The Convergence of Anti-Money Laundering Laws: Legitimacy and Effects on Offshore Centres

Globalisation and technology have resulted in an increase in international commerce, capital flows and the movement of goods and services across borders. Such factors have also increased opportunities to launder money and reintergrate the proceeds of crime into the legitimate economy. In response to such developments, as well as perceived threats to their national economies and tax-bases, the G7/G8 and the OECD have created various International initiatives, to combat money-laundering, which have targeted jurisdictions offering limited financial regulation, bank confidentiality and low levels of taxation. These initiatives, however suffer from a legitimacy gap, owing to the vertical unilaterality of the regimes they seek to institute. This work will attempt to examine the origins and purpose of the homogenising global anti-money laundering regime. It shall also examine its legitimacy and effectiveness, with emphasis on Offshore Financial Centres

Prognostic Role of Optical Coherence Tomography in Outcome of Idiopathic full thickness Macular Hole Surgery

Abstract Purpose: To assess the prognostic value of Optical Coherence Tomography indices preoperatively in outcome of idiopathic full thickness macular hole surgery. Material & Methods:  A Quasi experimental study was carried out at Al Ibrahim eye hospital, Karachi from June 2019 to Feb 2020. Patients between 50 to 70 years of age, including both genders with full thickness idiopathic macular hole on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) were included while patients with secondary causes of macular hole like trauma, myopia, detachment of retina with macular hole, macular hole with other causes of poor vision like corneal scaring, Age related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy were excluded. OCT measurements are basal diameter, height of macular hole, right and left arm length and derived indices are macular hole index (MHI) and hole form factor (HFF). Results: A total 33 patients including 23 (69.6%) male and 10(30.3%) females of idiopathic full thickness macular hole were taken. Patients  mean age was 55.25±6.9. Among 33 patients, MHI (>0.5) was found in 21(63.6%) patients while 12 (36.3%) patients had MHI (< 0.5). In 25 patients HFF calculation was possible. 17(68%) patients had HFF (>0.9) while 8  (32%) patients had HFF (< 0.9). Anatomical and visual outcomes were assessed at 1st and 3rd month follow-up. Of 21 patients for MHI >0.5, vision improved (i.e. ≥ 6/18) in 15 (71.4%). Similarly, out of 17 patients for HFF > 0.9, 13 (76.47%) patients had improved vision post-operatively. Conclusion: Optical coherence tomography indices can be helpful to predict surgical outcomes of idiopathic full thickness macular hole surgery

Determinants of Environmental Degradation in Economy of Pakistan

The study attempts to examine various factors responsible for environmental degradation in Pakistan. Contributing towards economic growth, these factors added pollutants as a byproduct to the environment. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rate is one of such pollutants and has been used as a dependent variable in the study. Numerous factors are responsible for environmental damage, but the study includes the major ones. These determinants are economic growth, population, energy consumption and industrialization, and time-series data of these variables from 1972 to 2018 are utilized for empirical analysis in the study. Long run relationship is computed using Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL). Findings of the study revealed that three factors; population, energy consumption and industrialization are positively and significantly contributed to environmental degradation in Pakistan. While, economic growth is negatively contributing towards environmental degradation. The paper concluded with a finding that population growth needs to be controlled. Besides this, clean and green energy should be promoted. Lastly, EPAs must be strengthened for their effectiverole.&nbsp

CAPITAL STRUCTURE, LIQUIDITY AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF THE FIRMS IN CEMENT AND SUGAR INDUSTRIES OF PAKISTAN

This research examines the impact of firm capital structure and liquidity on the financial performance of sugar and cement sector firms in Pakistan. The study used the secondary data of 30 firms randomly selected for the period 2005 to 2017. The data was analyzed through statistical tools like correlation and regression. The results revealed that the capital structure proxies have a negative correlation with financial performance proxies of these sector firms.The results indicated that debts to equity ratio and the fund capital ratio has a negative insignificant impact however the debts ratio and Funded debts ratio were found having a negative significant impact on the financial proxies of these selected firms. The results indicated a positive correlation of the liquidity with the financial performance of these firms. The results demonstrating positive effect of current and quick ratios on the financial performance proxies of these firms. The study has some meaningful insights for the financial managers and decision makers of these firms

Tourists’ Personal Development Through Participatory Consumer-Generated Content

The paper seeks to investigate key factors influencing the personal development of tourists. This study examines the relationship between participatory consumer-generated content and tourists’ capabilities, emotions, and skills, as well as the moderating effect of previous tourists’ experiences. To evaluate the research model, 301 valid responses were examined using the PLS-SEM technique. The empirical findings showed that participatory consumer-generated content positively relates to tourists’ capabilities, emotions, and skills. Moreover, previous tourists’ experiences moderate the relationships of participatory consumer-generated content with tourists’ capabilities and skills; however, previous tourists’ experiences have no moderation effect on tourists’ emotions. Thus, our paper\u27s findings offer valuable contributions to theory and practice. Practitioners and authorities should stimulate users to share their tourism experiences and take the initiative to share easily traceable and searchable data. Moreover, businesses should implement activities that encourage tourists to share their experiences as soon as possible and make travel and tourism websites and social media platforms readily available

Prevalence Of Peptic Ulcer In Patients Of Liver Cirrhosis Presenting With Upper Gi Bleed

BACKGROUND:  Although major cause of upper GI bleed in patients of liver cirrhosis is variceal bleed. However a significant proportion also presents with non-variceal bleeding (NVB). AIM: The aim of study is to determine the frequency of peptic ulcers in patients of liver cirrhosis presenting with upper GI bleed. METHODS: This descriptive cross sectional study was conducted in Gastroenterology section of medicine department at Benazir Bhutto Hospital from April 2017 to December 2018 . 672 patients of liver cirrhosis presenting with upper GI bleed were enrolled in study through non probability consecutive sampling. Upper GI endoscopy of all patients was performed by consultant Gastroenterologist and findings were documented on standardized Performa. RESULTS: 672 patients were included in study with mean age of 54.68 ±11.15. Among these 370 (55.1%) were males and 302 (44.9%) were females. 92 patients (13.1%) had peptic ulcer as cause of upper GI bleed. 112 patients (16.6%) had both peptic ulcer and variceal bleed as cause of Upper GI Bleed and endoscopic findings of remaining 468 patients (69.6 %) showed varices (oesophageal + gastric) as prime source of bleeding. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, peptic ulcer accounted for 13.1 % of all cases of UGI bleeding. Keywords: Peptic Ulcer, Variceal bleeding, Upper GI bleed, Cirrhosis

Mobility Support 5G Architecture with Real-Time Routing for Sustainable Smart Cities

[EN] The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology and provides connectivity among physical objects with the support of 5G communication. In recent decades, there have been a lot of applications based on IoT technology for the sustainability of smart cities, such as farming, e-healthcare, education, smart homes, weather monitoring, etc. These applications communicate in a collaborative manner between embedded IoT devices and systematize daily routine tasks. In the literature, many solutions facilitate remote users to gather the observed data by accessing the stored information on the cloud network and lead to smart systems. However, most of the solutions raise significant research challenges regarding information sharing in mobile IoT networks and must be able to stabilize the performance of smart operations in terms of security and intelligence. Many solutions are based on 5G communication to support high user mobility and increase the connectivity among a huge number of IoT devices. However, such approaches lack user and data privacy against anonymous threats and incur resource costs. In this paper, we present a mobility support 5G architecture with real-time routing for sustainable smart cities that aims to decrease the loss of data against network disconnectivity and increase the reliability for 5G-based public healthcare networks. The proposed architecture firstly establishes a mutual relationship among the nodes and mobile sink with shared secret information and lightweight processing. Secondly, multi-secured levels are proposed to protect the interaction with smart transmission systems by increasing the trust threshold over the insecure channels. The conducted experiments are analyzed, and it is concluded that their performance significantly increases the information sustainability for mobile networks in terms of security and routing.Rehman, A.; Haseeb, K.; Saba, T.; Lloret, J.; Ahmed, Z. (2021). Mobility Support 5G Architecture with Real-Time Routing for Sustainable Smart Cities. Sustainability. 13(16):1-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169092S116131

Sustainability Model for the Internet of Health Things (IoHT) Using Reinforcement Learning with Mobile Edge Secured Services

[EN] In wireless multimedia networks, the Internet of Things (IoT) and visual sensors are used to interpret and exchange vast data in the form of images. The digital images are subsequently delivered to cloud systems via a sink node, where they are interacted with by smart communication systems using physical devices. Visual sensors are becoming a more significant part of digital systems and can help us live in a more intelligent world. However, for IoT-based data analytics, optimizing communications overhead by balancing the usage of energy and bandwidth resources is a new research challenge. Furthermore, protecting the IoT network's data from anonymous attackers is critical. As a result, utilizing machine learning, this study proposes a mobile edge computing model with a secured cloud (MEC-Seccloud) for a sustainable Internet of Health Things (IoHT), providing real-time quality of service (QoS) for big data analytics while maintaining the integrity of green technologies. We investigate a reinforcement learning optimization technique to enable sensor interaction by examining metaheuristic methods and optimally transferring health-related information with the interaction of mobile edges. Furthermore, two-phase encryptions are used to guarantee data concealment and to provide secured wireless connectivity with cloud networks. The proposed model has shown considerable performance for various network metrics compared with earlier studies.This work has been partially funded by the "La Fundacion para el Fomento de la Investigacion Sanitaria y Biomedica de la Comunitat Valenciana (Fisabio)" through the project PULSIDATA (A43). This research is supported by the Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics Lab (AIDA), CCIS Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The authors are thankful for technical support.Rehman, A.; Saba, T.; Haseeb, K.; Alam, T.; Lloret, J. (2022). Sustainability Model for the Internet of Health Things (IoHT) Using Reinforcement Learning with Mobile Edge Secured Services. Sustainability. 14(19):1-14. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912185114141