Financial constraints and the export decision of Pakistani firms

The payment of sunk costs associated with the entry to foreign export markets highlights the significance of financial dimension in the firm decision. The sunk costs become a challenge for the financially constrained firms. In this paper, we study the relationship between financial constraints and the export entry decision of the firms in a lower-middle income country context. We use new measures of financial constraints in finance literature alongside widely used measures of financial health in trade literature to scrutinise the relationship for Pakistani listed manufacturing firms. We find that being less financially constrained is a vital determinant of the Pakistani firms’ export participation decision irrespective the high firm leverage before entry. The undeveloped financial system and heavy reliance on bank loans for external finance in Pakistan may be the plausible explanations for our findings. Our results suggest that measures of financial constraints are more appropriate than the widely used measures of financial health in studying the determinants of the export participation decision. In addition, we find evidence that future exporters improve their financial conditions prior to entering the export markets. However, we do not find any evidence that exporting improves financial conditions of the firms after entry

Analyzing Energy-efficiency and Route-selection of Multi-level Hierarchal Routing Protocols in WSNs

The advent and development in the field of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in recent years has seen the growth of extremely small and low-cost sensors that possess sensing, signal processing and wireless communication capabilities. These sensors can be expended at a much lower cost and are capable of detecting conditions such as temperature, sound, security or any other system. A good protocol design should be able to scale well both in energy heterogeneous and homogeneous environment, meet the demands of different application scenarios and guarantee reliability. On this basis, we have compared six different protocols of different scenarios which are presenting their own schemes of energy minimizing, clustering and route selection in order to have more effective communication. This research is motivated to have an insight that which of the under consideration protocols suit well in which application and can be a guide-line for the design of a more robust and efficient protocol. MATLAB simulations are performed to analyze and compare the performance of LEACH, multi-level hierarchal LEACH and multihop LEACH.Comment: NGWMN with 7th IEEE Inter- national Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA 2012), Victoria, Canada, 201

Predation potential of flower fly Eupeodes nuba (Wiedemann, 1830) (Diptera: Syrphidae) on black bean aphid Aphis fabae Scopoli (Hemiptera: Aphididae) and the parasitoids species on its host in the field

The flower fly species, Eupeodes nuba (Wiedemann, 1830) (Diptera: Syrphidae) is crucial for agroecosystems as it provides various ecosystem services such as pest control through the use of predatory larvae and crop pollination by adults. In this research, the consumption rate of different instars of Aphis fabae (Scopoli, 1763) by E. nuba larvae has been studied under laboratory conditions at 25±2 °C, 60±10% humidity (RH). Fifty aphids and one larva of flower fly were present in each replicate. The results showed that the maximum number of A. fabae consumed by the larvae of E. nuba was 49.13 individuals at the third instar, followed by 35.73 individuals of aphids at the second instar and 16.26 individuals for the first instar of the predator. The highest daily consumption of aphids occurred during the third instar of the predator. A. fabae was heavily parasitized by different aphid parasitoids, Binodoxys acalephae (Marshall, 1896), Lysiphlebus fabarum (Marshall, 1896), and Aphelinus asychis (Walker, 1839) on the broad bean. Parasitization rates of these parasitoids increased during the broad bean plant season. The first recording of A. fabae as a new host for A. psychic. The survey of three parasitoids indicated that L. fabarum had the highest population in December, the parasitoid B. acalephae was the highest in January, and the highest population of A. asychis was recorded in February. It seems that biological control can be used as an alternative to chemical pesticides to control A. fabae

HEER: Hybrid Energy Efficient Reactive Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of numerous sensors which send sensed data to base station. Energy conservation is an important issue for sensor nodes as they have limited power.Many routing protocols have been proposed earlier for energy efficiency of both homogeneous and heterogeneous environments. We can prolong our stability and network lifetime by reducing our energy consumption. In this research paper, we propose a protocol designed for the characteristics of a reactive homogeneous WSNs, HEER (Hybrid Energy Efficient Reactive) protocol. In HEER, Cluster Head(CH) selection is based on the ratio of residual energy of node and average energy of network. Moreover, to conserve more energy, we introduce Hard Threshold (HT) and Soft Threshold (ST). Finally, simulations show that our protocol has not only prolonged the network lifetime but also significantly increased stability period.Comment: 2nd IEEE Saudi International Electronics, Communications and Photonics Conference (SIECPC 13), 2013, Riyadh, Saudi Arabi

The Relationship between Organizational Justice and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

The paper focuses on determining whether organizational justice has impact on the organizational citizenship behavior in charity organization in Erbil/Iraq. Correlation analysis analyzed (r =0.795**) was found between organizational justice and OCB, (r =0.424**) was found between Distributive and OCB (r =0.768**) was found between Procedural and OCB, (r =0.784**) e was found between Interactional and OCB. Simple Analysis concluded supported that there is linkage between organizational justice as an independent variable and OCB as a dependent variable (Adjusted R2 = 0.630, p <0.01). Multiple Regression Analysis concluded supported that there is linkage between dimensions of organizational justice as an independent variable as listed as Distributive, Procedural and Interactional with OCB as a dependent variable (Adjusted R2 = 0.654, p <0.05). Rely of the study outcome all hypotheses which are H1, H2, H3 and H4 were confirmed

Axial compressive behaviour of circular CFFT: Experimental database and design-oriented model

Concrete Filled Fibre Reinforced Polymer Tube (CFFT) for new columns construction has attracted significant research attention in recent years. The CFFT acts as a formwork for new columns and a barrier to corrosion accelerating agents. It significantly increases both the strength capacity (Strength enhancement ratio) and the ductility (Strain enhancement ratio) of reinforced concrete columns. In this study, based on predefined selection criteria, experimental investigation results of 134 circular CFFT columns under axial compression have been compiled and analysed from 599 CFFT specimens available in the literature. It has been observed that actual confinement ratio (expressed as a function of material properties of fibres, diameter of CFFT and compressive strength of concrete) has significant influence on the strength and ductility of circular CFFT columns. Design oriented models have been proposed to compute the strength and strain enhancement ratios of circular CFFT columns. The proposed strength and strain enhancement ratio models have significantly reduced Average Absolute Error (AAE), Mean Square Error (MSE), Relative Standard Error of Estimate (RSEE) and Standard Deviation (SD) as compared to other available strength and strain enhancement ratios of circular CFFT column models. The predictions of the proposed strength and strain enhancement ratio models match well with the experimental strength and strain enhancement ratios investigation results in the compiled database