Working Capital Management and Firm Performance: Evidence from Pakistan

Study analyzes the effect of the proper management of working capital on financial performance of cement sector in Pakistan. The sample period of the study is five years i-e from 2007 to 2011. The data was taken from dissimilar sources that used in this study from Karachi Stock Exchange, Published reports of SBP and respected firm site. The dependent variable of the study is Return on assets which is used as a proxy for firm financial performance.  There are independent variables are account receivable in days, inventory turnover in days, (CCC) and payable turnover in days. Panal Data methodology used to analyze the impact of Working Capital Management on performance or profitability of Cement sector. Results derived that CCC, Net Trading Cycle, Number of Days  Receivable has strongly positive relation with performance and these are significant whereas,  Number of Days Inventory turnover and Number of days payable turnover in Days have negative relation with firm performance and is insignificant. Keywords: Cash Conversion Cycle, Net Trade Cycle, Receivable Turnover in Days, Inventory Turnover in Days & Payable Turnover in Days

MUST: A Multilingual Student-Teacher Learning approach for low-resource speech recognition

Student-teacher learning or knowledge distillation (KD) has been previously used to address data scarcity issue for training of speech recognition (ASR) systems. However, a limitation of KD training is that the student model classes must be a proper or improper subset of the teacher model classes. It prevents distillation from even acoustically similar languages if the character sets are not same. In this work, the aforementioned limitation is addressed by proposing a MUltilingual Student-Teacher (MUST) learning which exploits a posteriors mapping approach. A pre-trained mapping model is used to map posteriors from a teacher language to the student language ASR. These mapped posteriors are used as soft labels for KD learning. Various teacher ensemble schemes are experimented to train an ASR model for low-resource languages. A model trained with MUST learning reduces relative character error rate (CER) up to 9.5% in comparison with a baseline monolingual ASR.Comment: Accepted for IEEE ASRU 202

Cerebral cavernous malformation presenting as seizures

Cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs) is one of the rare vascular malformation. It is diagnosed by characteristic lesions on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). CCMs typically appears as a “popcorn-like” masses on T2-weighted images on MRI studies.And clinically can lead to headaches, seizures,focal neurological deficits or intracerebral hemorrhages. . A familial form is suggested if lesions are multiple, and a sporadic form, if singl

Magnetic field dependent viscous fluid-flow between squeezing plates with homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions

The impacts of magnetic field dependent viscous fluid is explored between squeezing plates in the presence of homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions. The unsteady constitutive equations of heat and mass transfers, modified Navier-Stokes, magnetic field and homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions are coupled as an system of ODE. The appropriate solutions are established for the vertical and axial induced magnetic field equations for the transformed and momentum as well as for the MHD pressure and torque exerted on the upper plate, and are in details. In the case of a smooth plate, the self-similar equation with acceptable starting assumptions and auxiliary parameters is solved by utilising a homotopy analytics method, to generate an algorithm with fast and guaranteed convergence. By comparing homotopy analytics method solutions with BVP4c numerical solver packaging, the validity and correctness of the homotopy analytics method findings are demonstrated. Magnetic Reynolds number have been shown to cause to decrease the distribution of magnetic field, fluid temperature, axial and tangential velocity. The magnetic field also has vertical and axial components with increasing viscosity. The applications of the investigation include car magneto-rheological shock absorbers, modern aircraft landing gear systems, procedures for heating or cooling, biological sensor systems, and bio-prothesis, etc

Wind-to-hydrogen production potential for selected sites in Pakistan

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of wind energy potential for Hydrogen production under local conditions of Pakistan from the design, development and practical implementation perspectives. Simulations were performed for three sites - Bahawalpur, Sanghar and Gwadar using actual wind speed site data, recorded between 2016 and 2018, at intervals of 10 minute. For the selected sites, wind resource assessment was performed using the Weibull distribution function parameters, energy and wind-power density calculations at hub heights of 20m, 40m, 60m and 80m of the wind turbines. It was observed that Sanghar is the most suitable site for wind-to-Hydrogen production potential with power and energy density of 305.86W/m{2} and 2665.81kWh/m{2} , respectively. From the implementation perspective, the Nordex N90/2500 wind turbine at an 80m hub height was found to be beneficial for Sanghar with a cost of energy of 35.21/MWh (0.035/kWh). The cost of Hydrogen using an electrolyzer for 7-year long-term investment was 2.29 k/ton using Nordex N90/2500 turbine. Based on the available power density and land area, a general scheme for production of Hydrogen using electrolysis can be implemented with possibility of installation and commissioning of wind farms

Self-medication with antibiotics among non-medical university students of Karachi: a cross-sectional study

Background: The prevalence of self -medication with antibiotics is quite high in developing countries as opposed to developed countries. Antibiotics are often taken erroneously for certain ailments, without having the appropriate knowledge of their use. This carries potential risks for the individual as well as the community, in form of several side effects such as antibiotic resistance. Therefore the prevalence of self-medicated antibiotics in developing countries needs to be studied.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out at six different non-medical universities of Karachi. 431 students were included in the study. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaires and analyzed using SPSS version 19.Results: 50.1% students reported having self-medicated themselves in the past 6months and 205 (47.6%) reported self-medication with antibiotics. Amoxicillin was the most self-prescribed antibiotic (41.4%). Awareness of the adverse effects of antibiotics was demonstrated by 77.3% of the students and sleep disturbance was the most commonly known (46.5%) side effect. 63.1% denied having any knowledge about antibiotic resistance and only 19.9% correctly knew that indiscriminate use of antibiotics can lead to increased antibiotic resistance.CONCLUSION: The prevalence of self-medication with antibiotics among the non-medical university students was high despite the awareness of adverse effects. Antibiotic resistance was a relatively unknown terminology

Molecular epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2: A tertiary care hospital experience from Pakistan

Objectives: The current study was conducted to assess the molecular epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in the general population. Methodology: This study was conducted from April to July 2020, at the Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory, Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) General Hospital Islamabad, Pakistan. A total of 28,274 nasopharyngeal swabs were collected in Viral Transport Medium (VTM) media from symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals at the sample collection centers of our hospital and other affiliated hospitals. RNA was extracted using both automated and manual extraction platforms as per the manufacturer's instructions. Multiple qualitative reverse transcription real-time PCR kits for the identification of SARS-CoV-2 were used. Results: The results showed that 1,722 (6.09%) were positive for SARA-CoV-2 RNA. The males exhibited a prevalence of 2.76% while females showed a high prevalence of 13.44%. Among males,  most patients 424 (31.47%) were in the age group of 31-40 years followed by the age group of 41-50 years 306 (22.71%). Similarly among females, the majority of patients were from the age group 31-40 years with 91 (24.66%) followed by 41-50 years of age group 70 (18.66%) confirmed cases. Conclusion: The molecular epidemiological data may support the national policy formulation, transmission tracking, and the execution of measures to control viral transmission

How Subjective Career Success of Public Sector Universities’ Teachers Is Affected by Protean Career Orientation?

The study explored the mediating effect of Perceived Employability (PE) on faculty members’ protean career orientation (PCO) and Career Success (CS). The study is exploratory in nature which aimed to ascertain the mediating relationship of perceived employability between protean career orientation and career success of faculty members working in public sector institutions of higher learning. The researchers tried to test protean career theory by developing a conceptual framework. Data were gained through self-administrated questionnaires from the faculty members working in Punjab’s Public Sector Universities. For the purpose of sampling: stratified sampling technique was applied for data collection. Data were obtained from 269 respondents’ for testing the theoretical model. Measurement model was analyzed by applying Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) for testing the hypothesis. For this purposed we used SMART-PLS Licensed version 3. The researchers detected a statistically significant mediating role of perceived employability between protean career orientation and subjective career success. Due to the scarcity of financial and time constraints we have collected data from only 12 universities of Punjab, Pakistan. However, the results can be generalized as all the public sector universities are governed by same governing body; named Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC)

What Factors Drive the Banks Systemic Risk among South Asian Countries?

Purpose: This study designs to examine the determinants (size, liquidity ratio, leverage ratio, deposit ratio, asset growth, net interest income ratio and return on asset ratio) of bank’s systemic risk. We use the data of listed commercial banks of the South Asian countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India). Design/Methodology/Approach: The sample consists 30 banks from Bangladesh, 87 banks from India and 22 banks from Pakistan. This study covers the period from 2006 to 2018. The data is collected from the published annual reports of banks and stock exchanges of respective country. The panel data analysis is performed for the estimation of research models. Findings: The findings demonstrate that larger banks contribute lower in the systemic risk of banks. Additionally, highly liquid banks enhance the systemic risk of the banking system. Moreover, the banks with greater reliance on the deposits, net interest income and with high return on asset reduce the systemic risk contribution of the banks. Implications/Originality/Value: This study provides the justification to devise the banking policies like enhance the proportion of liquidity among assets, reliance on net interest income and promote the financing needs through deposits to limit the systemic risk contribution of the banking system.                                                           &nbsp

How Do Organizational Commitment and Work Engagement Mediate Between Human Resource Management Practices and Job Performance?

The main goal of this study is to empirically determine the mediating roles of organizational commitment and work engagement between the relationship of human resource management practices and job performance of the faculty members working in public sector universities of Pakistan. Data were obtained by self-administrated questionnaire. This study used stratified random sampling. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) has been applied by using SMART PLS registered version 3; to test the statistical model. The study found that work engagement and affective organizational commitment has partially mediating relationship with human resource management practices and job performance. Social Exchange Theory used as under pinning theory to develop theoretical model. Data were collected from 247 faculty member working in public sector universities of Pakistan