Mediating Role of Environmental Management Accounting and Control System between Top Management Commitment and Environmental Performance: A Legitimacy Theory

The purpose of current study is to assess the impact of top management commitment on firms’ performance, based on legitimacy theory with mediating role of environmental management accounting and environmental management control system. Survey-based data has been collected through questionnaires from ISO 14001 based manufacturing firms of Pakistan. Path analysis has been conducted by applying structural equation modelling on total 304 respondents' data to answer the study hypotheses by using SPSS and AMOS. Results of the study indicate that there is a positive and direct impact of top management commitment on the firms' environmental performance. Moreover, environmental management accounting and control system significantly mediate the relationship between top management commitment and environmental performance. The theoretical model of this study is first time developed and tested by the researcher in Pakistan. Practically, the findings of this research give a deep insight and understanding of how the managers in Pakistan can improve the environmental performance of their firms, through commitment and environmental management accounting as well as environmental management control system tools

A Low Profile Wideband RHCP Printed Archimedean Spiral Antenna for Glacial Telemetry Applications

Suitability of a RHCP printed Archimedean spiral antenna for glacier telemetry applications in the 433 MHz band has been assessed for the first time. The developed antenna provides a gain of 7.4 dBic at 433 MHz and a -10 dB fractional bandwidth of 47% in snow. The antenna beamwidths in the vertical planes cater for misalignments between the transmitter and receiver antennas due to basal sliding. The measured axial ratio remained below 1.4 dB between 330–580 MHz. Lastly, evidence has been provided towards suitability of the 433 MHz band for achieving communication ranges up to 2300 metres in ice

An Improved RHCP Archimedean Spiral Antenna for Glacial Environmental Sensor Networks

An improved version of a printed RHCP Archimedean spiral antenna for glacial environmental sensor networks is presented. Two changes have been made to the previous design. Firstly, the microstrip connections between the balun and the antenna arms have been tapered. Secondly, the antenna arms have been rounded at the edges towards the antenna boundary. These measures have improved the antenna performance in the following ways. Firstly, the signal quality has been improved by minimizing reflections and signal distortion. Secondly, the microstrip tapering between the balun and the antenna arms has increased the radiating surface area in the region. Resultantly, significant improvements in the antenna’s reflection coefficient, gain, total efficiency, and axial ratio have been observed

Evaluating Effect of Block Size in Compressed Sensing for Grayscale Images

Compressed sensing is an evolving methodology that enables sampling at sub-Nyquist rates and still provides decent signal reconstruction. During the last decade, the reported works have suggested to improve time efficiency by adopting Block based Compressed Sensing (BCS) and reconstruction performance improvement through new algorithms. A trade-off is required between the time efficiency and reconstruction quality. In this paper we have evaluated the significance of block size in BCS to improve reconstruction performance for grayscale images. A parameter variant of BCS [15] based sampling followed by reconstruction through Smoothed Projected Landweber (SPL) technique [16] involving use of Weiner smoothing filter and iterative hard thresholding is applied in this paper. The BCS variant is used to evaluate the effect of block size on image reconstruction quality by carrying out extensive testing on 9200 images acquired from online resources provided by Caltech101 [6], University of Granada [7] and Florida State University [8]. The experimentation showed some consistent results which can improve reconstruction performance in all BCS frameworks including BCS-SPL [17] and its variants [19], [27]. Firstly, the effect of varying block size (4x4, 8x8, 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64) results in changing the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) of reconstructed images from at least 1 dB to a maximum of 16 dB. This challenges the common notion that bigger block sizes always result in better reconstruction performance. Secondly, the variation in reconstruction quality with changing block size is mostly dependent on the image visual contents. Thirdly, images having similar visual contents, irrespective of the size, e.g., those from the same category of Caltech101 [6] gave majority vote for the same Optimum Block Size (OBS). These focused notes may help improve BCS based image capturing at many of the existing applications. For example, experimental results suggest using block size of 8x8 or 16x16 to capture facial identity using BCS. Fourthly, the average processing time taken for BCS and reconstruction through SPL with Lapped transform of Discrete Cosine Transform as the sparifying basis remained 300 milli-seconds for block size of 4x4 to 5 seconds for block size of 64x64. Since the processing time variation remains less than 5 seconds, selecting the OBS may not affect the time constraint in many applications. Analysis reveals that no particular block size is able to provide optimum reconstruction for all images with varying nature of visual contents. Therefore, the selection of block size should be made specific to the particular type of application images depending upon their visual contents

Landmark Based Audio Fingerprinting for Naval Vessels

This paper presents a novel landmark based audio fingerprinting algorithm for matching naval vessels' acoustic signatures. The algorithm incorporates joint time - frequency based approach with parameters optimized for application to acoustic signatures of naval vessels. The technique exploits the relative time difference between neighboring frequency onsets, which is found to remain consistent in different samples originating over time from the same vessel. The algorithm has been implemented in MATLAB and trialed with real acoustic signatures of submarines. The training and test samples of submarines have been acquired from resources provided by San Francisco National Park Association [14]. Storage requirements to populate the database with 500 tracks allowing a maximum of 0.5 Million feature hashes per track remained below 1GB. On an average PC, the database hash table can be populated with feature hashes of database tracks @ 1250 hashes/second achieving conversion of 120 seconds of audio data into hashes in less than a second. Under varying attributes such as time skew, noise and sample length, the results prove algorithm robustness in identifying a correct match. Experimental results show classification rate of 94% using proposed approach which is a considerable improvement as compared to 88% achieved by [17] employing existing state of the art techniques such as Detection Envelope Modulation On Noise (DEMON) [15] and Low Frequency Analysis and Recording (LOFAR) [16]

An Antenna Solution for Glacial Environmental Sensor Networks

Antennas used in glacial environmental sensor networks and reported in the last two decades have been reviewed. A link budget framework for designing such antenna systems is presented and used to design an antenna system for deployment at the Thwaites glacier, Antarctica. Design details of two left hand circularly polarized cross dipole antennas, one for englacial sensor probes and the other for supraglacial surface receivers are presented. The probe antenna is a 3D bent cross dipole that fits within a borehole of 8 cm diameter while providing a 1 dBic gain at 433 MHz in ice. The surface receiver antenna is a planar printed antenna providing a gain of 6.1 dBic with a quarter wave reflector. Both antennas provide 3 dB beamwidths of at least 50° in the xz and yz vertical planes catering for transmitter-receiver antenna misalignments caused by extended deployments. The antennas displayed good circular polarization and polarization purity traits. The 3 dB axial ratio bandwidths of both the antennas remained 54.9 %. The total efficiencies of the bent cross dipole and the surface receiver antennas were noted as 69.7 % and 86.9 % respectively. Lastly, the 433 MHz band has been validated for achieving englacial communication ranges of up to 2300 metres

Novel DEMON Spectra Analysis Techniques and Empirical Knowledge Based Reference Criterion for Acoustic Signal Classification

This paper presents some novel methods to estimate a vessel’s number of shafts, course, speed and classify it using the underwater acoustic noise it generates. A classification framework as well as a set of reference parameters for comparison are put forth. Identifying marine traffic in surroundings is an important task for vessels in an open sea. Vessels in vicinity can be identified using their signatures. One of the typical signatures emitted by a vessel is its acoustic measurements. The raw sonar data consisting of the acoustic signatures is generally observed manually by sonar operators for suggesting class of query vessel. The valuable information that can be extracted from the recorded acoustic signature includes shaft revolutions per minute (SRPM), number of blades (NOB), number of shafts, course and speed etc. Expert sonar operators use their empirical knowledge to estimate a vessel’s SRPM and NOB. Based on this information vessel classification is performed. Empirical knowledge comes with experience, and the manual process is prone to human error. To make the process systematic, calculation of the parameters of the received acoustic samples can be visually analyzed using Detection of Envelope Modulation on Noise (DEMON) spectra. Reported research mostly focuses on SRPM and NOB. Parameters such as number of shafts and vessel course and speed can effectively aid the vessel classification process. This paper makes three novel contributions in this area. Firstly, some novel DEMON spectra analysis techniques are proposed to estimate a water vessel’s number of shafts, speed, and relative course. Secondly, this paper presents a classification framework that uses the features extracted from DEMON spectra and compares them with a reference set. Thirdly, a novel set of reference parameters are provided that aid classification into categories of large merchant ship type 1, large merchant ship type 2, large merchant ship type 3, medium merchant ship, oiler, car carrier, cruise ship, fishing boat and fishing trawler. The proposed analysis and classification techniques were assessed through trials with 877 real acoustic signatures recorded under varying conditions of ship’s speed and sea state. The classification trials revealed a high accuracy of 94.7%

History matters in making Lahore sustainable

Lahore, the second-largest city of Pakistan, is facing sharp population growth and economic development coupled with increased motorisation and a deteriorating urban environment. This is due to a long history of investment into roads and low-density suburban housing development in Lahore which increases motorisation. This paper provides a historical overview of urban planning in Lahore by shedding light on the Mughal and the British period of development followed by the post-independence planning paradigm in the city. This paper examines the contradictions and uncertainties that have characterised urban planning in Lahore in the pre and post-independence period by using a sustainable city and sustainable transport literature. The analysis shows that Lahore traditionally attracted investment in the high-quality roads infrastructure (flyovers, underpasses and a ring road) and recently in the country first ever Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system (2013) and Metro Train project (2018) in the city. The paper argues that the Lahore BRT and Metro train projects can provide a window of opportunity to redefine transport and land use issues and offer a transit-oriented development (TOD) solutions in Lahore

Exploration of the foundations of ethnic conflicts in Baluchistan: a theoretical perspective

The main objective of this study is to understand the foundations of the violent ethnic conflicts of   Baluchistan, a federating unit of Pakistan so that the primary causes of the conflict are to be addressed. The mainstream theories of the ethnic conflicts primordialism, instrumentalism and constructivism are reviewed and applied in the context of Baluchistan. This attempt has been made because in the past state responded to ethnic conflicts without understanding the real foundations. The qualitative research methodology with descriptive and interpretive approaches has been adopted for dealing with the objectives. The article is principally based on the literature review. The arguments have been developed by juxtaposing the primary and secondary information collected through books, journals, periodicals, and electronic sources. It is argued, that primordialism has limited explanatory power while constructivism has explanatory power, but its appeal is limited in Baluchistan’s context. Instrumentalism explains the foundations sufficiently, while primordialism and constructivism provide the bases for instrumentalism. It is suggested that compromise and reconciliations should be adopted as the policy for ethnic conflicts so that the political and economic causes, instrumental in giving rise to ethnic conflicts, can be resolved