The Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Performance Control Tool and Its Link to the Economic Profit Measurement- Eva and Mva: a Literature Review

The organizational performance measurement and control system is vital to sustain the business in all economic environments. Organization requires a control system that measures the performance strategically. This paper gathers the literature discussion of one such popular integrated strategic performance control system, the balanced scorecard approach (BSC). The discussion focuses on BSC approach on facilitating the implementation of organizational strategic and its link to the economic profit measures. Two popular economic profit measures, the Economic Value Added (EVA) and Market Value Added (MVA) are discussed in detail from various researchers point of view. The paper highlights the difference between these two measures and difference with the Return on Investment (ROI). The limitation of the economic profit measure is also highlighted in the discussion. As conclusion the link between the BSC strategic performance control tool and the economic profit measures are noted. This paper provides detailed discussions of both BSC strategic tool and economic profit measures based on literature review

Usage of Electronic Resources by the Faculty Members of Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College, Coimbatore: A Study

This paper examined the awareness and usage of e-resources by the faculty members of Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College. The present study is based on primary data collected from the faculty members working in the various departments of Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College. This study is conducted using a total number sample of 277 Faculty Members were randomly selected from thirteen departments. The data were collected by using empirical method of the questionnaire. The study aims to analyze the awareness and purpose of e-resources, frequency of using e-resources, Utilization and Satisfaction level of e-resources. It is found that the majority of faculty members are highly aware on IEEE 218 (86.17%), Springer Open 128 (50.59%) and O’reilly Open book and Free Engineering books 91 (35.97%) and further found that majority of 203 (80.24%) faculty members fully satisfied with about NPTEL resources

The Impact of Self-Efficacy and Social Support Towards Resilience Among Malaysian Working Adults During COVID-19 Pandemic: -

The drastic economic work stoppage during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has totally impacted many especially the working population. Resilience acts as a protective factor that emphasizes the potential to manage stress and promote wellbeing. In the working environment, resilience is an important asset to be possessed by every individual. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the relationship between self-efficacy, perceived social support, and resiliency among working adults in Malaysia. A total of 184 respondents were recruited using convenience and purposive sampling methods to answer online surveys anonymously. Findings revealed that self-efficacy, support from friends and family showed a positive significant relationship towards resilience while on the contrary, significant others showed a weak relationship. To sum up, results illustrated that self-efficacy was the strongest predictor for resilience among working adults in Malaysia. This research was intended to fill the main gaps in finding the avenues that uphold the resilience attitude among working adults. This study hopes to shed light and serves as a guideline for the policymakers and human resource firms in generating useful schemes to develop the self-efficacy and social support to thrive towards the difficult circumstances successfully among employees in Malaysia

On Regular Elements in an Incline

Inclines are additively idempotent semirings in which products are less than (or) equal to either factor. Necessary and sufficient conditions for an element in an incline to be regular are obtained. It is proved that every regular incline is a distributive lattice. The existence of the Moore-Penrose inverse of an element in an incline with involution is discussed. Characterizations of the set of all generalized inverses are presented as a generalization and development of regular elements in a ∗-regular ring

An Empirical Study of Finding Approximate Equilibria in Bimatrix Games

While there have been a number of studies about the efficacy of methods to find exact Nash equilibria in bimatrix games, there has been little empirical work on finding approximate Nash equilibria. Here we provide such a study that compares a number of approximation methods and exact methods. In particular, we explore the trade-off between the quality of approximate equilibrium and the required running time to find one. We found that the existing library GAMUT, which has been the de facto standard that has been used to test exact methods, is insufficient as a test bed for approximation methods since many of its games have pure equilibria or other easy-to-find good approximate equilibria. We extend the breadth and depth of our study by including new interesting families of bimatrix games, and studying bimatrix games upto size $2000 \times 2000$. Finally, we provide new close-to-worst-case examples for the best-performing algorithms for finding approximate Nash equilibria

Evaluation of the use high resolution satellite Imagery to map slope instability in a tropical environment: St. Thomas, Jamaica

Landslides are a major natural hazard in Jamaica, and have resulted in loss of life, major economic losses, social disruption and damage to public and private properties. There is a need to delineate areas that are prone to slope instability in order to mitigate their effects. The first and most important stage for the creation of a landslide risk maps is the collection of accurate landslide data in a timely manner. However the type of terrain makes landslide mapping particularly difficult. Aerial Photographs have proven to be an effective way of mapping landslides but acquiring new photographs to map recent landslides is very expensive. High resolution satellite imagery were evaluated for their effectiveness in delineating landslides. The landslides on a whole had no distinctive spectral property; hence no one classification technique could be used to identify them. This research developed integrative methods utilising a combination of: edge enhancement to delineate the scarps area; Wetness Index to identify back titling blocks and debris flow lobes where moisture is higher; shape classification (to distinguish from e.g. ground cleared for agriculture); and slope curvature to map scarps. The information from the image classification was combined in a GIS and automated to determine the probability of the presence and or absence of a landslides. Data derived was validated against detailed field mapping at a scale of 1:5000. For more recent landslides, the modelling proved to be effective, accurately identifying 91% of the landslide both in terms of the location and extent. For the older landslides Pre 2000) the mapping was less effective, with misclassification as high as 24% particularly for smaller landslides. However, the use of these imagery does have great potential as they prove useful for mapping new landslides quickly and efficiently after landslide disaster and are much cheaper and quicker to acquire.University of Chester, KT research grant, and as an outcome of statutory research no. 528-0302-0828 Faculty of Geodesy and Land Management, Institute of Geodesy, bUniversity of Warmia and Mazury in Olszty

An inactivated vaccine made from a U.S. field isolate of porcine epidemic disease virus is immunogenic in pigs as demonstrated by a dose-titration

Citation: Collin, E. A., Anbalagan, S., Okda, F., Batman, R., Nelson, E., & Hause, B. M. (2015). An inactivated vaccine made from a U.S. field isolate of porcine epidemic disease virus is immunogenic in pigs as demonstrated by a dose-titration. BMC Veterinary Research, 11(1). doi:10.1186/s12917-015-0357-1Background: Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), a highly pathogenic and transmissible virus in swine, was first detected in the U.S. in May, 2013, and has caused tremendous losses to the swine industry. Due to the difficulty in isolating and growing this virus in cell culture, few vaccine studies using cell culture propagated PEDV have been performed on U.S. strains in pigs. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the humoral immune response to the selected inactivated PEDV vaccine candidate in a dose-titration manner. Results: PEDV was isolated from a pig with diarrhea and complete genome sequencing found >99% nucleotide identity to other U.S. PEDV. Inactivated adjuvanted monovalent vaccines were administered intramuscularly to five week old pigs in a dose titration experimental design, ranging from 6.0-8.0 log10 tissue culture infective dose (TCID50/mL), to evaluate immunogenicity using a fluorescent foci neutralization assay (FFN), fluorescent microsphere immunoassay (FMIA), and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) on sera. Pigs vaccinated with 8.0 log10 TCID50/mL inactivated virus showed significantly higher FFN titers as well as FMIA and ELISA values than 6.0 log10 TCID50/mL vaccinates and the negative controls. Conclusions: These results demonstrate the immunogenicity of a PEDV inactivated viral vaccine with a U.S. strain via dose-titration. A future vaccination-challenge study would illustrate the efficacy of an inactivated vaccine and help evaluate protective FFN titers and ELISA and FMIA responses. © Collin et al; licensee BioMed Central

Intracellular granzyme A expression of peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets in pulmonary tuberculosis

Cell-mediated immunity is a key weapon of host defence against tuberculosis (TB). Granzyme A (GzmA), a serine protease, present in the granules of cytotoxic cells induces caspase-independent cell death. We estimated the proportion of GzmA producing lymphocyte subsets in peripheral blood from 59 normal healthy volunteers and 48 pulmonary TB (PTB) patients using flow cytometry. When compared with normal healthy subjects, we observed a significantly higher percentage of GzmA-positive CD56+ cells (P = 0.01) in PTB patients. However, when the absolute number was compared between the two groups, a significantly decreased number of GzmA-expressing CD16+ (P = 0.01) and CD56+ (P = 0.0001) cells was observed in patients and this could be explained by the significantly reduced number of total lymphocytes (P = 0.0009) seen in the patients. There was no significant difference in the number of CD4+ and CD8+ GzmA double-positive cells between the two study groups. CD56 is a natural killer cell marker and these cells represent innate immune response to TB. We report an increased percentage of CD56+ cells expressing GzmA in TB patients, which shows the relevance of the GzmA-mediated pathway of apoptosis in immunity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis

3,4-Dibromo-2,5-dimethyl-1-phenyl­sulfonyl-1H-pyrrole

In the title compound, C12H11Br2NO2S, the dihedral angle between the two rings is 78.79 (12)°. The crystal packing features C—H⋯π inter­actions

Pathomimetic avatars reveal divergent roles of microenvironment in invasive transition of ductal carcinoma in situ

The breast tumor microenvironment regulates progression of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) to invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). However, it is unclear how interactions between breast epithelial and stromal cells can drive this progression and whether there are reliable microenvironmental biomarkers to predict transition of DCIS to IDC