 43, 69, 76 and 42% respectively, in grain yield plant-1, photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, chlorophyll a, total chlorophyll and carotenoids contents of maize as compared to the control under mild drought stress. Similarly, A. xylosoxidans with higher rate of biochar also enhanced grain yield plant-1, photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, chlorophyll a, total chlorophyll and carotenoids contents of maize up to 200, 213, 113, 152, 148 and 284%, respectively over control under severe drought stress. In conclusion, combination of ACC-deaminase containing PGPR, A. xylosoxidans and biochar (0.75%) proved an effective technique to improve maize growth and productivity under drought stress

Application of Gene Expression Programming (GEP) for the prediction of compressive strength of geopolymer concrete

For the production of geopolymer concrete (GPC), fly-ash (FA) like waste material has been effectively utilized by various researchers. In this paper, the soft computing techniques known as gene expression programming (GEP) are executed to deliver an empirical equation to estimate the compressive strength of GPC made by employing FA. To build a model, a consistent, extensive and reliable data base is compiled through a detailed review of the published research. The compiled data set is comprised of 298 experimental results. The utmost dominant parameters are counted as explanatory variables, in other words, the extra water added as percent FA (), the percentage of plasticizer (), the initial curing temperature (), the age of the specimen (), the curing duration (), the fine aggregate to total aggregate ratio (), the percentage of total aggregate by volume (), the percent SiO2 solids to water ratio () in sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) solution, the NaOH solution molarity (), the activator or alkali to FA ratio (), the sodium oxide (Na2O) to water ratio () for preparing Na2SiO3 solution, and the Na2SiO3 to NaOH ratio (). A GEP empirical equation is proposed to estimate the of GPC made with FA. The accuracy, generalization, and prediction capability of the proposed model was evaluated by performing parametric analysis, applying statistical checks, and then compared with non-linear and linear regression equations