Measuring E-Readiness among Non-Users of Internet Banking in Pakistan: By TAM with CRM as External Factor

In the recent technological era, ignorance by financial institutes is observed while considering customer focus policies and business offers. In the meanwhile, technological innovation has changed the business nature, where internal customers of financial institutes are engaging with heavy technological trainings, to put it in the core of actions. The triangulated quantitative and qualitative approach is adopted. Specifically, the quantitative survey analyzed to measure path analysis, model fitness and highlight relationships after validating the scales and methodology. In qualitative aspect, 3 interviews with bank's managerial staff to understand the stance of bank clients about the Internet banking adoption. The findings conclude that the non-users of internet banking service have attractive ‘Perceived Usefulness' and ‘Perceived Ease of Use', however the ‘push' from the bank by the effective communication is not been observed. The customers still can have the essence of trial-ability and adoption if the intelligent CRM based strategy is developed. To make it possible and successful adoption of internet banking, the current research suggests to promote Customer Relationship Management, as a tool to boost the morale of end-users. CRM can eliminate the negative impact of social influencing factors which are not current supporting internet banking adoption in Pakistan i.e. subjective norms, peer influence and reputation. Interestingly, only very few research studies highlighted the use of CRM and e-CRM to increase internet adoption globally. Moreover, it is the first initiative of its kind, to address Internet banking adoption while increasing relationship with customers in the focused region. Keywords: Internet banking, Technology Adoption Model (TAM), Pakistan, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Perceived Ease of Use (EASE), Perceived Usefulness (PU)

Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in Software Industry of Pakistan: An Overview of Dual Perspective of Demand and Supply Side

The current study is to understand the following aspects of IPR in Pakistan: (1) the readiness of IT skilled workforce to adopt and understand IPR policies in their business environment. (2) The legislative structure available in the country to implement and adopt IPR policies in IT related business environment. The key market players are realizing the importance of IPR for international and nationwide acceptance and growth. The software industry in Pakistan can contribute with much more impressive manner if the IPR policies will be adopted timely by the industry, and the facilities and encouragement provided by the administrative authorities immediately. Keywords: Intellectual Property Rights, Software Industry, Pakistan, IT skilled workforce, Software Protection, Information Technology, IPR Polic

FPGA-Based On-Board Geometric Calibration for Linear CCD Array Sensors

With increasing demands in real-time or near real-time remotely sensed imagery applications in such as military deployments, quick response to terrorist attacks and disaster rescue, the on-board geometric calibration problem has attracted the attention of many scientists in recent years. This paper presents an on-board geometric calibration method for linear CCD sensor arrays using FPGA chips. The proposed method mainly consists of four modules—Input Data, Coefficient Calculation, Adjustment Computation and Comparison—in which the parallel computations for building the observation equations and least squares adjustment, are implemented using FPGA chips, for which a decomposed matrix inversion method is presented. A Xilinx Virtex-7 FPGA VC707 chip is selected and the MOMS-2P data used for inflight geometric calibration from DLR (Köln, Germany), are employed for validation and analysis. The experimental results demonstrated that: (1) When the widths of floating-point data from 44-bit to 64-bit are adopted, the FPGA resources, including the utilizations of FF, LUT, memory LUT, I/O and DSP48, are consumed at a fast increasing rate; thus, a 50-bit data width is recommended for FPGA-based geometric calibration. (2) Increasing number of ground control points (GCPs) does not significantly consume the FPGA resources, six GCPs is therefore recommended for geometric calibration. (3) The FPGA-based geometric calibration can reach approximately 24 times faster speed than the PC-based one does. (4) The accuracy from the proposed FPGA-based method is almost similar to the one from the inflight calibration if the calibration model and GCPs number are the same

On Board Georeferencing Using FPGA-Based Optimized Second Order Polynomial Equation

For real-time monitoring of natural disasters, such as fire, volcano, flood, landslide, and coastal inundation, highly-accurate georeferenced remotely sensed imagery is needed. Georeferenced imagery can be fused with geographic spatial data sets to provide geographic coordinates and positing for regions of interest. This paper proposes an on-board georeferencing method for remotely sensed imagery, which contains five modules: input data, coordinate transformation, bilinear interpolation, and output data. The experimental results demonstrate multiple benefits of the proposed method: (1) the computation speed using the proposed algorithm is 8 times faster than that using PC computer; (2) the resources of the field programmable gate array (FPGA) can meet the requirements of design. In the coordinate transformation scheme, 250,656 LUTs, 499,268 registers, and 388 DSP48s are used. Furthermore, 27,218 LUTs, 45,823 registers, 456 RAM/FIFO, and 267 DSP48s are used in the bilinear interpolation module; (3) the values of root mean square errors (RMSEs) are less than one pixel, and the other statistics, such as maximum error, minimum error, and mean error are less than one pixel; (4) the gray values of the georeferenced image when implemented using FPGA have the same accuracy as those implemented using MATLAB and Visual studio (C++), and have a very close accuracy implemented using ENVI software; and (5) the on-chip power consumption is 0.659W. Therefore, it can be concluded that the proposed georeferencing method implemented using FPGA with second-order polynomial model and bilinear interpolation algorithm can achieve real-time geographic referencing for remotely sensed imagery

Entrepreneurs and Environmental Sustainability in the Digital Era: Regional and Institutional Perspectives

Climate change and environmental degradation have negatively affected the sustainable development of mankind. The “green” concept has been gradually accepted by the public, thereby strongly promoting “green” business forms and social innovation. This study adopts related information and technology knowledge and experience and warm glow (altruistic value) for business initiatives as push factors, market opportunity (MO) and personal innovativeness (PI) in technology as pull factors, and institutional theory (regulatory support and normative support) as mooring factors. These factors are employed to analyze the switching intentions of individuals toward green entrepreneurship, which is a new persuasive psychological model based on Push–Pull–Mooring model (PPM). The survey questionnaires are collected from a total of 1562 respondents through WeChat in mainland China. The study findings present all variables that significantly affect individuals’ switching intentions toward green entrepreneurs. PI exhibits the most significant impact on intention of individuals toward green entrepreneurship, while the interaction between the mooring factor and MO on switching intentions to green entrepreneurship is relatively weak. Finally, the study contributes theoretical and practical implications for increasing intentions toward green entrepreneurship

The impact of government funding on senior high enrolment in Ghana

Successive governments, both military and civilian regimes, funded senior high school education in Ghana to increase access and improve quality since the nation attained independence on 6 March 1957. In the study reported on here we adopted a quantitative research method using secondary data from five public senior high schools in the Wa Municipality, as these schools are beneficiaries of government funding in Ghana. We used the generalised linear model to test the impact of government funding on student enrolment. The study reveals that government funding has a significant impact on increasing enrolment among girls but it is not statistically significant in increasing boys’ enrolment. Keywords: enrolment; government funding; senior high school; sustainable development goal

GMO/GMF on Social Media in China: Jagged Landscape of Information Seeking and Sharing Behavior through a Valence View

The study examines the critical factors affecting Chinese social media (SM) users’ intentions and behavior to seek and share information on genetically modified organisms/ genetically modified food (GMO/GMF). The proposed framework was conceptualized through benefit-risk analysis and subsequently mapped SM users’ perceived benefits and risks to seeks and share information using Kurt Lewin’s valence view. Quantitative data was collected using survey questionnaires administered from 583 SM users. The results of the path analysis demonstrated two key findings related to SM users’ perceived benefits and risks to seek and share information on GMO/GMF. Among risks, the psychological risk is the strongest predictor of perceived risk to use SM for GMO/GMF, which consequently determines the intentions and behaviors to share information about GMO/GMF on SM in People’s Republic of China. Among benefits, the results showed that perceived usefulness, creditability of GMO/GMF information, and information support are positively related to perceived benefits to use SM for GMO/GMF, which subsequently, predicts the intentions and behaviors to seek information about GMO/GMF on SM. This study suggests scholars and practitioners explore and utilize the efficient communication strategy to fulfill the potential of the SM to increase GMO/GMF acceptance in Chinese society

A comprehensive quantification of global nitrous oxide sources and sinks

Nitrous oxide (N2O), like carbon dioxide, is a long-lived greenhouse gas that accumulates in the atmosphere. Over the past 150 years, increasing atmospheric N2O concentrations have contributed to stratospheric ozone depletion1 and climate change2, with the current rate of increase estimated at 2 per cent per decade. Existing national inventories do not provide a full picture of N2O emissions, owing to their omission of natural sources and limitations in methodology for attributing anthropogenic sources. Here we present a global N2O inventory that incorporates both natural and anthropogenic sources and accounts for the interaction between nitrogen additions and the biochemical processes that control N2O emissions. We use bottom-up (inventory, statistical extrapolation of flux measurements, process-based land and ocean modelling) and top-down (atmospheric inversion) approaches to provide a comprehensive quantification of global N2O sources and sinks resulting from 21 natural and human sectors between 1980 and 2016. Global N2O emissions were 17.0 (minimum–maximum estimates: 12.2–23.5) teragrams of nitrogen per year (bottom-up) and 16.9 (15.9–17.7) teragrams of nitrogen per year (top-down) between 2007 and 2016. Global human-induced emissions, which are dominated by nitrogen additions to croplands, increased by 30% over the past four decades to 7.3 (4.2–11.4) teragrams of nitrogen per year. This increase was mainly responsible for the growth in the atmospheric burden. Our findings point to growing N2O emissions in emerging economies—particularly Brazil, China and India. Analysis of process-based model estimates reveals an emerging N2O–climate feedback resulting from interactions between nitrogen additions and climate change. The recent growth in N2O emissions exceeds some of the highest projected emission scenarios3,4, underscoring the urgency to mitigate N2O emissions