A Review and Identification of Aspects that Contribute towards Creation of Audit Expectation Gap, a Step towards Narrowing This Gap

Bridging of something requires a gap, and Audit expectation gap still exists since the time it was identified in 1970s, and to cover a gap requires identification of areas which needs to be covered, specially the areas which are the reason of creation of this gap. This paper attempts to expand the literature by identifying the factors which result in creation of this gap through a comprehensive review of literature, specially focusing the key countries in which studies are made regarding audit expectation gap as well as to highlight the groups among which the audit expectation gap exists, so that all necessary aspects should be taken into necessary consideration, and necessary attempts should be made to cover it. It is revealed that audit expectation gap exists due to difference of opinions about the factors like auditors’ role with respect to company and financial statements, audit knowledge, auditor’s attitude towards their profession, audit process, auditors’ independence, fraud detection, importance of auditing, preparation of financial statements, performance of company, parties to whom auditors are responsible, prohibitions and regulations of audit firm, reliability of financial reports and usefulness of financial statements among auditors, accountants, bankers, brokers, creditors, directors, educators, government, investors, journalists, jurors, shareholder, students and government. Various policy implications are also discussed herewith. Keywords: fraud, auditors, accountants, auditors’ responsibilities, expectation

Dengue fever presenting as quadriparesis due to hypokalaemia: a rare presentation

Dengue is one of the leading causes of arthropod borne viral haemorrhagic fever. Majority of the times, it clinically manifests as fever, arthralgia and rash; however, we present a case of a young man who presented with progressively increasing weakness of all four limbs. Initial investigations showed low potassium, hence he was managed as hypokalaemic periodic paralysis. With initial history of fever and low platelets, dengue was suspected. Dengue antibody was checked which came out to be positive. Potassium was replaced which led to improvement in power of his limbs. He was discharged in a stable condition with a diagnosis of dengue with hypokalaemic quadriparesis

Non-Compliance with COVID-19 Screening in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Objectives: To quantify the non-complaint portion of the general public – not wanting to be screened for COVID-19 and find the reason for this non-compliance, in the general public of Rawalpindi Pakistan. Study Design: Cross-sectional survey. Place and Duration of Study: General public of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. From June 19, 2020, to June 21, 2020. Methodology: A questionnaire was constructed based on a local study, it was injected to the accessible online population through Google Forms. Surveyors collected data from the illiterate population on printed proforma. A sample of 1108 was collected. IBM® SPSS® was used for data analysis. For categorical data, frequencies and percentages were calculated. A Chi-square test was applied for statistical significance. Results: 45.3% of participants were females, 54.7% were males. 37.9% of participants were married and 62.1% were unmarried. 3.8% were illiterate, 40.4% were matriculated and 47.1% had education higher than intermediate. 38.3% was non-compliant population – didn’t want to get screened for COVID-19. 30.7% were non-compliant because of ‘fear of isolation/ quarantine with other COVID-19 patients, leading to worsening of disease’ followed by 26.9% who ‘don’t trust the reliability of the test’. Gender and Education level variables were statistically significant in determining non-compliance. Marital status was found non-significant. Conclusion: A significant portion of the population i.e. 38.3% showed non-compliance with COVID-19 screening, which was statistically associated with gender and education level

Deploying Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) in newly-built nuclear power plants

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) evolution made IIOT deployable in nuclear power plants for remote access and monitoring operations. The deployment will be technically effective and economical when deployed during the construction of the NPP than on existing NPPs. Most existing NPPs were constructed prior to the digitalization era, so they do not provide the data visibility IOT needs to work. Deployment of IOT sensors at the design and construction stage will supply the operating system with raw data transmitted to the monitoring system for necessary predictions in real-time

Passive cooling analysis of an electronic chipset using nanoparticles and metal-foam composite PCM: An experimental study

Thermal management of electronic components is critical for long-term reliability and continuous operation, as the over-heating of electronic equipment leads to decrement in performance. The novelty of the current experimental study is to investigate the passive cooling of electronic equipment, by using nano-enriched phase change material (NEPCM) with copper foam having porosity of 97 %. The phase change material of PT-58 was used with graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) and magnesium oxide (MgO) nanoparticles (NPs), having concentrations of 0.01 wt. % and 0.02 wt. %. Three power levels of 8 W, 16 W, and 24 W, with corresponding heating inputs of 0.77 kW/ m2, 1.54 kW/ m2 and 2.3 kW/ m2, respectively, were used to simulate the heating input to heat sink for thermal characterization. According to results, at 0.77 kW/ m2 heating input the maximum base temperature declined by 13.03 % in 0.02 wt. % GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam case. At heating input of 1.54 kW/ m2, the maximum base temperature reduction of 16 % was observed in case of 0.02 wt. % GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam and 13.1 % in case of 0.02 wt. % MgO-NEPCM/copper foam. Similarly, at heating input of 2.3 kW/ m2, the maximum temperature of base lessened by 12.58 % in case of 0.02 wt. % GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam. The highest time to reach the set point temperature of 50 ⁰ C, 60 ⁰ C, and 70 ⁰ C was in case of GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam composites, while at all power levels MgO-NEPCM/copper foam gave comparable performance to GNPs based composite. Similar trend was observed in the study of enhancement ratio in operation time. From the results, it is concluded that the copper foam incorporation in NEPCM is an effective measure to mitigate the heat sink base temperature and can provide best cooling efficiency at low and higher heating loads

Application of deep learning for livestock behaviour recognition: a systematic literature review.

Livestock health and welfare monitoring is a tedious and labour-intensive task previously performed manually by humans. However, with recent technological advancements, the livestock industry has adopted the latest AI and computer vision-based techniques empowered by deep learning (DL) models that, at the core, act as decision-making tools. These models have previously been used to address several issues, including individual animal identification, tracking animal movement, body part recognition, and species classification. However, over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in using these models to examine the relationship between livestock behaviour and associated health problems. Several DL-based methodologies have been developed for livestock behaviour recognition, necessitating surveying and synthesising state-of-the-art. Previously, review studies were conducted in a very generic manner and did not focus on a specific problem, such as behaviour recognition. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no review study that focuses on the use of DL specifically for livestock behaviour recognition. As a result, this systematic literature review (SLR) is being carried out. The review was performed by initially searching several popular electronic databases, resulting in 1101 publications. Further assessed through the defined selection criteria, 126 publications were shortlisted. These publications were filtered using quality criteria that resulted in the selection of 44 high-quality primary studies, which were analysed to extract the data to answer the defined research questions. According to the results, DL solved 13 behaviour recognition problems involving 44 different behaviour classes. 23 DL models and 24 networks were employed, with CNN, Faster R-CNN, YOLOv5, and YOLOv4 being the most common models, and VGG16, CSPDarknet53, GoogLeNet, ResNet101, and ResNet50 being the most popular networks. Ten different matrices were utilised for performance evaluation, with precision and accuracy being the most commonly used. Occlusion and adhesion, data imbalance, and the complex livestock environment were the most prominent challenges reported by the primary studies. Finally, potential solutions and research directions were discussed in this SLR study to aid in developing autonomous livestock behaviour recognition systems

Determinants of Capital Structure in Non-Financial Companies of Pakistan

This paper analyzes the various factors which determine capital structure in non-financial companies listed on Karachi Stock Exchange. Panel data of 113 companies spanning over a period of 10 years is used as our sample. Data is obtained from balance sheet analysis of non-financial listed companies, published by State Bank of Pakistan. Panel data estimation models are employed for data analysis. Our results reveal the factors contributing to determination of capital structure in Pakistan. Profitability and liquidity are negatively related to debt ratio, while free cash flows, interest rates and earnings volatility are positively related to debt ratio. Firm size, growth opportunities, non-debt tax shields and asset tangibility appear to have no significant impact on debt ratio. Keywords?capital structure, debt ratio, profitability, liquidity, free cash flows, tangibility, firm size, earnings volatility, interest rate, non-debt tax shields, growth opportunities, Pakistan

Influence of different formulation variables on the performance of transdermal drug delivery system containing tizanidine hydrochloride: in vitro and ex vivo evaluations

The present study was aimed at preparation of transdermal patches of tizanidine HCl, evaluation of the effect of polymers on in vitro release pattern of the drug, and the effect of permeation enhancers on the penetration of the drug through the rabbit skin. Various proportions of hydrophilic (HPMC) and hydrophobic (Eudragit L-100) polymers were used with PEG 400 as film-forming agent, and Span 20 or DMSO as permeation enhancer. The formulations were assessed for physicochemical characteristics and in vitro drug release studies using USP paddle over disc method in phosphate buffered saline (pH 7.4) at 32.0±1°C. On the basis of in vitro studies and physicochemical evaluations, S03-A and S04-A were selected at Eudragit : HPMC ratios of 8 : 2 and 7 : 3, respectively, for further ex vivo analysis. The effects of different concentrations of Span 20 and DMSO were evaluated on excised rabbit skin using Franz diffusion cell. Cumulative drug permeation, flux, permeability coefficient, target flux, and enhancement ratio were calculated and compared with the control formulations. Kinetic models and Tukey’s multiple comparison test were applied to evaluate the drug release patterns. Formulation SB03- PE containing Eudragit L-100:HPMC (7:3) with Span 20 (15% w/w) produced the highest enhancement in drug permeation, and followed zero order kinetic model with super case-II drug release mechanism